This new school year, the English River secondary school has introduced a new elite class for its secondary one (S1) students ‒ a completely new initiative and it is the first state school to take such a step.
“The decision to have an elite class has been taken by the school and the parents,” confirmed the head teacher of English River secondary school, Steve Hoareau.
The idea of having a school of excellence was suggested by the then Minister for Education, Joël Morgan.
“This was debated in the National Assembly but the idea remained floated! Our school decided to have a class of excellence instead. We established the criteria that if a child performs extremely well in all subjects scoring A to C, then we will have this class. Now as this has been met, we have a proper elite class. This will be a class where the students will not mix with others, they will stay together and work together. They will have more challenging tasks,” explained Mr Hoareau.
This decision was fully backed by the parents of the school.
“The parents are happy as they want to see competition. In the past, when the students were put in a class with mixed abilities, some were demotivated. All parents want their children to excel and at the end of each school year the results of each subject will be reviewed and students will be promoted or demoted,” added head teacher Hoareau.
A total of 110 students have joined the five S1 classes at English River school.
In terms of staff, the school is all set and it is only missing a Science teacher. The school has 70 teaching and non-teaching staff.
“We used the challenges brought about by Covid-19 as a stepping stone to move forward. We have been using WhatsApp, and we will use more digital learning. Currently, we are discussing the length of class periods and the subjects we teach at the school. Our programme is to prepare our students for IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education). It means, we will be aiming at running two programmes in parallel at the school,” shared Mr Hoareau.
English River secondary school is set to the lead the process of becoming autonomous as many changes are on the way.
Source: Seychelles Nation
