SCHOOL’S IN / IN TER NATIONA L EDUC ATION
ABOVE Cranleigh Abu Dhabi is a British-style school RIGHT GEMS New Millennium School offers the CBSE curriculum
never access from “home”. One week you have a group in Orlando at the Kennedy Space Center and the next another group building schools in Nepal.
Preparing our children Children learn to make friends quickly and deep bonds are formed from shared experiences. Children brought up overseas have to learn to be flexible and adaptable. They learn to appreciate others’ viewpoints, gain confidence in critical analysis and independent thinking, and often leave the country competent in more than one language. Mirrored with the opportunity to look at further education across the globe, it is not hard to see how international students gain an edge when it comes to the workplace.
TH E CO N S Feelings of rootlessness For some children, being a “Third Culture Kid” can mean that they struggle to claim an identity. Being born to parents of two different nationalities
and educated in a third can leave a sense of cultural dislocation. This can also be true of children who spend an extended period of time being educated outside of their home country, where they can lose touch with the cultural references and “in stories”. Much of this can be overcome with the easy accessibility of international communication, but you may need to work hard to make sure your child retains these connections. On top of that, international schools can often host quite transient families, so friends and teachers will come and go. It can be disconcerting for children, who have formed a strong emotional attachment to someone, to find people suddenly move on mid-term. It does, however, teach children to be very resilient and flexible with regards to social circles.
Curriculum challenges Sometimes a significant proportion of the timetable can be taken up by topics that need to be covered under local legislation and this can have an impact on the delivery of the international curriculum. There are advantages in choosing, for example, the British National Curriculum, as you can be sure that if you
walk into a school in the UAE or a school in rural Suffolk you will be likely to see virtually the same lesson in progress. Yet, while the same topics will be covered, sometimes these very similarities can raise questions. How appropriate it is to be reading a book with snowmen and conker fights when you are sitting in a multi-cultural environment at the other side of the world?
The full experience? Many UAE schools are producing outstanding academic results, but there can sometimes be a lack of extended opportunities for extracurricular activities. For some parents there is a constant worry about whether or not their children are achieving at the same level as their peers back home and whether they are reaching their full educational potential. However, many parents find that if their children do transition back to a school at home they are often more than a match for their peer group and certainly have a more varied range of experiences to draw on. For those parents who are seriously concerned about how their child compares, there are assessments such as UKiset, which can be used to put their mind at rest. There may be some negatives attached to an international education, but we believe they are vastly outweighed by the positives. Being educated in an international school gives children the opportunity to become culturally sensitive, confident and independent young people ready for the next step on the global stage – something most parents would see as a huge advantage.
S O P H I E OA K E S Education Consultant Gabbitas Education Middle East 2018
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