40 Years of Success for U.K.’s First European School

The Anglo European School in Ingatestone, Essex has just celebrated 40 years since it was founded as Britain’s first school with a European ethos and curriculum. Ex-teachers and head teachers who remembered the first years of the school recounted how the concept seemed quite difficult to promote back in 1973. The fact that Edward Heath had made an effort to get Britain into the European Community in that year made the effort a little easier.

The school started life as Ingatestone Secondary Modern, which was encountering stiff competition from nearby grammar schools before the decision to convert the school into a European style school. One teacher who remembers the early days of the school well has lived in Ingatestone since 1965 and was the school’s founding Biology teacher. She says that the parents in those days were conscious of Essex’s proximity to the continent and the entry into the Common Market, but thinks they were still “brave” to consider such a radical change in the school.

Essex County Council had been considering the idea of creating a school in line with changing times back in 1971, when a special committee was set up to prepare an outline of the school the council had in mind. The school was to focus on European studies and modern languages and organise exchanges with students from European schools. The fact that the European headquarters of Ford was in nearby Warley helped to give Ingatestone more of a cosmopolitan flavour.

40 years later, the school now has 1,350 students and has a strong focus on European languages as well as offering the International Baccalaureate Certificate. Joint head teacher, David Barrs, thinks that the name of the school should be changed from “European” to “International”, which is more in keeping with the role the school now plays in the community.

The school first started using the IB (International Baccalaureate) diploma back in 1977. This academic program is more arduous for students than the traditional three A levels that most schools in Britain offer and is thought to prepare students better for an international view on the world. The school only offered it to students that it thought could manage it at first and founding head teacher, Norman Pitt, admitted that the first years that the IB was implemented were quite difficult.

The school not only demonstrates its academic progress, but plays a role in charitable work as well with a longstanding relationship with the charity “International Help for Children”, now renamed the Margaret McEwen Trust. The school has raised thousands of pounds over the years for children overseas and has helped to build a home for boys in Southern India.

£25,000 Offered to Bright Graduates to Train to be Teachers

The Government is planning to improve standards in the classroom by recruiting the brightest graduates. They will be given a £25,000 training allowance to train to be as teachers in order to meet current teacher shortages.

These generous cash awards are to be offered to those with the highest degrees in computing, maths, chemistry and physics. These are subjects that are almost always short of suitably qualified teachers.

This is all part of a lift in training bursaries in 2014 throughout the state education system. It is designed to both support traditional disciplines and at the same time offset recruitment crisis concerns.

The Department for Education has also stated that those students who have attained honours degrees that are third class will be eligible to put in a claim for bursaries to teach physics and maths and they will be worth of £9,000.There was a previous pledge that a minimum of a 2.2 would only qualify for support..

There are also concerns that trainee PE teachers who were expected to be granted £9,000 will no longer be prioritised, even though sport is considered important.

These changes to teacher training in England are taking place at the same time as training is taking place more in schools than through postgraduate courses at universities.

Professor Chris Husbands, the director of the Institute of Education, said that schools were up against a problem because of their failure to take on trainees in maths and physics into the “Schools Direct” programme in subjects like maths and physics.

The Schools Minister, David Lewis expressly stated that the challenge was to recruit graduates with the most talent and who had the potential to be superb teachers in important subjects. He considers that this is what British children deserve.

Ministers intend to hand out to 680 students a 12 month £25,000 scholarship designed to train them to teach computing, physics, chemistry and maths. In order to qualify, those with a 2:1 will have to attend an interview and be expected to pass a test in their chosen subject.

The Government has also earmarked more bursaries from £4,000 to £20,000 which are for trainee physics and maths teachers who have gained a 2:1. Those graduates with relevant A-levels in the two subjects will be eligible for £9,000.

Other bursary packages are available instantly to students who are prepared to teach secondary school computing, chemistry, design and technology, English, biology, history, music and geography. Also, trainees who have a first class degree and wish to train for primary school teaching will be awarded £9,000.and up to £11,000 for those who are prepared to teach primary maths.

Civitas to be introduced to Pimlico Academy?

London’s John Nash Pimlico Academy may be looking to introduce a Civitas based core knowledge curriculum.  The education facility which is sponsored by the charity Future, set-up by husband and wife John and Caroline Nash.

Using the existing building, the academy opened in 2008 to become a private non-fee-paying school for 11-19 year olds.  With an impressive alumni, and many awards under its belt in the last 4 years, the privately owned school has been consulting with various educational experts since the draft primary National Curriculum documents for English, mathematics and science were published on 11 June 2012.

English, maths and Science will still be core subjects under a Civitas themed syllabus, however the addition of regular guest speakers and a focus on family structure and the EU are stark differences.

The current American core knowledge curriculum is adapted for the UK, and if introduced it will be a big change for this arts and history focused private school.

Based in Westminster, Pimlico Academy is home to 1300 students, from all backgrounds.  Over half speak English as their second language, with a sixth of the student population being asylum seekers.  Students are encouraged to develop a keen sense of belonging and self-respect.

CELTA – Lessons from the Classroom assignment part 3

Continued from Pre Teaching Vocabulary

I believe that one of my strengths is drilling however for future lessons I need to analyse what language needs to be drilled and I can do this by identifying what my main aims are for my future lessons. After watching one of Lucy’s lessons where she drilled the word ‘dynamic’ which was the concept being taught rather than the target language I realised that sometimes its not necessary to drill or correct pronunciation of language which students don’t need to know e.g. the name of the concept.

Drilling teaching technique

Also when I observed a reading lesson taught by Marcus I realised the importance of gist tasks and how they can help students to find out what a text is about, gist tasks help students to not feel overwhelmed when they are given the more detailed task. Gist tasks can help particularly when teaching a subject through a text/recording. Generally, I don’t find it difficult to carry out gist tasks for students.

One of the problems in classroom management is controlling students, I found that Marcus Michaels was very good at controlling her students and when she told them to stop they did and when she gave instructions they understood them, in my lessons it seems that sometimes students don’t understand a task or they don’t stop when I ask them to. To improve on instruction giving I’ll pre plan lesson instructions more carefully and look to see how I sound at the moment. I’ll try and adopt a more authoritative tone and demonstrate activities when possible.

Finally, I noticed that during my lessons because of my complex instruction giving I often use too much TTT rather than having more STT. Also, I do a lot of echoing (when you echo a students mistake but say it in the correct way) and helping students complete sentences rather than getting them to do it themselves, which is counter productive to learning, in future lessons I’m going to use the self or peer corrections mentioned before, I noticed in Luke’s lesson that she used a rising intonation on an incorrect word to indicate a mistake, so I’ll try and integrate that with my teaching.

* Please don’t copy as you may be penalized or taken out from your course if you do, you have been warned!!

CELTA – Lessons from the Classroom assignment part 2

Pre teaching vocabulary

When watching Joseph’s lessons I admired the way he pre taught vocabulary by eliciting items with the use of realia, this is a quick and effective way to get students to get familiar with new vocabulary. I have struggled in one of my lessons because I spent too long teaching vocabulary, next time I hope to use realia to try and teach instead. I also liked the way Terry elicited vocab in her lesson when teaching vocabulary on telling the time.

When watching Nigels’s lesson I found that he encouraged his students to correct themselves when they made mistakes, this is affective because it is a good way to get students to think for themselves as often they know the answer but they just need to be encouraged to try and remember. If students can’t correct themselves its also good to get students to correct each other (this is known as peer correction) this is good because it gets other students involved and keeps the flow of the lesson. If nobody can correct the mistake then its up to the teacher to correct the mistake. I have found it hard to incorporate this in to my lessons because I’ve often been too shy to try and involve the whole class so often I correct the student without the student trying to correct themselves, I will try and do this in future lessons.

This leads on to a key skill which I have trouble with but I’m improving on slowly, which is asking concept checking questions which is when simple questions are asked to a class in order to check their understanding of the target language or meaning of vocabulary. It’s important because it shows that students have learnt. Another important skill which I’ve learnt is drilling, this is when a new piece of grammar, vocabulary or function is repeated by the teacher, then the whole class chorally and then individually by students, this gives students practice to use the target language and helps the teacher to spot any pronunciation mistakes which need to be improved.

Part 3 on its way!!

* Please don’t copy as you may be penalized or taken out from your course if you do, you have been warned!!

CELTA – Lessons from the Classroom assignment part 1

This is the first part of a sample assignment from the CELTA course which  passed a few years ago. It will probably be your fourth assignment in your CELTA and you’ll discuss what you learnt from your course.

Lessons from the classroom

During speaking lessons students should be encouraged to develop fluency and confidence with the target language they have been taught, when I watched James’ lesson I saw that he enforced this by not correcting mistakes as he heard them, instead he wrote them on the board and corrected them at the end of the lesson, in my speaking lesson I emulated this and this made my lesson a success, however some students felt left out because students weren’t all talking to each other, this could have been controlled if I had got them in to small pairs first so that the students could feel more comfortable with each other. Also to promote fluency further James told students to not use their dictionary but instead used scaffolding techniques to encourage fluency.

Also looking at most lessons it seems that the best way to get students talking first is to get them to talk in pairs as opposed to group work straight away as it encourages the less confident students to speak.

Warmer exercises

Whilst observing Mark’s class I found out how important and interactive warmer tasks can be, they are used to introduce the topic and arouse interest in a lesson, during the lesson the students didn’t seem to get bored and this could be because Mark introduced the topic in an interesting way. The warmer was short and snappy, which is something I seem to be struggling with. When I first started teaching my warmers often took too long and made it difficult for me to go through the following tasks without rushing. I found that in most of the first lessons which were taught by most of my TP group timing was a problem, that’s something I need to control in the future by rehearsing, doing thorough lesson planning and anticipating problems which may cause planned activities to last longer than expected.

Part 2 coming soon!

* Please don’t copy as you may be penalized or taken out from your course if you do, you have been warned!!