Since I am here to teach perhaps some notes about teaching are in order.
Private Public State
In the UK there
are, as far as I know, three types of schools:
private, public and state. The
terms bring about a lot of confusion in Canada and even more confusion here in
the UK. To ameliorate this there are now
two terms: state schools are governed by
the elected government and independent schools have their own board of
governors. The early schools were
largely private with respect to who attended them and who governed them. An act of legislation, the Public Schools
Act, changed that and a number of prestigious schools were made public both in
the sense that anybody from the public can go to the school but the school is
governed by a board of directors drawn from the public.
The school I
teach at is owned by one person so, in that sense is private, but any student
may attend so in that sense is public.
So to avoid confusion we call it an independent school.
Contracts and Unions
In British
Columbia I am a member of the teacher’s union the BCTF and they take care of
contracts and processes to protect teachers.
Here I don’t have that. Many
teachers at Westbourne are members of a variety of different unions. Some of us are not. The owner has, with his solicitors, drafted a
contract for the school. This has caused
a lot of angst within the staff. However,
it is a strong statement of the professionalism of all involved how the staff
has pulled together and how the headmaster is delicately discussing the
concerns expressed by staff.
I have not
joined a union but may do so. There does
not seem to be any organisation of mathematics teachers in Wales, Penarth or
Cardiff. I am on the e-mail listserve
for BC mathematics teachers and make use of that for help. I also draw heavily on the teacher from
Malvern with whom I did an exchange sixteen years ago.
Curriculum
Generally, in
the UK, schools teach a government prescribed curriculum up to year 11 (BC’s
grade 10) where the students write a battery of examinations to receive their
General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). There are a number of boards who offer these
examinations and curriculum is similar among the boards and Wales, England and
Scotland each have slightly different demands.
On a global basis the International Baccalaureate (IB) is very popular
and Canada is one of the leaders in this.
The IB offers a complete program: primary, intermediate and
diploma. Westbourne offers GCSE up to
year 11 and IB for year 12 and 13. Year
12 and 13 are referred to as the sixth form:
lower sixth and upper sixth. I am
still trying to sort all this out!
Students up to
year 11 are mostly local but, tend to go elsewhere for the sixth form as the IB
is perceived to be very difficult. It
is. I was hired to teach sixth form
mathematics. There are only three IB
schools in Wales and the only one close is the Atlantic College near Llantwit
Major. I e-mailed the school to contact
the mathematics teachers there to get together but they never replied.
After Christmas
I picked up a small class of year 10 students.
Our marketing department has been so successful that the year ten maths
class is too big (there is a maximum size) so the teacher drew five students from
the bottom of the class for me to teach.
I taught year 10 when I was on exchange sixteen years ago so I am
familiar with what needs to be done. The
students are well behaved and, because there are only five, I can concentrate
on working on their basic arithmetic and algebra skills.
The School Year and Day and Week
The year
consists of three terms and each term is broken by a week-long half term
break. Christmas and Easter are each
three weeks and summer is five and a half weeks. The work day is from eight-thirty until five
o’clock. Students have registration for
twenty minutes at the beginning of the day and at the end. That way they are well looked after by their
form tutors. Students start at nine and
end at four. Form tutors collect
homework each morning and, if homework is not done, a note goes home and the
student has to stay the next day from four until five in the evening.
Classes are an
hour long. There is a twenty minute
break after period two and a full hour for lunch.
Staff Meetings
There is a staff
meeting every Monday but, since I am done at 12:40 I rarely attend. Most staff meetings have a specific topic so
I attend if the topic is of pressing interest to me. The most recent was around a standardised
test that the school has adopted which generated a lively discussion amongst
staff. I think the tests are very
helpful in getting to know the students’ potential.
Every morning at
8:40 there is a Headmaster’s briefing where the activities of the day and
important notices are announced. This is
a time where concerns are brought up and behavioural and academic problems are
quickly identified and a plan put in place to correct problems. It is very impressive to see how effective
this is.
Boarding House
The school has a
boarding house not far from the school; as well, some students choose to board
with local families. Westbourne is not a
boarding school but, for the sixth form, almost half the students board so I am
interested in this.
The school I
exchanged with in 1996 was a boarding school and school life centred on
boarding life drawing the teaching staff into lunches, dinners, special events
and supervising evening study. At
Westbourne staff have little to do with
the boarding house. At the beginning of
the year the headmaster announced that the house-parents wished to have a
connection with the school and invited staff to come for dinner. Carolene and I took him up on the offer
shortly before Christmas and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The sixth formers got together and, with the
houseparent’s permission, invited us to return, which we did and the house-mom,
being Thai, treated us to some fantastic Thai food.
