Best of Both Worlds: Keeping On Track

By Stuart White
Head of Secondary
British International School Shanghai, Puxi Campus

Children who grow up as part of an international community are well on the way to being equipped for life in a global society. Living in a different country or even continent, spending time with friends from many nations and cultures, speaking, hearing and seeing different languages – all these are clear benefits provided by parents for whom globalisation is part of everyday life. There are concerns too, however, and two of the most common are often shared with us by parents. “How will I know that my son is developing academically at the right pace? When I move back home, will my daughter be able to fit back into a domestic school and curriculum?” These are understandable concerns, and they deserve answers.

At the British International School Shanghai, Puxi Campus, students follow the highly regarded National Curriculum of England and Wales. This in itself provides some of the reassurance necessary. Students follow prescribed courses of study with teachers who are trained in the standards used ‘back home’, and it is much easier to transfer in (or out), should a parent’s work require it, with minimal disruption.

The National Curriculum is split into Key Stages. Key Stages 1 and 2 take children through their primary years, from the end of early years education up until the age of 11, before handing over to Key Stage 3, which supports children through the first three years of secondary school, aged between 11 and 14. Over these three Key Stages, children’s progress is recorded as a series of levels, from 1 to 8, with students expected to make at least two levels worth of progress in each Key Stage to match UK government targets. The strength of the UK system and its national curriculum is that it provides a coherent and comprehensive curriculum with clear expectations of attainment all the way through. Despite being 6,000 miles away from Western Europe, parents don’t have to worry about whether their child is “covering the right work” or “going fast enough” – the expectations are laid out for all to see, and frequent reports to parents provide reassurance and confirmation.

As every parent of a teenage student knows, the pressure starts to increase as they approach serious examinations. Following the British International School curriculum, that starts with the GCSE at 16, after the two years of Key Stage 4. Like many of the most prestigious independent schools in the UK, we actually enter our students for IGCSE examinations – the international version of the domestic GCSE – but the syllabuses and levels are broadly similar, with the difference mainly in the arguably more rigorous and formal style of assessment. Once again, parents have the advantage of knowing that the courses their children are following mirror those being studied across the UK and in other similar international schools around the world.

Whereas once the jewel in the crown of a British education was the gold standard of A-levels, the baton has now been passed – in the UK and overseas – to the International Baccalaureate Diploma. Widely regarded around the world as a rigorous and meaningful two-year intellectual challenge, this is an ideal platform for students who are preparing for universities around the world. Universities in many countries, including the UK and the US, hold the IB Diploma in high esteem and, more importantly, the programme helps students to learn the crucial skills of independence and self-motivation. More reassurance for mobile parents and mobile students.

As parents of children who have moved through different education systems in different countries, we are all concerned to know that our children’s education remains on course for success. We want, of course, to know that our sons and daughters are making the progress that they would be had they remained in their national programmes, or even more. At the British International School Shanghai’s Puxi campus, a new scheme running this year aims to provide parents with that reassurance. As pupils progress through Key Stages 1, 2 and 3, we are making use of materials standardised in the UK as part of a new system of assessment called APP, Assessing Pupils’ Progress. This makes accurate and reliable measures of how children are doing through work carried out in class – reducing the need for unnecessary and intrusive testing – and hence provides a clear statement of the national curriculum level that a child is working at. Levels are reported unambiguously to parents, with opportunities to discuss any concerns.

Extending this at Key Stage 4 and for the IB Diploma this year, we make use of ‘trackers’, which report – among other things – the teacher’s prediction of what the student will get at the end of the course. This prediction is as simple as it sounds: the teacher’s best assessment, based on his or her professional judgement and experience, of the grade each individual pupil will read on his or her results slip. Such a simple concept is extremely powerful. In this way, teachers have to be honest with students and parents from as early a stage in the GCSE or IB course as possible. Our policy is based on ‘no surprises’ – we believe that students need to take responsibility for their own learning at this stage, and they can only do that if we are honest and straightforward with them throughout.

It isn’t enough, however, just to be honest with students about our expectations of them. We need to make sure that we have the right expectations of each and every child in our care, and we need to ensure that we are challenging, stretching and guiding them to what they are capable of. This is where the benefits of working with the English curriculum come in again! All our students – like most of their counterparts in the UK – are given tests which measure their ability when they join us. While we could have long discussions over what exactly we mean by ability in this context, these tests do give us measurable and comparable baseline data on all our students, and we can mix this in with the global statistics for GCSE and IB exams to produce a set of guideline grades that tell us what each of your sons and daughters would do if they were in a typical UK school.

Five times each year, we put teacher predictions and guideline grades together for every pupil, to make sure that everyone is at least on track to achieve what they would have achieved if they’d been left undisturbed in a national education programme. This way, we can be confident that students who work with us in the exciting, challenging, heady international mix that is school life in Shanghai are getting all of the benefits without any downside. And they speak much better Mandarin than they could ever have learned at home!

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