Foreign Perspectives

I’m debating with myself what to do education-wise as from October next year at the moment. Yes, I know, it seems a long time off, but some of the things I’m looking at take a lot of preparation time.

What I’m doing this year is fine: first I’m finishing off my life sciences degree, then I’m going to top-up my other degree to the point where I’d be able to claim it. That means the Infectious Disease and Public Health course now, Childhood studies and child psychology next October and Chemical change and environmental applications May next year. After that, the second degree can be parked as it will have enough points to let me claim it but I don’t need to and can add to it later.

If I could find a way of funding it (and the family), I’d probably go for the Molecular Biology and Biotechnology masters full-time at Queen’s but, so far, the funding of the family has knocked that on the head. Other options in that line are possible part-time, or rather distance learning, such as the Structural Molecular Biology at Birkbeck but I’d really like to do the Queen’s one if I can. Related to that there’s the Medicinal Chemistry masters at the OU which is just over the fence from molecular biology though I’d like to have a look at the course texts before committing to that.

Option 2 is to carry on and complete the psychology degree which would take three or four years at a sensible pace.

What I’ve been doing for both the biology and psychology options in the meantime is to go along to all the free presentations that I can find. So far, that’s largely been in the psychology line as they seem to have heaps of essentially day schools as well as standalone lectures. The day schools are largely psychology careers events, each looking at a field in psychology. The clinical psychology one a few months back put me right off that as it would take at least 10 years full-time to get anywhere but the health psychology one this week seemed to offer the possibility of getting somewhere interesting in a much shorter time and with an interesting journey along the way too.

For the biology, there aren’t nearly so many around, basically because there aren’t so many biologists. That said, they run day trips on a biology theme every month or two locally and Queen’s do what are essentially molecular biology seminars now and again too. Molecular biology is a bit of a peculiar subject lying close to but different from medicinal chemistry so you can find talks being done by biology people, medical people and the cancer group who seem to lay in the middle.

James is starting to really get into the project now and has run up getting on for 2000 words on it so far which is almost as much as Wendy or I would be writing for one of our university assignments!

The original split into the four seasons with four or five themes running through each seems to be working out quite well. Having living in a hotel lets him write about how different family life was there compared to life here (he’s had loads to write there). Making a film has let him tell all the different stages in the preparation of the film they made (which has brought back a lot of memories). He’s only just started on the school in France sections but they’re letting him highlight the differences in schooling. French customs is a bit of a mixture where he’s been able to highlight differences and similarities that you might not expect. Finally, Around the area is there to let him say something about the things he’s seen when we’ve been out and about.

We added in the first selection of photos yesterday and it’s starting to look rather well.

Or is it post-primary, grammar or high school? Officially it’s post-primary but that’s only because secondary got a really bad name over the years so the former secondary schools are now called high schools whilst the former high schools didn’t like to be lumped in with them and therefore rebranded themselves as grammar schools.

Anyway, he’s in the final few weeks of primary school now and we’re gearing up to his next school. We’d thought that we were over the hump of the paperwork with the transfer test behind us and school preferences in, but there’s a fair bit of paperwork to complete for his new school already.

The next year will be “interesting” for him with a change from a small handful of subjects to around a dozen different ones and exams for the majority of them next May. The school is quite a lot larger than his primary school and it’s an all-boys school too which’ll make quite a difference I suspect.

A big plus point is that it’s the school that we all felt at home in during our visits there so all being well that feeling will see him through the initial stress beginning at the end of August. He only needs to find his tutor’s classroom as the first year classes go around in groups so some of them should know where to go or at least they’ll be easier to find if they all get lost.

The P7 class in James’ primary school stop a couple of weeks before the rest of the school in June so he’s only got a few weeks left to go now.

As expected, they’re not really teaching them anything now as they’ve done their bit and it’s the secondary schools which will take the kids on further now. That’s shame in some ways as it would be useful to do some final preparations of them for their new schools as it’s going to be quite a jolt to the system for quite a number of the kids.

At the moment, the homeworks have disappeared and in their place is “the project” which is the final piece of work that they’ll do in primary school. They’ve a totally free choice of subject for the first time ever which I’m sure has left a fair number of kids and their parents floundering. After all, few people would be told to go and do a project – they’d have at least a subject to work with.

Anyway, we’ve talked James into doing his on his school life in France which is probably about ideal as it both gives him a decent subject to work with and it will also give him something to remember his time in France too.

In school, it’s the final assembly and play that the P7 kids are working on with just three weeks to go before the performance. They’re not having a prom this year but instead have a fun day the week after they officially leave primary school. That’s thanks to a vote that the kids were offered months ago, the result of which didn’t go down too well with a number of the parents who were gearing up to top last year’s (Hummers, stretch limos, and little girls made up like stars seemed a bit much for a primary school).

We’re delighted to have James going to what was the favourite school of all of us – Campbell College.

Despite scraping around to find logical reasons to justify the choice to the primary school principal, quite honestly we put it at the top of our list simply because it just felt nice and was somewhere that we all felt at home. As far as logic goes, they offer all the subjects that James is interested in academically, he was fired up by a number of the after school activities and the kids all knew what they were talking about in the demonstrations at the open day.

Although it’s a boys only school, that had nothing to do with our initial reason to go there. However, it does make quite a difference. As the principal said at one of the open days, the school is totally aimed at encouraging boys in everything that they do. Thus, the library is packed with books that boys like to read and the school activities are completely aimed at boys. Less obvious is that in a boys only environment, the boys don’t get turned off by “girly” subjects and activities so the home economics department turned out quite an attractive selection of delights on the open night and rather than having a choir with the typical 115 girls and five boys, it has a choir of 120 boys.

It might seem like a thing all schools would do but everyone (kids, teachers and the former alumni) at the open day took an interest in us and behaved as though we’d be enrolling James. There was none of the “we’re probably wasting our time” attitude that came across in many schools. I can appreciate that in many of the schools, the number of applications can far exceed the number enrolled (eg Lagan gets around 300 applications for 200 places) but behaving as though we would be enrolling in due course really made a big difference to our impression of the school. Even in the trivial interactions, it felt like James was being treated as a pupil there, if only for an afternoon and I guess that feeling of belonging is why it ended up at the top of our list.

One of the things that we wanted to do in each of the schools after the open day was to just have a wander around and rather than being slung out at the end of the open day, as happened in almost all of the schools, we were welcome to have that wander and had a long chat with one of the former pupils too. But the not being slung out was, for us, just another part of the welcoming attitude – “sure, it’s just an open day, but think of yourself as a pupil here if only for today”. Former pupils being there was a nice touch too, giving a connection to the parents as well as to the potential pupils.

On the open days with them, we never felt like they were just doing an open day because that’s what schools do these days but rather that they were showcasing the school – “hey, look at how great our school is”. That’s how it should be, but even among a number of the other excellent schools that we went to, that wasn’t the case and in many cases it felt that an open day was just another chore to do.

The reports on the school are a bit negative on the old class rooms but that’s one of the aspects that makes it feel like a school rather than a modern office block that some of the new build schools feel like. To us, I think that was part of the attraction. In too many cases, the thinking seems to be that a new school building will sort out the school but a school is the teachers and pupils, not the buildings. It was our interactions with the people that encouraged us to put Campbell at the top of our list.

James did the transfer tests at Campbell which was an interesting experience. To be honest, we only chose Campbell for the tests as it was handy for parking and they did both AQE and GL. However, even there, their care towards the pupils was very apparent as they didn’t just dump the kids in a sports hall for the tests as happens elsewhere but put them in proper classrooms and gave us all kinds of advice as to how to make sure that they were relaxed on the day. They didn’t have to do that but it was yet another aspect that appealed to us.

Anyway, we’re delighted that James can treat Campbell as home now and I hope that he can put across that feeling to some other kids out there when he participates in future open days.