Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Dear Betsy,
I read in last week’s GulfWeekly about Gabriela’s difficulty in finding a school for her son.
I cannot guarantee to find him a place but at the British Council we endeavour to have the latest information about English language medium private schools in Bahrain. At this time of year we receive a number of similar enquiries and we work very hard to help people in such a position. Very often the difficulty is that someone new to Bahrain does not know all the options available.
Please ask Gabriela to contact me so we can arrange a meeting where I can talk to her and her son to see if there are any possible opportunities that they have not yet explored.
Best wishes,
Diane Lindsay
Examinations Services Manager
British Council, PO Box 452, 146 Shaikh Salman Highway
Manama 356, Kingdom of Bahrain
Dear Diane,
Thank you for your email which I have forwarded on to Gabriela. Hopefully she will soon be able to find a suitable place for her son. At the time of going to print, your reply was the only one I had received from an educational establishment offering help. Many thanks and we all look forward to hearing some good news from Gabriela.
Dear Betsy,
I know how Gabriela feels. But I have a word of warning for her; there are always people who are willing to try to make money out of your misery!
This is my experience. We arrived in Bahrain in February this year and my husband’s employer told us there was no problem with school places for expats.
I am English and my husband is Portuguese and our son who is 13 is fluent in both languages.
However, we could not secure him a place at the school of our choice and turned to alternatives.
The only school willing to take him was one of the multi-cultural schools you mentioned in your article last week. The headmistress told us there was no problem and offered him a place right away. However, she insisted that we pay all the school fees for the WHOLE YEAR dating from the previous September!
We were totally shocked and she tried to justify it by saying that because he had been in an English school and her school was following the USA curriculum my son would have to have lots of extra tuition to bring him up to date with their curriculum. That extra tuition would take place during his school breaks and take the form of lots of extra homework.
We explained we felt this was highly irregular and unethical but her attitude was, ‘you are desperate, take it or leave it’.
We paid as we did not want our son to feel isolated at home. It was a big mistake as the level of tuition in my opinion was so poor and the extra lessons never materialised and my son’s education took a dozen steps backwards as the work they were doing he had completed the year before in the UK and as most of his teachers spoke very poor English he just switched off in class most of the time.
On reflection, we would have been better off teaching him at home as there are lots of support websites now. Happily, he is at a leading English school in Bahrain now and is making up for his lack of progress last year.
So my advice to Gabriela is not to be pressured into sending your son to an unsuitable school just because you are desperate for a place for him.
Give home schooling a try as it is only temporary and at least you know exactly how your son is being taught.
Furious in Janabiya.
Dear Furious in Janabiya,
Thanks for sharing your experience with us all and I am so happy to hear that your son is now at an appropriate school.
I’m told even the editor’s daughter had to wait five months before securing a school place!
It seems to me that there is a gap in the market here and I hope that established schools are listening and will think of expansion and that other investors will see the potential business here as Bahrain expands at a rapid pace both within our national and expat populations.
There appears to be lots of scope in the future for more private educational projects. I am sorry to hear of your bad experience at this multi-cultural school.
Is what the headmistress did illegal? I am not sure. (Readers can contact the Director of Private Education, Ministry of Education, for such clarification and guidelines)
However, in my opinion it appears unfair. I really hope she gets to read this article and will take the opportunity of explaining her position.
l WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE PRIVATE EDUCATION ON OFFER IN BAHRAIN? Email betsymathieson@hotmail.com
