Following on from our feature on St. George’s School in Switzerland, we speak to Hazel Hogg, who lives with her husband and her daughters Morven (11), Rowan (8) and Alexa (3) in France – practically on the border with Switzerland, where they enjoy stunning views of the Alps and Lake Geneva.  Her children attend the International School of Geneva. Here Hazel talks about living overseas, and tells us more about choosing this school for her children. Read more.

Could you explain how you came to be living in France, and why you chose an international school for your children?

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We’ve opened our Saudi Arabia Talent Pool, and this week we’ve put together a special feature on working in the country. “In some years we have one or two days when it may rain, but this is not certain,” explains Bruce Gamwell, Director of the British International School of Jeddah. Read on to learn more about the school from Bruce and other teachers, and find out about current Saudi vacancies.

“Make of it what you can and Jeddah will return your efforts and not disappoint you.

The sun always smiles in Jeddah.”                              

“Make sure you have plenty of fancy dress costumes!”

“You never have to iron again!”                     

“Make sure you are good at journey directions especially if your partner is not, alternatively buy a GPS on arrival!”

“Visiting old Jeddah is magical and an experience you should not miss and try to repeat.

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There are no specific requirements for British schools overseas, unless the host country has its own requirements, but these can be very varied. Ofsted inspects foreign schools in the UK.

The Department for Education (DfE) was approached by several countries to give an assurance that British schools in their area are run properly. As a result, we introduced the BSO Inspection System last September, providing a government-approved inspection process which is absolutely voluntary.

We called for expressions of interest in carrying out inspections from interested organisations. We had applications from nine international organisations with roots in the UK and six were approved, including CfBT Education Trust, Cambridge Education and Tribal Education.

So far nine inspections have been carried out and they all went well. The schools were sufficiently confident about the education they provided to put themselves forward for the first wave. The problems in the Middle East resulted in a number of inspections being delayed last term because of concerns for the safety of inspection teams, but they’ll take place as soon as things quieten down.

During this first year we have been trialling the process.  At the moment we’re not actively promoting the inspection system but I’m confident it will grow organically, by word of mouth. Once national governments decide to support it – and Egypt and Dubai have been finding out more about it – it will snowball. Large corporates who move people around are very interested as education is very high on the list of priorities for people being relocated.

The British Council is often asked to recommend an international school but until now they’ve had nothing to go by. This inspection system helps them discriminate between schools and direct parent to a respected independent report about the school.

How does the BSO Inspection System work and is it similar to Ofsted?

The inspections are broadly similar to Ofsted’s. However, the international aspect means that they’re not short notice visits and most inspections will be booked in advance – it’s all about being pragmatic. The costs of an inspection depend on the organisation that’s carrying it out; the DfE isn’t privy to this as it’s a commercial matter.

The system looks at two overarching issues:

• how easily will a pupil slot back into schooling in the UK and
• if a pupil completes their education in a British overseas school, how difficult would they find it to fit into a UK university, in terms of their qualifications and awareness of how British society works.

I’d like to stress that the system isn’t just for the expensive top public schools; it’s for every good British school overseas that provides a good quality education: it’s not necessary to have lavish facilities. We want to be inclusive, to provide parents with the best quality information about a range of schools, with the reports giving them a real understanding of the ‘flavour’ of a school.

How does the inspection system combine the British character of schools with the need to allow for different cultures?

Again, we need to be pragmatic. Where there’s a conflict between international standards and the requirements of the host country, schools must comply with the host country – and the schools must make this clear to inspectorates who can reflect the situation in their reports.

The ‘British’ aspect of education in international schools can relate to the school’s ethos, values, and extra-curricular activities – its ‘Britishness’!

What are the benefits of the system?

The benefit for schools is that it makes it clear to parents who want a good quality education and understand the value of inspections that the school has reached the gold standard and is as good as the best schools you’ll find in Britain. It also provides an independent view of whether a school will deliver what parents are paying for and that the education provision on offer is as good as it can be.  This means that they need have no hesitation in sending their child there. A further benefit is that the inspectors can suggest how a school can improve, update them on forthcoming developments and things on the horizon.

It’s useful for teachers too. The inspection reports give teachers a better idea of the kind of school they’re considering working for. They can get information on issues like the curriculum of the country and how it impacts on international schools, the school’s facilities, turnover of pupils and how many teachers speak English.

Finally, the government has just confirmed that schools that have had a BSO inspection will be eligible to provide induction for new teachers training in the UK. These new arrangements are likely to come in from September 2012 and we anticipate consulting British Schools Overseas in the autumn on these new arrangements.

For more information click here.

Colin Bell, from the Council of British International Schools (COBIS), commented:

“We support all schools to work towards a DfE approved inspection. We encourage schools to focus on this in their development plans and target setting, with buy-in from governors, senior leaders, teachers, and parents. The inspection system gives schools confidence, increased pride, a feeling of well being and an opportunity to share collective success. It enables a clear comparison with quality education in the UK independent school setting, and evidence of ease of transition for pupils.

Another tangible benefit for a school with a successful BSO DfE approved inspection and fully accredited COBIS membership is that from September 2012 they will be eligible to support NQTs to complete their induction process – something which COBIS has campaigned for.”

France may be one of the world’s top holiday destinations, with more space and fewer people than the UK, but what’s it like to actually live and work there, and what are the opportunities and challenges for Brits? We spoke to Dr Steffen Sommer, headmaster of the British School of Paris (BSP), to find out more about his school and about working in France generally. Read more.

Could you start by giving us an introduction to The British School of Paris?

The BSP is a co-educational British school based just outside Paris in a prestigious western suburb close to Versailles in Croissy sur Seine, on one of the most beautiful stretches of the Seine outside of the city centre.

We are a high achieving school – if we look at examination results we consistently achieve GSCE and A level examination results that are comparable to high achieving independent selective schools in the UK, yet like all British international schools we’re not selective.

We’re catering predominantly for the British expat community in Paris – or that was certainly very much the case up until nine years ago. But the expat climate and community has changed quite significantly because the major employers are employing fewer Brits, which has had an impact on the BSP. However the result is simply that we are more ‘international’ than we used to be.

The crux is that we are very proud of the Britishness that we uphold here: we teach a completely British curriculum, and what you find at the BSP is exactly the same as you’ll find at any independent or state school in England, but the cohort we have is very international: we’re 38% British with 50 other nationalities represented. We start at the age of three and go up to the age of 18, and we have one big campus and two sites – one for the junior school, and one for the seniors, which shares with administrative offices in the oldest part of the school in a château. There are roughly 400 children in each school.
The campus is breathtakingly beautiful!

How are British schools recognised and monitored?

We’re one of the biggest and one of the very oldest British international schools, and we’re a founding member of COBIS – The Council of British International Schools. We’ve been fighting hard to get the level of recognition by the British government that we are now enjoying. Now we have statutory inspections in all British international schools, whereas previously the label ‘British’ seemed to be available to anyone founding a school, regardless of the kind of place that it was.

Now the British government, very much like the Americans and Australians, actually say “No you can’t call yourselves ‘British’ unless you do all of this”.

What opportunities are there for UK teachers?

The vast majority of our teaching staff are from the UK. However our staff turnover is minimal. The reason is that it’s a fantastic place to work, in one of the most beautiful areas you can imagine. The school is also extremely well appointed, with state of the art facilities. I wouldn’t ever say that teaching is easy, but one can live out one’s professional ambitions completely without having to focus on mundane things like discipline! The students are extremely well behaved, and we uphold British standards, with a uniform code and so forth.

We’ve fought very hard within COBIS to be able to accept newly qualified teachers, and I think that before too long it will be possible. We’ve also had very close relationships with British universities, and have accepted students for work experience.

Although we’re in France, we’re very conscious that with the train link between Paris and London, we are actually much more conveniently placed for insets and so forth than many schools back in the UK. So all our in-service training and examination training takes place in the UK. No one coming to Paris to teach would miss out on anything they have in the UK.

It sounds very competitive because it’s such a great place to work!

Well our documentation is very upbeat, in our adverts we say who we are, where we are, that we are a high achieving school, that our class sizes are very small, and that our students are very well behaved, so yes – even for shortage subjects like maths or physics: for example this September we had a physics post going, and I received 74 applications, out of which 10 were appointable.

That’s not the case all the time: we had an ICT vacancy recently and there weren’t many in the cohort applying, and they weren’t of the calibre that we normally get. But certainly our location is a major attraction.

Could you tell us about the opportunities in France more generally for UK teachers?

There are two British schools in France: the BSP, and the Mougins School, which is a fantastic place to be, very close to Nice and Cannes. It is a smaller but very popular school in a more rural and exceptionally pretty location.

There are a fair number of international schools: here there’s the International School of Paris, and the American School of Paris which tends to employ American teachers who understand the American programme. The International School would be more generally focused, and you’d end up with ‘the international experience’. It’s a different environment of learning, which is less formal than at the BSP. But they also employ British teachers, who would be in a staffroom comprising many different nationalities. You’d have a melting pot of all kinds of experiences of different teaching and education systems, which comes along with its own complexities and difficulties. Here or at Mougin, by contrast, you’re more likely to have predominantly Brits and some other Anglophones.

Are there many particular bureaucratic hoops for UK teachers wanting to work in France?

There aren’t any particular stumbling blocks. France like the UK is a member state of the EU, therefore you have freedom of movement, and freedom of employment – there is no problem at all. If you apply for the job and get it, you’re there. But I always ask at interview of our many applicants what they know about France. They don’t have to speak French because the lingua franca is English here, but living in France is different from being on holiday in France. It is not as easy a country to live in as the UK. Bureaucracy is rife, it always takes time, and it is very very difficult to lead an adequate life – although it is very pretty and very nice – without speaking French.

Having said that, at BSP we have our own community: many of our parents are expats, who may only come for a year or two, and our community is a bit of an enclave. So not only are we a school, but we also provide opportunities for parents to take part in activities – including learning French – and we involve the whole family, providing opportunities for them to meet each other, to speak English. And those who are not British join in with this: they choose British education because they like our values.

What would you say is the biggest attraction for someone in the UK trying to get a job in France?

It is ‘widening the horizons’, while having the comfort zone at the BSP of ‘knowing the system’; there’s nothing here that would be alien to any British teacher. At an international school, a lot of things would be alien. So if you come here you have the added complexity of being in France, so it’s a challenge for your own personal life to live outside the UK, but there’s the comfort zone that the job offers.  We also help with finding accommodation and ‘setting people up’, but then they lead their own lives. So for those who haven’t worked in another country before, it’s quite a nice thing to do, to have a comfort zone, and also opportunities to ‘have done something else’ – the opportunity to have lived in France for some time.

It’s also a valuable experience for teachers who come from areas that aren’t highly urbanised and who aren’t used to teaching a mixed national group… and our students come from all kinds of education systems: they might have spent two years in an American school in Houston; they might have spent a couple of years in a local Vietnamese school for example.

It’s also good for teachers to see first-hand that the majority of our students are at least bi-lingual; some are tri-lingual or speak four or five languages. That makes these students very different kids: not more intelligent than others, but they just come with a ‘worldliness’… they have travelled the world. They go about life with ease – even if they don’t speak French that well because they’ve only just moved here – but they go about with an ease that inspires teachers. Nothing ever really stops them – they are quite prepared to make the very most of life in a global environment. Because they are living global lives.

Following on from our ‘top ten tips of things to consider when thinking of teaching abroad’, this week we focus on the problem of culture shock, and look at strategies to help make the transition into your new life overseas a smooth one.

As you may have heard us mention before, working overseas and moving away from your comfort zone is one of the big adventures, and it can be a real eye opener. It’s a chance to meet a completely new set of colleagues, make new friends, experience a different culture and become part of another community. Hopefully you’ll also get the chance to explore a different part of the world, too. Of course it’s also the start of another journey you’ll share with your students.

‘Culture shock’ however is a completely normal part of the process of adapting to a new environment. That sense of confusion and anxiety, of not knowing how things work, or even of not knowing what behaviour is or isn’t appropriate, can seem quite debilitating.

Experts writing about the ‘expatriate experience’ report that after an initial ‘honeymoon period’, when everything is new and the possibilities seem endless, culture shock, perhaps taking the form of homesickness or even depression, can set in.

Fortunately there are coping strategies to help make the transition into your new overseas life – and ‘cultural adaptation’ – run smoothly and enjoyably. Here are just a few of them.

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