Is anybody listening? – Can somebody do something?
people like me in Thailand who have kids here but not the cash to pay the
massive fees demanded by international schools – some even more expensive than
Eton.
can bring me close to tears or if not that send my stomach into knots. My daughter Annie, 5, goes to bi-lingual school in
Bangkok and speaks to me in English.
speaks Swahili I believe. By the time
they are all at school I will be speaking gibberish from multiple panic attacks.
I’ll bag all the kids and take them on a plane to rural Berkshire or my first
love the Western Highlands of Scotland.
contacts are in Asia now. I would be put out to graze I guess. Become a shepherd or ghillie?
current government achieving anything in its application – apart maybe from
some very large commissions. I would like to see it work but I gave been told too much about the machiavellian schemers involved.
the status quo. Keep the poor people poor and ignorant, and the rich people rich. Short term
gain.
Vietnam racing ahead as did Malaysia and Singapore years ago.
The patronage system continues. Nobody listens.
thrown away a long time ago. Though I
still want people to be able to write with pen and paper.
School, whose kids come from what is described as a ‘disadvantaged intake’
every teacher has an I-Pad. Every pupil
has an I-pod Touch.
“The gadget revolution is all down to Abdul Chohan, a
chemistry teacher at the school’s former failing predecessor. He is now one of
four directors – in old parlance, deputy heads – at Essa.
“Mr Chohan, who had experience with Glaxo pharmaceuticals as
a researcher before turning to teaching, is convinced that his pupils will need
21st-century skills when they set out to find work. He also believes that too
much attention is focused on exams rather than developing life skills.
“He is particularly scathing about the way some schools have
introduced new technology. “Thousands of pounds has been spent in schools
and used really unwisely,” he says.
“Teachers are really good at doing the wrong things
well. For instance, they used to have a blackboard and now they have an
interactive whiteboard – but they still stand in front of the class pointing to
it as if it was their old blackboard.”
The fact that pupils can be continually in touch with their teachers is a crucial advantage of the new system, Mr Chohan points out. “If there’s something they want to know, why should they have to wait until the school gates open at 9am in the morning?” he says.
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| RAF 220 Squadron Hudson |
But anyway Essa School seems to
have got it right in the end.
Last year every pupil achieved five A* to C grade passes at
GCSE, compared with 40 per cent previously.
school. They do not give reports until she is seven at least that’s what my ex-tells me. If Annie has any problems I do not hear them. So maybe she does not.
trouble maker.
attack today when I caught Matthew on the top shelf of my office grabbing for a
model of Flying Fortress ‘J’ of RAF 220
Squadron which is the plane his granddad flew in the Second World War.
plane.
Azores.
provisions, but the records show there were no survivors.
He said he could hear their screams.
But of course he could
not through the four engines of a B -17. But I knew what he meant. I think he
always had nightmares about this.
Dropping bombs on port cities, when Bomber Command was leafleting, was less personal, although 220 Squadron was wiped out twice in the war’s early stages..
tell them. I need to get them to learn about irony and that there can be level playing fields and how we used to fight dictators but now befriend them for commercial purposes. But they’re still on phonetics so I’m just teaching Annie how to, or how not to, make cupcakes – But its fun.
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| Fortress ‘J’ in the Azores |