Saturday 25 February 2012

Well, Let’s See The CiF Crowd Argue Against This…

…after all, aren’t they always holding up Scandinavia as a paradise?
The first foreign company to run one of Britain's free schools has spoken about its plans to "teach to the highest standards and help students to become holistic, well managed, young individuals".

Internationella Engelska Skolen (IES) will manage the new Breckland free school in Brandon, Suffolk, from September.
This’ll be good!
The company, which was founded twenty years ago, runs 17 free schools in Sweden and teaches more than 11,000 students. A further 62,000 are on the waiting list to join.

IES says parents are attracted by its results and its emphasis on discipline combined with pastoral care.
Ah, discipline! And yet anyone’d have you believe that the free-and-easy Scandinavians don’t go in for all that. Well, anyone at CiF, anyway…
"We are passionate about education" said IES's chief executive Peter John Fyles.

"Our ethos is about working with young people and developing them to the best of their individual ability."

"All parents and students when they join must sign a social contract," said Mr Fyles.

"It tells them the rules and they sign off on them so if someone comes to school with a mobile phone, which we don't allow, we instantly call the parents and say: 'Why have you broken the contract you made?'

"We also teach good manners. All our students will say 'good morning sir' or 'madam', they will say 'thank you' if they receive something and they will clear their tables after lunch."
Oh, it gets better and better!
The company's founder, Barbara Bergström, said she and board members have recently been watching episodes of the documentary "Educating Essex" and were horrified at some of the behaviour which they saw.

She said: "How could parents ever allow their children to behave like that?"
A question everyone asked, Barbara.
Mr Fyles said: … "Our results and the sheer number of people who want to be with us shows we must be doing something right."
Indeed it does…

H/T: CJ Nerd via email

5 comments:

Captain Haddock said...

Hmmm ..

It sounds good, I wonder whether that's really the case though ?

I always worry somewhat when I hear the term "Pastoral Care" being bandied about ..

Defined thus by Wiki ..

"Pastoral care can also be a term generally applied to the practice of looking after the personal and social wellbeing of children or students under the care of a teacher. It can encompass a wide variety of issues including health, social and moral education, behavior management and emotional support. This usage is more common in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries such as Australia and New Zealand, where it is also used for student support services at the university level" ...

To my simple way of thinking the job of a Teacher is to teach, no more, no less .. what happens outside the school is beyond their bailiwick ..

Like so many other institutions, such as the Police, local Councils and the Courts .. Teachers seem to have lost sight of their real job and have become so inefficient at performing that job it has become highly visible ..

And so, in order to deflect attention from those shortcomings, they, along with the Police, local Councils and the Courts have diversified, into matters not within their remit, in the hope that their failings may be spread more thinly & therefore become less noticeable ..

I'd be more impressed if the IES "mission statement" read - "Our aim is to teach to the very best of our ability and to concentrate all our efforts to that end alone" ..

Personally, I think that Mr Fyles is living in "La-la land" with his "social contracts" .. they're simply not enforceable ..

And judging by the preceding post, Sweden is hardly a shining example of "how to do it" ..

Furor Teutonicus said...

XX its emphasis on discipline combined with pastoral care. XX

???

What, like, if they are late, they get frog marched to the pasture and milk the fucking cows, or something, do they mean?

microdave said...

And even if they DO succeed in producing fine, upstanding citizens, they will have the shock of their lives when let out into the real world.

Do I hear cries of "Traumatised"???

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, we used to have something like this once before.

Let me think...that's right, they were called "grammar schools".

But the left decided that everyone should be levelled downwards, and so they are for the most part gone.

JuliaM said...

"I always worry somewhat when I hear the term "Pastoral Care" being bandied about .."

Well, me too.

But hey, if they really do enforce their 'social contract', with expulsions, it might be onto something.

"And even if they DO succeed in producing fine, upstanding citizens, they will have the shock of their lives when let out into the real world. "

Maybe. Maybe not.

"Ah yes, we used to have something like this once before.

Let me think...that's right, they were called "grammar schools"."


Spot on! :D