黑料福利社

The big plus is that by Y3, certainly by Y6, a kid of English-speaking parents is bilingual in their stream language, meaning able to speak haltingly (not really enough native speakers usually) but able to easily watch a film without subtitles. The teachers are generally good. The children move at double speed, with half the week in English, half in the stream language. Now they are forced to follow the National Curriculum, but it's taught in two languages. This was a vindictive move against Europe by the Tories, and it cut the school off from the web of European Schools across Europe, who did the European Baccalareate at 18. Now, they have to do the International one, but still, there are no GCSEs, so a massive roadblock in education is still absent, thank god. The children at the school are generally nice children, considerate, kind, and there is almost nothing in the way of normal troubles. The bad points? Loads, of course. Some children can't take it and drop out. There is zero music provision, zero drama, and they are not even allowed to use the school field in lunch breaks. The school buildings are in a terrible shape, falling apart, peeling paint, there is mud, puddles of enormous size, all due to a lack of government funding. There are buses to the school but not run by the school and not free - run by a parent committee - around 拢1000 a year per pupil. Music tuition, such as piano, is available, about another 拢1000. If you want drama, there's a club in the school on Saturdays, about another 拢1000. The school also has higher costs than usual, as a result of getting over half of its teachers from other countries, and the govt takes no account of this. They ask for a voluntary contribution of a pound a day per pupil. There are the usual crop of trouble-making parents in the school, but they are few and the trouble is usually confined to ridiculous sniping against other parents who are running various committees, and in fact, only from one part of Oxford, curiously enough. Many parents are Oxford academics, and so many are from the stream countries but also a totally international intake, and some children are handling four languages as easily as one, as young children do. The catchment is wide, encompassing Oxford up to the northern ring road, Abingdon, and Reading and Didcot, with villages. Homework is set from the later primary years. It's straight through to 18 but the primary and senior children are kept mostly apart, and the smallest children have their own protected playground. There is little in the way of playground equipment but there is some. All the outer surfaces are old fashioned concrete, no soft bouncy stuff. Oh, perhaps near one or two bits of small child play stuff. The school has big grounds that it doesn't use. It has a car park that is way too small so pick-ups can be very crowded and parents are asked to use the buses.

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