MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: 10 MINUTES WITH…
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minutes with… Reigate Grammar School Reigate Grammar School has set up shop in Casablanca on the back of an agreement between the UK and Moroccan governments that makes it easier for British education institutions to launch in the North African country. Headmaster Shaun Fenton shares his school’s expansion plans First, tell us a bit about Reigate Grammar School Founded in 1675, Reigate Grammar School (RGS) is a coeducational independent school for children aged 11 to 18. The RGS ‘family’ also includes two prep schools for children aged two to 11. Around 95% of RGS students receive offers from Oxbridge or Cambridge universities, or other top, research-intensive universities which are members of the Russell Group, medical schools or leading international universities. While a clutch of A* grades are important, we believe that future happiness and success depends upon qualities of character rather than a fistful of qualifications. RGS was named School of the Year for Wellbeing and Pastoral Care in the prestigious Times Educational Supplement awards last year. The verdict of the Good Schools Guide, the leading reference book for the independent schools sector, was “happy kids, great results”. We’ll take that!
What are the main reasons behind your school’s international expansions? If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a global village to educate a global citizen. At RGS, we believe that this starts with a network of international schools. In China, the first school, in Nanjing, has already opened a kindergarten, and further building work has just been completed. It will grow to have a student body of 2,400 students from three years old to sixth form, with boarding provision for many. The second school, RGS Zhangjiagang, is near Shanghai. RGS has also
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agreed to have a collaborative relationship with a Chinese state school as a “sister school”, Zhixin High School, in Guangzhou. These partnerships offer our British students, their parents and alumni new opportunities to network, develop relationships and form friendships that cross continents, which would never otherwise have been formed. Students and teachers are able to enjoy placements and secondments overseas and the partnerships allow us to have a much more authentic visits programme because they’re based on enduring, long-term relationships. Our teachers can learn with and from teachers around the planet to develop a new paradigm of world-class education. Creating, for example, Anglo-Chinese links between young people and school communities will promote empathy, understanding, tolerance and friendship – and that must be better than the alternatives. Our world benefits from crosscultural collaboration. Different countries have different curriculum content and some of that difference presents challenges to UK schools working in collaboration. All our international schools follow a British curriculum with A-levels – and most take iGCSEs. Should we avoid educational partnerships involving countries where there might be controversies about human rights and political freedoms? I totally appreciate the difficult issues here and it is a controversy that challenges the governing body at my school significantly. I believe that more good will come from talking than from silence; from engagement rather than isolation; from education rather than ignorance. For that reason, I choose to see education as a bridgehead.
EducationInvestor Global • March 2020
