Nantong No.1 Middle School of Jiangsu Province, founded in 1919, has been awarded as the key school in Jiangsu Province since 1980, national model high school since 1997 and the Four-star high school in Jiangsu Province since 2004.

It has been honored as the national advanced group of spiritual civilization, the national advanced unit of mass sports, the national model school for language standardization, the national model school for fire safety education.

In the past years, Nantong No 1 Middle School has obtained outstanding achievements in essential-qualities-oriented education and curriculum reform, by establishing the educational ideology of characteristic education. In 2010, the school was awarded the advanced unit of curriculum reform, and first prize on education & teacher achievements in Jiangsu Province. In 2011, the physics curriculum base has been audited and launched, which has become a symbolic project for curriculum reform. In 2012, the school has been confirmed as the pilot school for digital teaching & learning.

The school is well and comprehensively equipped with digital office platform, microteaching center, digital labs, providing staff with state-of-the-art teaching and research facilities. It also boasts a team of professional teachers with high moral ground and deep theoretical foundations, amongst which is 1 provincial education specialist, 2 senior teachers with professor level, 4 premium teachers, 5 members of the 333 High-level Talent Project, and 15 leading teachers for each individual courses of the city. In the past few years, more than 60 teachers have been awarded of first prize for state or provincial teaching competitions. 

The school has carried out the essential-qualities-oriented education and has achieved outstanding results in the new curriculum reform. Over its 90 years history, the school has supplied great numbers of talents for all trades of the society. In the past ten years, 6 students have won provincial first or second place in national college entrance examination, and the achievements are getting better each year. All-round harmonious development of students has been given high priority and students have won all kinds of awards in various competitions. Based on solid data in the past three years, there have been 9 students awarded with first prizes in the national tech-competition and Olympic-intellectual competitions; more than 100 have won first prizes on the provincial level. And to meet up the globalization trend, the school has adopted the international curriculum based on two platforms of PGA and A-LEVEL. Since 2011, the school has been identified as the advanced school of Jiangsu international education and in 2012, all of the 24 graduates from the first PGA class were admitted by the top 100 universities in the world.