British-Style schools come to the colonies

Blade Publication - December 2000
By Sandra Svoboda

When Neha Rajpal had an assignment to design some money for her school she drew the Union Jack on one side and a replica of a $100 bill on the other.

The idea made perfect sense, considering where she goes to classes each day. "It's the British School money, said the 6-year-old native of India.

Now numbering three in the United States - Boston, Houston and Washington -the schools are attracting not only British expatriates but also Americans and students of dozens of other nationalities whose parents work in the international business, diplomatic, and academic communities.

Partial to the British national curriculum, which has standard lesson plans in core subjects but instruction designed for individual students, the parents also say they like the school's focus on the arts, world studies, and reading as young as nursery school, along with the emphasis on respect and good behavior from students.

"I wanted more of an international component in terms of a different environment where people came from all sorts of different places with different kinds of backgrounds," said Beth Myers, a Washington arts administrator whose 12-year-old son attends the school on the northwest side.

For British parents who have embassy postings for three years or who work for multinational companies in several countries over their careers, the schools offer their children a chance to continue their studies with less disruption. England has adopted a national curriculum, which means Year Eight students in a British school for example, cover the same 20th century history material whether they're in Washington, London, or Damascus. "There have been so many developments in the curriculum in England over the last 10-15 years, that people are finding it difficult to move their children around now and for them to be missing from the A British system," said Grainer O'Reilly-Askew, head mistress of the Houston school.

A community of 40,000 British citizens, mainly employed in the oil industry, are sending children to the school located on a 14.5-acre former high school site. The school opened in September with 75 students, which will more than double by next fail, Ms. O'Reilly-Askew, said.The Houston school is 70 per- cent British students. Boston, which also opened this year, has nearly all Americans, and Washington is nearly half British, a third American, and the other students from dozens of nationalities.

Alison Connick sends her daughter Zoe, 3, and son Oliver, 5, to the Washington school Her husband is a lawyer with an English firm with offices throughout the world. They are enjoying their time in Hong Kong and the United States but plan a return to their native England at some point.

"[We sent them] because it was a British school, and we plan to only be here for a short time,' Mrs. Connick said. "I thought if we were going back, they should stay in the system."Until the school opened here two years ago, the United States was the only major country in the world that did not have at least one British-style school.

Interest from parents posted in the U.S. capital led Robert Findlay of Educational Relocation Associates in Surrey County, southeast of London, to gather a group of investors and start one. "He opened this up initially to take expat and embassy families," said Mandy Harper, head secretary. "Within a year it became very clear that the Americans were coming in droves."

School officials plan to open one new school each year, with Chicago slated for fall, 2001. At $11,000 a year for the primary grades in Washington, enrollment means a serious financial commitment but is about the average for private schools in the area, according to the National Association of Independent Schools. Ms. Myers, who runs a public art project in one of Washington's inner-city neighborhoods, said the school's emphasis on student achievement, the teachers' enthusiasm and passion, and her 12- year-old sons renewed interest in learning make the tuition well worth it.

Ms. Myers said she was not originally attracted to the school for study of the classics but for its uniqueness. After about four months there, she decided elements of the British private schools could improve the American public system, specifically the differentiation in lesson plans according to children's abilities. "They work the kids really hard during the day, but there's really little homework at night" she said. "The classes are small and the expectations are high."

This year at the Washington school 215 students from 27 countries attend classes in the former Romanian embassy residence that now houses the Upper School for students ages 8 to 14. Each year, the school adds an upper grade. The Lower School, with students ages 3 to 7, rents space in a church annex a few blocks away. At both schools, children dressed in the uniform of blue skirts or pants, white-collared shirts, and red sweaters fill the narrow hallways as they move between geography, French, physical education, computer, science, and design technology courses and their regular classrooms.

"This way, sports can help them learn geography,' said Andy MacPherson, who also teaches math. Regular classroom bookshelves are filled with Emily Bronte, William Shakespeare, and Rudyard Kipling as well as standard classroom texts in history, social studies, and literature.

All books are brought from the UK and all teachers are trained there. They bring with them a few notions of how children should behave that may be a bit different from the norm in some American schools. "We do expect them to walk down corridors. We do expect them to hold doors and be polite," Ms. Harper said. "In turn, we give them that respect back.

"Indeed, "Yes, sirs" and "Good morning, ma'ams" do begin many student-teacher conversations. But Graham Gamble, head of the Upper School, downplays any notion of inherent superiority of the British-style education."I'm not saying it's extremely formal.... but there is a return to formality," he said. "I'm not saying it's better. I wouldn't say that for one moment. But I do think for certain types of children and certain types of parents, it suits them very well."

One of the keys, Mr. Gamble said, is truly challenging each student. That's done in each class as students in the same room may study the same lesson with books written at different reading levels, or it may be done through individual teacher-student interaction, he said.

With plans to move to a bigger location for the Washington school, and Houston and Boston with full classes, the success of the schools has some administrators carefully balancing the uniqueness of their British character with the cultural lessons from the United States.

They plan to continue to offer healthy doses of both that will pay off for the foreign students learning more about America and American children appreciating the country's British heritage.

"While parents might decide to put their children into the British system while they're here, it would be a terrible waste for them not understand the culture of their host location," Ms. O'Reilly-Askew said. "The great pleasure and the great beauty of being here is that we are able to give the students first-hand experience in a way we wouldn't be able to at home."