part series, Hirah Azhar takes a closer look at schools offering the British Curriculum I plunged headfirst into the role of an educator when I was employed as a Year 3 class teacher in a popular international school in Jeddah. I offered no previous teaching experience or relevant training, but was assured that my degree from England made me a much better candidate for teaching than my colleagues. My nightmarish experience highlighted a climaxing crisis in Saudi Arabia's private education sector. Saudi Arabia – along with much of the Middle East - has witnessed the accelerated growth of private ‘international' schools apparently providing the British curriculum in the recent past. While this phenomenon has provided much relief to those expatriates who are unable to afford the traditional providers of British education here, it has also brought an assortment of ills along with it. A large number of these fledgling schools are making completely baseless claims concerning the ‘brand' of education they provide, and are effectively trapping unaware expatriate parents into enrolling their children into institutions that are providing almost none of the prerequisites of a British schooling. British education has long been preferred in many countries where there is a need for English-medium schools. In Saudi Arabia, these schools overwhelmingly cater to the needs of expatriates for whom the unviable alternative are Arabic-medium Saudi schools. This is especially so for the scores of expatriates from the Asian Subcontinent living in the Kingdom who prefer the British curriculum over their home countries' curriculum but appreciate having a few components of the latter thrown in. Unlike its American counterpart however, the British education system doesn't impose stringent guidelines and certification on institutions overseas. The British Government does not support or monitor schools outside the United Kingdom, and this loophole has contributed to the growing presence of so many imitations of the existing certified institutions of British education here. I spoke to the Director of the British International School of Jeddah (BISJ) – informally known as ‘Conti' - Mr. Bruce Gamwell, and asked him whether his school normally accepts transfers of children from these imitation schools. ‘Generally, the older the pupils get the more difficult it is for them to gain admission to this school', he answered and declined to comment on any discrepancy in quality between schools. Indeed, it is exceptionally difficult to differentiate between the academic quality between reputed schools like BISJ and the rest. This is mainly because most parents judge schools on their Cambridge International Exams' (CIE) results which are derived from the globally popular and recognised IGCSEs and A levels. At my former workplace, I witnessed a number of parental visits and observed how they were always shown reams of fantastic past IGCSE results but none for any of the other years. It's not just because CIE results are easier to accumulate and display, but also because international schools plunge an inordinate amount of attention and resources into pupils attempting CIE exams. Disproportionately more than that invested on the Primary and lower Secondary sections. Moreover, most IGCSE and A level pupils take rigorous private tuitions and this further muddies the school's real contribution. A school's genuine academic standards can therefore only be gauged when results for all sections of pupils are accumulated. Accreditation – a formal certification process – by a recognised educational association would eradicate much of the ambiguity concerning the authenticity of these schools. COBIS (Council of British International Schools) are a UK-based membership association of reputable British schools and are a member of the International Schools Council in Britain. They provide access to official British certification through inspections by UK's Independent Schools Inspectorate. They can therefore certify British schools anywhere overseas, but only six British curriculum schools in the Kingdom are even recognised by the organisation. One such school is BISJ which is also fully accredited by two other highly regarded British associations, including the reputable Council of International Schools (CIS) – of which it is the sole member in this country. The quality assurance check accreditation provides is essential for schools wishing to provide British education because it complies with roughly the same standards schools in Britain offer.Many of these schools maintain that accreditation is only for the wealthy and mighty. Sahar Shamsi is an administrator at a popular school in Riyadh and she mirrors this opinion: ‘It's much easier for elitist schools to get accredited because they charge higher fees and have a lot more resources than us. They can easily fulfil the prerequisites of these associations'. I asked her whether her school had ever even contacted any such association and she instantly replied that there was no official decree on that. It is true that the considerably lower tuition fees these schools charge mean that they cannot afford to jump straight into the accreditation process. However, the process itself takes many years and these schools can at least start the procedure. Many are of the complacent view that if accreditation is not required by law, then there is no need to worry about it. This casual indifference is duplicated in other aspects as well. COBIS and CIS both require the teachers of a candidate school to possess teaching qualifications recognised by Britain's Department for Education and Skills (DfES), which usually includes a recognised bachelors' degree and a postgraduate teaching certificate. Unfortunately most – if not all – the teachers in emerging international schools are unqualified for the job. My former colleague was a class teacher for Year 3 and was still in the process of completing her degree from her home country. Her Maths and English was poor and she often sought help to explain key concepts to her class. Not only was this damaging to the level of confidence she inspired in her students, but was also very frustrating for her. As a result, she often resorted to the use of physical and verbal abuse for her pupils as a vent for that frustration. I was justifiably surprised, therefore, that every school I contacted as a prospective parent claimed that all their teachers were fully qualified. My question on what kind of qualifications the teachers offered was frequently met with complete silence and even some indignant huffing. Why is it so strange for a parent to ask about the teaching qualifications of their child's future teachers? During my conversation with Mr. Gamwell of BISJ – one of the few schools that does only employ qualified teachers – I asked him whether untrained people could do the job. His frank ‘no' echoed the zero-tolerance of certification associations. There is no reason why this guarantee of teaching quality cannot be implemented in every school. Running international schools in the Kingdom is a rather lucrative business and it is certainly possible for school Boards to pay higher salaries and employ qualified teachers or alternatively, fund the training of their current teachers. Accreditation associations similarly sponsor a variety of training workshops that these schools can participate in with a bit more effort. BISJ itself, offers a Post-Graduate Teaching Certificate in conjunction with Britain's University of Sunderland. According to Amina Fareed, who works within the Finance department of an American curriculum school in Jeddah, private schools have more than enough resources to fund the training of teachers. Unfortunately however, ‘workplace politics' and the resultant favouritism that plagues most private schools here makes implementing this scheme almost impossible. ‘There are lot of schools that will decide to send a few teachers for training to workshops in Dubai or Bahrain. The next day, someone from the Board will recommend a much less deserving candidate for the course and the scheme will be dropped entirely,' she complained. Rampant employee-management friction such as this is blocking progress and hampering any effort to tighten the gap between quality schools and the rest. A large majority of these emerging schools follow CIE's international curriculum, which is rather uniform across schools but caters only to pupils above the age of fourteen. It is only when you examine the pre-CIE curriculum, that the picture loses its clarity. Schools in Britain adhere to the National Curriculum which consists of four levels or ‘Key Stages' as they are called and students are tested for them at the respective ages of five, seven, eleven, and fourteen. Along with the usual subjects, History, Geography, Technology and Music are also added after the primary cycle of Key Stage 1. In search for a school that offers the complete National curriculum, I wrote to Mr. Paul Hay – the Headmaster of the Jeddah Prep and Grammar School (JPGS) – and asked him what curriculum his school offered. ‘JPGS is the only school in Jeddah which follows the National Curriculum of England and Wales from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 4 (5 – 14)...No one else can make that claim,' he wrote back. There is officially no obligation on schools abroad to follow the National Curriculum precisely. But doing so makes it apparent that the school in question is taking the responsibility of providing a UK – equivalent education seriously. This is not to say that schools not fully providing the National Curriculum are not providing a British education. BISJ, for instance, offers an ‘adapted' version of the National Curriculum, and the COBIS website emphasises that schools abroad have full liberty to follow the National Curriculum with such amendments. The dilemma facing parents is how to know for sure that the claims being made by a school are not dishonest in any way.
