Multicultural, multiracial Macrometropolis, Louise Simpson

The challenge of the new Multicultural, multiracial Macrometropolis

Louise Simpson describes headship in the Jardins of Sao Paulo

When I announced to my staff at Bromley High School that I would be taking up a new headship in Brazil I was met with stony silence…. The distance, both culturally and in absolute terms, between a GDST school in leafy south London and a bustling co-ed city school of over a thousand Brazilians in one of the largest cities in the world that most of us remembered from geography A level case studies, seemed enormous, and it took a while for the idea to sink in. I must say, during the period between my appointment and my coming here in August 2014, whilst I had plenty of opportunities to visit my community and get to know them a little in the year before I moved here, there were times when I wondered whether it might not have been a better idea to have chosen somewhere a little more familiar and a little closer to home than Brazil for my first overseas post!

I am now in the position, 6 years later, of looking back to the east, across the Atlantic, towards my next post, at Exeter School, where I will take up the headship in September 2020, and I would not have had it any other way. As one starts to reflect on the career choices one makes, and thinks about paving the way and preparing for the next head of St Paul’s, São Paulo, I inevitably turn my thoughts to what I have learned, what I would have done differently, and what I will say to the

next head, as they prepare to lead this great school community forward. So here are my reflections.

Stay connected

Many people have asked me over the years how different is St Paul’s, as compared to Bromley, and how similar is it to run a school in Brazil compared to London? There are many, many differences, but the similarities are more striking and much more fundamental, and hence, more important.

The first thing I had to make sense of was the IB diploma programme and being an IB world school as part of a truly global community. The IB is a phenomenal thing – and I think that as educators, brought up on a diet of GCSE and A levels, we can all learn a lot from the international community of educators that exists beyond our home shores and the idea that a curriculum can have a philosophy and core values at its heart, which is much more than a specification or a set of assessment criteria. The IB is one subset of that community and embraces about 5000 schools of many types worldwide, but within the community of English medium and curriculum schools there are many other subsets, all of which provide support, collaboration and ideas to their members and associates. Being

away from home, as we are, makes the links with similar schools much more important. We need to stay current and aware of changes ‘back home’ and in similar schools elsewhere in the world, so the Council of British International Schools (COBIS) and the Latin America Heads Conference (LAHC), of which I am currently chair, have been important platforms and groups for me, as has international HMC, for maintaining links and connections with home and wishing colleagues to understand the life of an international school head.

Embrace the local context

I have found that many schools internationally cannot be truly independent as they have to work in parallel with the local curriculum and legislative requirements. In some places this is more rigorous than others and may well restrict your plans and ideas and innovations as a new head, simply because there are not enough hours in the working week to fit everything in! I have learned the importance of diplomacy and relationships within the local education community, and that our Brazilian diretora (who works just 3 hours a week) is technically far more important than I am when it comes to keeping the local education officials happy that we are complying in all senses with the local regulations. Teaching particular subjects, or a particular proportion of the curriculum in the home language, is quite typical in schools like mine. We see these as opportunities to be embraced, rather than restrictions which prevent us from doing what we want to do, but they do shape our curriculum and also our assessment procedures and reporting to parents. Embracing this, rather than trying to fight against it, will make life better for everyone.

Understand your parent body

We are a school of mostly local families and, in line with the majority of British international schools overseas, this has changed over time from a largely expat population. This brings with it some challenges, especially in schools that are relatively new and therefore do not have a community of parents who attended the school themselves, a community that in our case makes it easier for new families to make sense of some of our peculiarities. We take it as read in the UK that everyone knows what GCSEs are, after all we all read about them every August in the press, but such fundamentals might need to be spelled out to parents, staff and pupils who are much more familiar with their own national school system. Over the last five years I have discovered that the things parents are concerned about are largely the same on both sides of the Atlantic; it might just be the way in which they are communicated that differs. Working hard to communicate clearly has been crucial for us – and we still don’t always get it right. Inevitably there are times when things get lost in translation, or the expectation of parents does not quite marry up with the reality in school. Maintaining good humour really helps here – and ignoring WhatsApp to maintain sanity!

Freedom to follow our own path

We are extremely lucky to be liberated from the dreaded league tables – and this was a sigh of relief for me on joining the St Paul’s community. Of course our public exam results are important, and we are very proud of the results that our pupils get and the university entrance offers that they secure as a result. We proudly share them with the school community and wider public via our communications and social media, but the annual round of press coverage and images of leaping youngsters on the school

lawn, waving exam results in the air, is not something that is high on our list of priorities. The freedom that comes with this lack of national obsession and scrutiny is fabulous. We can focus on other things in our academic strategy like choosing the right attitudes in the classroom in our Lion Learning project, or devising Personal Powers for our Prep School pupils who, unrestricted by the Common Entrance syllabus and scholarship wars for senior schools (they almost all stay with us for 15 years) can enjoy projectbased learning in the international primary curriculum and enjoy plenty of creative and fun approaches to their learning which might seem rather strange in a traditional UK prep school.

The most fabulous teams

For a long time, those of us who chose to work overseas were considered rather maverick, or not up to the job back home or, worse still, running away from something. I am happy to say that this is absolutely not the case now! My staff body could not be more professional and committed – both locals and overseas hires (and we have a relatively small proportion of expats compared to many international schools). Binding the two groups together can be a challenge, but is essential if we are all to work together to deliver on our mission. Perhaps those who decide to come to the only UK government recognised school in Brazil have a certain level of drive and commitment about them. Certainly the challenges of language and culture in Brazil, not to mention the 12 hour flight, mean you need to be a bit more adventurous than you might in other parts of the world, but I have never been disappointed with my fabulous team. Working hard to get the recruitment process right is key here and one thing that we have worked hard on in the last five years in order to ensure the very best people to work with.

Looking back on our five years here, and with a full academic year ahead to enjoy before we leave, there is little I would change. I am frustrated that my Portuguese is not better, but I have learnt so much more about many other aspects of myself, and of living overseas… I urge you to try! Louise Simpson is the Head of St Paul’s School, São Paulo