Author Archives: adminbesteducation

The language school Concord is going online this summer, delivering free activities, learning opportunities and challenges that students of all ages can do from home (recommended age 13-17). All activities will take place on social media, with the opportunity for safe & secure online meet ups with friends (supervised by staff), and a dedicated platform to view detailed activity information and upload photos & videos of completed tasks.

What’s more, not only is the programme completely free to join, each submission of completed tasks (there are 20) generates an entry to the ‘End of Summer Prize Draw’ for a chance to win a free place at Concord Summer 2021. So that’s potentially 20 chances for each student to secure a place in the 2021 summer courses (T&C’s apply).

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The summer is here! There are so many fun things to do during summer holidays. We have gathered them and listed below.

Literature

Getting lost in a good book can pass several hours of your day, which can come in handy if you are struggling a little during summer break. Reading is also a great way to relax and de-stress. If you have already read all your books and don’t fancy re-reading them, now is the perfect time to escape into the world of online books.

Check out the following:

BBC sounds – more than 100 short stories are available to listen to for free as well as many books such as Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson and Silas Marner by George Eliot. There are also 15 children’s stories, including The Children’s joke by Louisa May Alcott and Finn and the Scottish Giant by Harold F Hughes

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We live in a digital world. The easiest way to learn anything nowadays is joining online lessons and you can take them anytime, anywhere, and in any subject.

Online learning has been on the rise in recent years, and it’s really not hard to see why. On the one hand, online learning has become hugely popular by the simple virtue of being so much more convenient than traditional face to face tuition. There are lots of benefits of studying online, such as:

• Convenience and flexibility
• Variety of programs
• Individual approach
• More comfortable learning environment
• More interaction and greater ability to concentrate

We offer tutoring for ongoing academic needs and for school entrance tests.

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When I worked as a teacher, I participated in running of two environmental clubs.  It was a few years ago, but already at that time children were very interested in the topic.  Recently it became the big movement.  Below I will share with you some information from the media on how schools react to it and incorporate this topic into the curriculum.

Should pupils bunk off school to attend climate protests? This year, the swelling ranks of teenagers joining environmental demonstrations posed a dilemma for teachers. On the one hand, they want pupils to become engaged and active world citizens. On the other, they want to keep them safe and in school.

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A Levels

A Levels are known for developing in-depth subject knowledge and the English National Curriculum (of which A Levels are a part of) still remains the most popular curriculum choice with international schools around the world. Students usually choose three or four subjects, and take two years to study for these A-levels between the ages of 16 and 18. Pass grades are A* (the top grade), followed by A, B, C, D and E. One similarity between the IB Diploma and A Levels is that both qualifications are assessed by exams at the end of a two-year study period.

IB Diploma

The IB Diploma is for students aged 16-18 and requires no specific preparatory classwork, so can be undertaken directly from GCSEs. It offers a broad curriculum made up of six subject groups – students usually study three at a higher level and three at a standard level.

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International students are to be offered a two-year work visa after graduating from a British university, the government announced in September, overturning a key plank of Theresa May’s restrictive immigration policies.
Currently, graduates with bachelors or master’s degrees are allowed to look for work for only four months. From next year all international graduates could qualify for a two-year period to work in the UK, increasing their chances of finding long-term employment after studying.

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A level results came out last week.  The overall pass rate remains the same as last year at 97.6% for students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Girls narrowly reclaimed the lead from boys, with 25.5% achieving A* and A grades compared with 25.4% of boys.  The figures, released by the Joint Council for Qualifications, also show that – for the first time – the number of girls taking the three sciences has overtaken boys at 50.3% compared with 49.6%. There has been a big push to increase the take-up of sciences among girls.  Although far more boys – 30,159 – still took physics A-level, compared with 8,799 girls.  Six weeks after the last A-level exams were taken, more than 300,000 18-year-olds have ended the anxious wait to learn their A-level results.

We look at different scenarios

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The Common Entrance received press attention recently when three top independent schools announced that they are dropping the 13+ Common Entrance exam in a bid to reduce pressure on pupils, parents and teachers.

Westminster, St Paul’s and Wellington College will stop requiring pupils to take the exam from 2021. They will instead rely solely on their “pre-test”, which comprises verbal and non-verbal reasoning, maths and English, and is taken at the age of ten and 11.

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Additional academic programmes or Summer courses can help children further their skills, providing students with  the chance to focus on their skills and their individual strong points.  Learning in the classroom can give children a fantastic grounding when it comes to basic educational needs, but additional academic enrichment programmes can give students a better understanding of critical thinking, give them chance to excel in a particular subject or area, and can give students a more rounded education in general.

Choosing a programme

There will be an enrichment programme/summer course out there to suit every need and topic, so you need to look at your child’s wants and needs before booking onto one. For example, if they excel in the performing arts, it may be worth booking them onto a course that gives them opportunities in the arts that they wouldn’t normally get in the school/classroom – you may find a course that has specialists in Musical theatre and Broadway experts come in to teach, giving them access to something they’d never get in the classroom environment. If your child loves sports and challenges, a summer sport camp will be a great way for them to enhance their life experience and make friends outside the classroom.

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Looking  for a good book to read? In our February newsletter we want to tell our readers
about the international bestseller “Watching the English”.

In this book anthropologist Kate Fox takes a revealing look at the quirks, habits and foibles of the English people. She has not only compiled a comprehensive list of English qualities, she has examined them in depth and wondered how we came to acquire them. Take the weather, which is where she starts, perhaps because it is where most English conversation begins. Yet, according to Fox, we are not really interested in whether it might brighten up before lunch, we are filling in awkward conversational space. The phrase “Ooh, isn’t it cold” is merely a more acceptable way of saying “I’d like to talk to you — will you talk to me?”

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