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News
Loretto School
launches iPhone App
Loretto School near Edinburgh in Scotland has become the first school in the UK to launch its own Smartphone application for parents, pupils and staff at the school.
The application was officially launched in June and provides information such as school calendars, a news feed and the ability to tailor the contents to individual children’s extra-curricular activities – thereby informing parents instantly about any changes in arrangements. The second phase, due this month, will provide even more functions such as Google maps showing the venue of sports matches, two-way alerts and real-time sports match reports.
Peter Hogan, Headmaster of Loretto, said, “The addition of the Loretto iPhone App will not only give parents, staff and pupils another option for receiving information from the school but it also allows us to get updated information to our community quickly and efficiently. We can also use the text alert facility as a more efficient method than we currently use to target specific parents with a real-time message about their child.”
Apps Central, who developed the application, said that they had been in discussions with other schools keen to develop their own version.
Feature
Student integration
Integrating young students into boarding schools in the UK should be taken seriously, according to Dr Christopher Greenfield, Chairman of the Boarding Schools’ Association and Principal of the International College in Sherbourne in the UK. Here, he discusses what agents and schools can do to minimise the culture shock experienced by international students arriving at a boarding school for the first time.
 British boarding schools have become very international over the last few years. In 2003 almost 25 per cent of all students boarding in Britain came from outside of the UK: 15,780 international students. By 2010 this number had grown to over 23,000, representing a growth of 7.4 per cent on 2009, and now account for a third of boarders in British boarding schools.
Yet the character of boarding schools in the UK remains unmistakably British. Parents from overseas usually cite this as one of the reasons for choosing British boarding schools. There are many fine international schools all over the globe, but genuinely British boarding schools exist only in the UK. It is not just the quality of education that is valued. Every British boarding school puts heavy emphasis on trying to build a fair, constructive and co-operative community. This necessarily involves encouraging values of esteem, tolerance, respectful listening, teamwork and sportsmanship, friendship and trust. Coupled with the British approach to education, which promotes constructive debate, rigorous analysis, and imaginative synthesis, British boarding schools contribute to producing citizens who are valued in any society.
So how are boys and girls from non-English speaking, non-British cultural backgrounds, integrated successfully into British boarding schools? Just as every boarding school in Britain has a subtly different ethos, so each boarding school has its own approach to induction and integration of international students. The Boarding Schools’ Association (BSA) emphasises that induction is a process, not an event. Any school that says it has ‘done’ the induction on the very first day that a student is at the school, probably needs to think again.
The important thing is to get things off to a good start. Every student joining a boarding school – even students from the UK – experiences something of a culture shock. Boarding schools have their own rhythms and routines. They often have their own unique vocabulary and procedures as well. An important starting point is encouraging realism in the student’s expectations.
Educational consultants can contribute a great deal to the induction process themselves. Firstly they can try to explain to parents and students some of the reality of the school they will join. To children who only know about boarding schools through Harry Potter, or possibly rather dated British literature, expectations may be wildly out of proportion. It is obviously helpful if consultants have visited the school in question themselves. Consultants can also help schools in the UK get a more complete picture of the prospective student than is possible from an application form. Finding out about his or her interests outside of school, the number of times they might have visited English-speaking countries, their favourite subjects at school, their career aspirations and the importance of their own religion to them, all contribute to the likelihood of a better start in boarding schools in the UK.
Schools in the UK usually have a very sensitive approach to the induction. Gone are the days when the British culture was seen as superior. Nowadays the dominant culture of a school is explained in the context of students needing to understand the way in which a boarding school operates, rather than having to share the beliefs of the boarding school in question. Boarding schools seek to integrate non-British students, not make them British!
One essential ingredient of a successful induction is to keep international students busy for the first few days, mixing with other British and international students. This hastens the making of friends, which itself is the biggest single antidote to culture shock. Trying to give international students a consistent experience of the boarding school is also very important.
The second wave of induction is probably best focused on the immediate experiences that an international student will have. Getting to know the people and the parts of the campus that will be encountered on the first day or two, for example. Existing members of the boarding school, especially those sharing the new student’s language, national or ethnic background, can be very helpful indeed in this process.
The Boarding Schools’ Association also lays emphasis on the development needs of staff in any school receiving international students. Schools that have understood the imperative of improving staff understanding of issues that may be important to international students, will undoubtedly be giving international students a much better experience than those who have not yet seen the link.
A close and constructive relationship between agent and school is very helpful in the induction and integration of students. The mutual respect between educational professionals which now generally characterises these partnerships brings benefit to everyone.
Agent Profile
In a new bi-monthly section, we ask an agent that specialises in UK boarding school placements to tell us about their business and why they like working in this sector of the education travel industry. This month we talk to Larry Field from Overseas Personal Development Services in London.
 “Overseas Personal Development Services (OPDS) is based in London and managed by myself and Sunny Field, with a team of Chinese speaking staff who liaise with students, schools and parents to help provide a guardianship service with a strong pastoral element which fully meets the needs of all parties. In 1997, recognising the recent trend in overseas students coming to the UK to study, we formed OPDS primarily to work in the China market. Today the company works with 100 boarding schools, liaises with an agent network in China of some 30 agents based in as many cities and arranges school tours to China and Chinese lessons for students who wish to visit the country during the Summer holidays. OPDS has direct access to key decision makers – registrars and school heads – which enables them to offer a fast turnaround, a 98 per cent offer rate and a visa success rate in excess of 95 per cent, helping agents to sell the services on to their clients.” |
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