36 | ENGLISH-L ANGUAGE SUMMER SCHOOLS | INTERNATIONAL Read a related story: click here
T O TAL IMME R S I O N
Could intensive English-language summer schools offer any lessons to independent schools looking to integrate ever-greater numbers of international students, asks Ted Underwood
I
ABOVE: the children are set an array of complex and demanding challenges
t is 9 o’clock at night when my phone beeps politely and informs me I have text message. I click it open and smile to myself. It’s from Sergey,
my Russian friend, a whirling dervish of energy, eccentricity and globe-troting tales. He’s not often in town so after a pleading explanation to my wife, who rolls her eyes and agrees, I set out to the pub where we always meet for a couple of beers. The thing I like about Sergey is that it always feels
as though he’s never been away and yet he always brings something new. After our usual conversations about mutual friends, Russian literature and politics, I ask him what he’s been up to. He fixes me with an enthusiastic eye and begins to tell me of an English-language summer school he’s been teaching at in Latvia. Apparently, it’s quite a place. If your school is lucky enough to run its own summer
school, then congratulations, economic stability is yours. Every year thousands of teenagers flood into the UK to spend a couple of weeks apparently learning English, meeting other teenagers from around the world and being driven around the UK’s cultural hot spots on coaches staffed by overtired university students who thought they were going to get an easy summer job. They will return home with perhaps a few more words of English than they had before, a whole new cohort of friends on Facebook and a vast collection of selfies taken at places that they can’t remember but looked nice at the time. London Gates’ Summer School is somewhat different.
The location is uterly irrelevant (it was chosen for its ease of access for Russians, both geographically and politically). What maters is that the young students are away from home and their normal every day routines. Once at the site, there is a rigorously enforced ‘English only’ rule from morning until night. Students are always in groups and accompanied by a teacher from the moment the day starts at 9am until
they go to bed at 11pm. Every day is built around a different theme, such as economics or linguistics, with an array of complex and demanding challenges. The children are often still solving logic puzzles late at night and – don’t forget – this is all in English. In addition, over the two-week duration they somehow find time to rehearse a play too: this year it’s ‘Charlie and The Chocolate Factory’. There is no doubt that this is the hardest summer school I’ve ever heard of. The whole camp is run by The London Gates
Educational Group, a chain of schools whose intention is to provide a top British educational experience in Moscow and other Russian-speaking communities around the world. The schools employ only the brightest and best teachers, with the intention of inspiring and leading small groups of eager young people to the dizzy heights of academic excellence. It is the brain child of Yulia Desiatnikova, a
practising psychologist with a passion for learning who divides her time between London, Moscow and Tel Aviv. A pioneer of private education in Russia following perestroika, Desiatnikova also founded the first elite youth club in Israel. It would seem that her philosophies on education, whether or not you agree, are based upon considerable personal experience. While it is somewhat at odds with the community ethos and discrete approach to teaching and learning that underpins many independent schools in the UK and abroad, there is something rather fascinating about such an uncompromising approach. It leaves me thinking about the possibilities for areas of student development, such as subject revision and citizenship, which often lack the intensity in schools to have a sustained effect. Surely the idea of a subject specific ‘revision camp’ has been done somewhere before? Last month, I wrote a piece on the integration of
international students and the immense challenge it poses to schools. Could something along the lines of
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