THE ST. ANDREWS’ FAMILY WAY

The research is not new. It is only relatively recently, however, that a number of schools have begun to think seriously about how to cater to different learning styles in a constructive and relevant way.

St Andrews International School is one of them. Its managing director, Graham Sullivan, has been the driving force behind new initiatives that, he believes, makes his school that little bit different from others in the same league.

“I’ve seen over the last five years an emphasis on technical proficiency at the expense of creativity. I mean, the technical ability to dissect a sentence into clauses and sub-clauses is such a rarified skill, who needs it? Unless you’re going to be a proofreader that is! Same with maths – everybody should be numerate and comfortable with numbers but it’s not enough,” says Sullivan forcefully.

“If you want to have kids who are good at sums and good at reading and proof reading,” he adds, “then the UK national curriculum is perfect for you. With the numeracy and literacy strategies, at the primary stage, counting and technical literacy occupies about 60% of the timetable, perhaps even more.”

Whilst St Andrews does adopt the UK national curriculum, it is used only as a guide. Sullivan and his colleagues have been careful to adapt it in such a way as to make it relevant to childrens’ needs without disrupting a healthy educational balance.

“Before all this came in, maths and english were still important and very broad but they were integrated. So if you were doing Geography or Science, maths would be integrated into that and language would come out of something meaningful.”

Sullivan is adamant that children who go to St Andrews will be exposed to a much broader education where other subjects such as music, drama and physical education will be given suitable prominence. “The people who put their kids in our schools want what we say we offer,” he says, “which is breadth and balance and creativity and the kind of thing that kids want that they can’t get in Thai schools or Asian schools.”

St Andrews is made up of a consortium of five different campuses, four of which are in Bangkok with another in Rayong. The bulk of students are in their primary years of education and it is in this area that Sullivan feels the initiatives will have most impact. But being five small schools as opposed to one big institution has enormous advantages as far as implementing the philosophy is concerned.

“When I came to St Andrews two and a half years ago, we had this slogan – ‘leaders of tomorrow created at St Andrews today’,” Sullivan recalls. “That is quite a powerful thing to say. But when I arrived, I couldn’t see much evidence of the consequences of that statement. So we began to define what we thought leaders were about and became more serious and committed to doing what the slogan said. Our belief is that we can only offer what we do if the units we are dealing with are small and if we recruit staff who are committed to the idea and then make it happen.”

Sullivan notes that central to the school’s philosophy is the notion that not all students in one class work at the same level but they can be catered for. “It’s tricky,” he admits, “but if you give up and say ‘oh it’s too complicated, you can’t do it’, it’s not true. We organise our time in the week to ensure an appropriate balance. So you don’t, for example, get Maths and English killing the day off, with music and drama and dance and art being squeezed to the twighlight hours when the kids are tired. Why not start the day with drama? That is what we do now. It’s risky but it’s what the parents want.”

It is fair to say that most international schools in Thailand aim for balance and breadth in their curricula. Naturally, it is how you put it into practice that makes all the difference.

In many primary or elementary schools, teachers are expected to shift from one subject to the next in tandem with a centrally arranged timetable. At St Andrews, the approach is not quite so systematic.

“Children develop in a personal and individual way, so what we’ve tried to do is recognise children as individuals,” says Sarah Cooper, Head of Primary at the growing campus in Sukhumvit 71. Cooper explains how the system at St Andrews has built in the flexibility to accomplish this aim.

“We teach all our lessons around a topic and out of that comes language development, numerical development and all of the other areas,” she notes. “We found that if you give the children one thing to hook all their new learning on to, such a topic like the Aztecs, they find it much more coherent and logical.”

Studying the Aztecs provides plenty of scope for writing, both factual and creative, Cooper explains. Factor in opportunities to learn about history and geography, do a spot of role-playing and even make music like the Aztecs and you have a fully rounded day where everything seems to have a common purpose. Even subjects such as Maths, which don’t immediately appear to fit comfortably into Aztec life, can at least indirectly linked.

“We don’t force teachers to make unnecessary connections,” says Cooper. “So they take an element from Aztecs – for example, shaping pattern – and then develop the mathematical skills of shaping pattern. We can also link that to, say, their IT work and art work. Teachers say that the children are much more engaged because they want to research around the topic.”

The flexibility of the timetable and the small class sizes make the initiative much more manageable, Cooper observes. “If you get on to something that interests the children then you can spend the whole day on it if you want. This makes learning more fun, especially if the children feel that they have some sort of influence over what happens in the classroom.”

Paul Schofield is Head Teacher at the Sukhumvit 71 campus and expands on why small is not only beautiful but practical as well.

“We want a small school ethos in terms of a community that knows these children,” he says. “We want the school to be child-centred in terms of the type of learning the children are doing and we want teachers who realise what effective learning is so that you can allow them to maximize the potential that they’ve got.”

Schofield points to the school’s music programme, as being a positive example of the ethos in action. No matter what their musical ability, each child is encouraged to become at least technically competent in playing a musical instrument of their choice, giving them a skill which they can carry on into later life whether it be to take their talent to another level or, at the very least, the confidence of being able to master something difficult.

The results so far have been encouraging, Schofield says. Students who would never have thought of playing a musical instrument are now realising that they really have the ability to do it. Of course, many children learn an instrument at school. The difference here is that the process continues from one year to the next, so that it is not just a token attempt as is the case in many schools where there simply isn’t time to carry it through – the children are all way too busy learning how to dissect sentences and pass their exams.

The music programme is also a shining example of the inclusive aspect of the school. “We have an open access policy, so we do take a range of learning needs that other international schools wouldn’t look at,” says Schofield. “We have children who are dyslexic, autistic children, a child with Downs Syndrome. We develop programmes based on the child’s needs with learning support staff. Some of that may be withdrawal to focus on particular styles of learning or it may mean working in a group.”

Schofield is impressed with the way that children with difficulties integrate so well into mainstream. “We teach the children that you have to look after each other,” he says. “Children are for more accepting of differences than adults. They don’t see any issues with that at all.”

Building the self-esteem of children is a big priority at St Andrews. “We’ve got children, who would otherwise be told they haven’t got the ability to play a musical instrument, doing extremely well,” says Schofield. “Of course, none of them are going to be in the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra but they’re having a go and they’re enjoying it. This is all part and parcel of life and sometimes in schools we forget that. If kids are enjoying themselves, they are going to be much more happy and effective. The nicest thing the parents say is that the kids want to come to school. That’s what we want.”

The drive towards developing emotional intelligence over academic intelligence is a brave one indeed, especially in an age where so much emphasis is placed on examinations and grades. It is nonetheless an increasingly popular approach, both here and in the UK, not only with students and teachers but with parents as well. At St Andrews, regular parent workshops, in which parents learn more about their children’s new learning styles, have been well received by the community.

Importantly, the teachers appear to be motivated by the new challenges. Fiona Measures, who has recently arrived in Bangkok after a stint in an inner-city school in the UK, is pleased with the broader appeal of the curriculum. “In Early Years and Kindergarten, it’s going back to the learning through play,” she notes. “It’s a different challenge because we have to think in different ways but its kind of exciting as well because we are all working together towards the same aims.”

Whilst much of the emphasis has been on the primary school, the rapidly expanding high school at both the Sukhumvit and Rayong campuses are being influenced too. Simon Quail, who is a Science teacher at the Sukhumvit campus, says that he is adapting his own teaching style to fit learner’s needs. “We still teach a conventional curriculum,” he says, “but we use techniques, such as thinking skills where we ask children to discuss a scientific principle, come up with their own ideas and then maybe compare their ideas to other theories. Students develop a much deeper understanding and it makes it more relevant for them as well.”

Whether or not the current approach is a success remains to be seen, although the prospects look good. Managing director Graham Sullivan is confident but realistic in his hopes. “It’s not easy to do what we are doing,” he says. “It’s much harder to make it work at classroom level than it would be just to have another set of slogans.”