It is a truth, not always acknowledged, that all schools, for-profit or otherwise, are in the business of selling. And the language of the sales pitch is almost identical: on offer is a holistic experience that moulds the whole child with an emphasis on 21st Century Learning, where the focus is not simply on academics (although of course these are important) but on service, outdoor education and a values-based education. Whole paragraphs of one school’s promotional material can be lifted verbatim from one website into another and no one would know the difference. The first task, therefore, of any parent choosing a school is to look through the glossy image that the school projects and see the actuality. How, then?

The most important consideration is whether the school fits your child’s academic and social needs. The school admissions staff may know the school, but you know your child, and what’s right for one family may not be right for the next. Don’t be too persuaded by what ‘everyone else’ is doing.

Having said that, word of mouth is one of the most important indicators. What are the parents and the students, saying? How enthusiastic are they about the programme on offer and, crucially, the teachers who are delivering it? Are they happy that the ‘promise of the pitch’ is reflected in the reality of the experience? The answers to these questions will begin to crystallize your impressions of the school.

Visiting a school is essential but be aware that those giving the tour are people who believe in the product. Try to visit the school during break time. The informal chatter of students will reveal their engagement in the day-today process of learning. See beyond the facilities. Students do not remember state of the art buildings and shiny technologies. They remember their teachers, they remember their lessons. So ask hard questions, particularly about staff. For example, ask about staff turnover, ask about how regularly they are appraised and what the school policy is on professional development.

Insist on evidence that the school does what it says it does. Ask about the things that are important to you and your child. Such evidence is not simply a matter of results or what universities students get into. Look for the value-added experience. Find out how many activities take place each week, how many representative sports teams there are, how many students take instrumental music classes. And don’t stop there. Find out how many opportunities there are to connect with the local community, if there are student-led empowerment projects, how many student hours are spent oversees. These, above all, are the crucial and meaningful indicators of the holistic education that every parent wants for their child.

By ensuring you examine what’s important to your family before you start the process, you will be in a position to make the best-informed decision you can about which school is the best for your child.

Jonathan Carter

Director of Admissions

UWCSEA

Photo courtesy of UWCSEA

In the past decades there has been a growing movement toward Outdoor Education for both schools and businesses as we seek to develop character in our young people and cohesion within our teams. Adventure programmes have become popular with schools and are now a regular feature for most students at some point within their school year.

An aim of modern education is to develop the whole child and many schools opt for a “holistic” approach to fulfill this goal. For most schools, our motives for developing outdoor education programmes are not to instill camping, climbing, biking or kayaking skills, as interesting as they may be. The reality is that the vast majority of our young people are unlikely to need these specific abilities and competencies later in life. What we are aiming it is a much more loftily goal. By creating experiences in the outdoors we are striving toward developing a set of personal skills and qualities that are highly sought after in schools, universities, and the modern workplace. Resilience, self-management, and collaboration have become the hallmarks of adventure programmes around the world and are in demand now more than ever.

Outdoor experiences can ignite a passion within young people to challenge themselves, they can increase their resilience through trials that demand they maintain, recover, or improve their physical or emotional state and support resilient states of others around them. These can be times of self-discovery, self-expression, and satisfaction that are accelerating their personal and social development.

The educationalist, Kurt Hahn, thought that “expeditions can greatly contribute towards building strength of character. Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim tells us that it is necessary for a youth to experience events which ‘reveal the inner worth of the man; the edge of his temper; the fibre of his stuff; the quality of his resistance; the secret truth of his pretenses, not only to himself but others.’”

It is within these challenges that we develop our character and personal qualities. The wilderness has been dominated through centuries of struggle, danger and discomfort. Arguably, it has now been conquered and the struggles of the past no longer exist. We seem now to miss the opportunities for growth that these struggles provided. We recognize the skills and qualities that individuals and teams developed through those trials and that are now no longer available in our confortable everyday lives.

We do not have the opportunity in our modern age to struggle within our environment. Our modern conveniences have made every attempt to mitigate the unpredictable and sometimes uncomfortable natural elements. We struggle when our ever-narrowing comfort zones are threatened with being too hot, too cold, too humid, or too dry. We see qualities emerge in students when they are in a different environments and faced with different stresses, well outside our typical everyday routines.

There is a special sense that one gets when remote and isolated in the outdoors. It is a sense of scale that provides a contrasting perspective from our daily confinement, surrounded by walls and tight spaces, and connected electronically to everything at all times. The experience in the outdoors is one of space and connectedness to nature. It is unfortunately an experience that is disappearing for most of our young people and is now usually accessed through programmes in Outdoor Education.

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About the author

James Dalziel is the Head of UWCSEA’s East Campus. Prior to moving to UWCSEA, James was the Deputy Head at the Canadian International School in Singapore and a special programmes coordinator with the Durham Board of Education in Ontario, Canada.

James has taught in a variety of educational settings including special needs classrooms and outdoor education programmes with Outward Bound. He has Masters and Doctoral degrees in Education from the University of Western Australia with a focus on the leadership and management of change within international schools.

Photo courtesy of UWCSEA