NEW DAWN FOR BRITISH SCHOOL

The new school year, which began as late as this Sunday for the kingdom's youngest pupils, has rung in a new beginning for the British School of Bahrain.

Fourteen years after opening its doors to the island's expatriate children, the Adliya-based institution which merged with Al Ruwad School in 2007 and operated on two sites, has finally moved into a single unified campus in Hamala.

The school community has moved from what was fondly described as 'gypsy encampments' into a spanking new building boasting spacious classrooms and state-of-the-art facilities costing BD15million.

The school is now attracting local Bahraini children alongside its traditional intake of expat children because the curriculum now includes extensive Arabic tuition.

The new building accommodates the junior and senior school students and along with the playing fields represents around 80 per cent of the total campus which is spread around an area of 159,000 square metres.

With the last licks of paint finishing off the classrooms in readiness for the new intake of pupils the administration was expecting to handle its fair share of headaches ... until nature, or rather the threat of illness, took its course.

Government orders to close schools and extend holidays as part of health measures to tackle the spread of the H1N1 swine flu virus meant a delay in fully opening school premises across the kingdom.

Although the British School of Bahrain was eager to open the doors of its new combined site the government orders proved to be just what the doctor ordered in some aspects.

Deputy director Karen Moffat, 53, admitted that the official health moves proved a 'mixed blessing' for the institution. She said: "The delay has been very good in a way but it has also been very frustrating too.

"The teachers, particularly the kindergarten teachers, have been climbing the walls! Teachers do NOT do well without their kids. They want their babies and there is only so much planning you can do.

"But, in all honesty, it has been a mixed blessing - very helpful in ways because we have been able to resolve many issues such as getting the electricity connected - although it is still early days and we are bound to have more teething problems.

"The teachers not involved in the planning and provision of the facilities have found it very frustrating and have been raring to go.

"Some new teachers arrived at the end of August. They were new to Bahrain, new to the school and they didn't even have a chance to get to know their students. So, there were lots of difficult issues such as how to communicate with parents. It was also a unique and constantly changing situation at times."

Now that all the children are back, the British School can confidently plan its future. Mrs Moffat explained: "It is a key aim of ours to become over the next few years an extremely well-resourced hi-tech school with full one-to-one computer connectivity. To this end we have already installed a fibre-optic network backbone that supports our 1,400 students and staff and offers additional capability to support even larger numbers of simultaneous users.

"We have also installed interactive smart boards in all the junior school classrooms and all senior school classrooms have digital projectors."

Future plans include developing a large area into a multi-media and information centre that will potentially serve the wider community.

There will also be a spacious cafeteria with a view overlooking a basketball court. Other sports facilities include a floodlit artificial grass football pitch, two tennis courts and two netball courts alongside the current two indoor swimming pools allowing all year-round training facilities.

When the British School of Bahrain was acquired by business leader Esam Janahi of Gulf Finance House, the site only had a sports hall and kindergarten school.

Today, the school campus in Hamala is now an impressive site and even boasts underground parking for 160 cars. The highlight of the campus is the new three-storey facility, which sits alongside the original school building.

Students from Year 3 to 13 are now located in its new wing. The school's director Bill Frost, and its senior management team, had a major say in the design of the school's interior. It has several meeting rooms, 46 classrooms and 15 specialist rooms including two music rooms, six science laboratories, four computer rooms, three art rooms, a drama and performing centre and a food technology centre. In due course every student will also be allotted a personal locker.

The new facilities have given parents, pupils and staff a huge boost but good buildings alone do not make a good school. Mrs Moffat believes that children achieve their best when they are happy and helping them to achieve their full potential is the primary objective of the school.

She added: "I think everyone here wants to keep the 'small school' feel. Bill Frost, our director, always says that when children leave school they do not always remember what they were taught but they always remember how they were treated.

"One of the things that continues to be very important to us is that the school remains a caring community that is very supportive. We are very proud of the fact that we are an international school. We have more than 40 nationalities at this school and that is proof that people can live together in harmony and work together in peace with one another.

"Many parents want the gold standard of the British national curriculum because it is trusted and reliable, offers high quality education and is highly accountable.

"We want this school, which is a huge melting pot of cultures, to be a place where children feel valued, respected and loved."