Edition XXII
September 2020
Dear subscribers
As promised, this week’s EDDi offers you something a little different.
In the first of an occasional series, we are delighted to present ‘The Interview’. As the name suggests, this feature is a conversation (presented as text) with prominent educationalists.
This week ‘The Interview’ is a case study of how a small school in Brunei coped with COVID-19. We spoke to the school’s Principal, Chong Wee Meng, and the Deputy Principal (Academics), Joel Espiritu. Their insights are below.
For those interested, there is a useful comparison of how a UK Primary school responded to COVID-19 here (in podcast form via PERSYOU).
This EDDition also has three regular academic digests for you. To make navigation easier, we will now link to our Digests as separate articles:
If you haven’t yet downloaded it, the free introduction chapter from International Schooling: The Teacher’s Guide is still available here. If you sign-up to access the chapter we will put you on our advance purchase list (you’ll get early access and a discounted price).
Finally, in response to requests, a reminder that our back issues are available to paying members.
Happy reading
EDDi
THE INTERVIEW
How a small school with a big heart coped with COVID-19
Study the worldwide data on COVID-19 and you could be forgiven for thinking that a tiny sultanate in South East Asia has somehow miraculously been spared what the rest of us are still struggling with.
As with most global listings of any type, tiny Brunei tends to get missed off.
But then how many people could readily find Brunei on a map? But it is there – occupying an idyllic northern corner of the tropical island of Borneo, as it has for over 600 years.
Today, Brunei is a thriving, sophisticated country, its oil and gas revenues generating a GDP of US$37 billion (2019 estimate), making its 437,000 citizens among the wealthiest on the planet.
But wealth is no barrier to viruses - ask any American.
Inevitably, Covid-19 landed on Brunei earlier this year, triggering an immediate and unequivocal response from the Bruneian Sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah, who ordered the country sealed off: no one leaves and no one enters, all business closed, with schools, colleges and universities shuttered for the duration.
The consequence of his sharp actions are revealed in a simple fact: 141 coronavirus infections, of which just three were fatal, all remaining patients having fully recovered. And no new infections leading up to the writing of this article. To put that in perspective, if the UK had done as well as Brunei at curbing Covid-19, then it would have suffered not 50,000 deaths, but less than 500.
Nevertheless, the impact has been dramatic for all Bruneians, and especially so for Dr Mary Lim and her son, Leonard; owners/directors of Sarjana Education Group, the company which owns and leads several schools in Brunei, including Seri Mulia Sarjana International School.
Seria Mulia Sarjana International School
Founded in 1998, SMSIS has been a continual and growing success story for Bruneian education. It is not the biggest, grandest or most expensive international school in Brunei, that mantle goes to Jerudong International School and the International. School of Brunei, but the leaders and managers of SMSIS know their client market and they know their education.
The school never operates at less than full capacity - 839 students (Preschool to Year 6), with a long waiting list of parents all anxious to get their children enrolled. It is a highly multicultural community, of 23 nationalities. But among their 77 teachers and staff don’t expect to find any Westerners. There aren’t any. 50% of the staff are Bruneian, 40% are Filipino, and the remainder a mix of Indian, Sri Lankan and Chinese. It is truly an Asian school, offering the EYFS (Foundation Stage) and Cambridge International Primary Curriculum (adopting the National Curriculum for England for all non-core subjects). A member of the Council of International Schools, SMSIS has a truly global outlook but with that added dash of Asian authenticity, communalism and cultural awareness.
Since its inception, SMSIS has been led by Bruneian educationalist, Chong Wee Meng. A graduate of Keele University’s renowned MBA in International Education, Chong has gathered around her an impressive Senior Management Team, led by Deputy Principal (Academics) Joel Espiritu. Together, this partnership faced arguably the biggest challenge of their professional lives when Covid-19 appeared in Brunei.
However, like most South East Asians, the leaders and community of SMSIS at least recognised the seriousness of Covid-19 from the outset, having already had to respond to SARS and MERS over the past two decades.
Joel: “As soon as we noticed the emergence of this new virus early this year, we began to take precautions. We recognised there would be a high chance of us having to close the school if Bruneians got infected, so we began preparing for full online learning.”
Back in 2016, the Sarjana Education Group introduced a ‘Bring Your Own Device’ programme into all its schools. This not only proved highly successful and very popular with the students, it helped create a knowledge and skill base which was to prove most valuable once Covid-19 hit.
Chong: “We had previously developed online learning systems and acclimatised our parents and students through BOYD, but in a much more limited way. So, we could offer partial online learning and were actually on a strategy for full implementation across all our subjects within two years, but Covid-19 forced us to accelerate this process.”
Response
For the two weeks leading up to the Bruneian Ministry of Education’s instruction to close all schools (6th March), the SMSIS leaders and teachers had been busy preparing to deliver full online classes to all students.
Joel: “Like every other school around the world we were suddenly in a state of uncertainty. The Bruneian MoE initially stated that there would be a three-week closure, coinciding with the school holidays, but we assumed it would likely go on much longer than that.”
And go on longer it certainly has.
SMSIS tentatively reopened on the 3rd June, but only at limited capacity. No more than 200 students in the school at any one time, with the remainder of the students following one of three online, home-based Learning Management Systems:
Preschool – Classdojo
Year 1 to Year 4 – Google Classroom
Year 4 to Year 6 – Microsoft Teams
Following what have now become standardised Safety First and Health Protection protocols for schools around the world, SMSIS has imposed layers of sanitisation protocols for all staff and students to go through before they can proceed to classrooms, along with wearing of masks at all times, regular hand sanitization, temperature checks and the maintenance of social distancing.
All of which makes for a very strange educational experience, especially in a Primary school full of usually lively and energetic children.
But although the normal classroom and teaching environment has changed, at least the students are safe and well. And as schools around the world now realise, child safety has become the primary concern of parents, far and above exam results.
Chong: “We’ve had excellent support from our parents in fact I think they were surprised at how well prepared we were. There have been no complaints about any aspect of our delivery or our response to the Covid-19 emergency. We’ve kept the parents fully informed at every stage and provided online feedback and suggestions for parents to respond to. The feedback survey showed 90-95% satisfaction with the school’s procedures and responses.”
Nevertheless, this highly positive outcome wasn’t arrived at without a determined team effort from every section of the Sarjana Education Group together with SMSIS leaders and teachers.
Joel: “Certainly all of us have had to undergo a crash course in video conferencing, simplified online lesson planning for all the age groups, and ensuring that we didn’t fall too far behind in terms of our students ongoing development and learning. Teachers have had to reduce their learning outcomes to one or two per day, and we’ve provided a Home-Learning Pack for those students who do not have a device or access to internet at home. This is part of our learning provision where printed learning materials such as notes and worksheets can be collected by parents and submitted back to the school.”
Because SMSIS prepared for the COVID-19 impact a full two weeks before the virus hit Brunei, the teachers were already creating their online lessons, adjusting to video-conferencing, with the SMSIS leaders devising the necessary health and safety protocols.
Chong: “The goodwill and flexibility of our teachers is a massive bonus. This has enabled us to maintain 100% staffing compliment throughout the pandemic. Every teacher has undergone professional development in online learning, video conferencing, and simplified lesson planning.”
The Timeline of Responses
By the middle of July, Chong and Joel were in a position to reflect on the programme of crafted learning provisions and implemented online teaching strategies deployed to mitigate the effect of Covid-19 on student learning from March to the middle of July. Below is that timeline together with the various actions:
9th March: Crafted Academic Contingency Plan: Preparing teachers and staff for possible Partial to Full On-Line lessons. (School officially shutdown on the 7th March)
16th – 20th March: Professional Development across the school: Training on video conferencing, introduction and management of various Learning Management Systems.
23rd- 27th March: Virtual Classroom/Home-Based Learning: Teachers tasked to prepare Online Learning Resources to be uploaded to the LMS and school website in preparation for home-based learning to start in Term 2).
27th-29th March: Setting-up and Distribution of LMS Accounts: Teachers establishing LMS accounts for students/parents in order for them to access all resources.
31 March: Start of Term 2/Home Based Learning: Full Online Learning comes into operation. 80% of students manage to register into their Google Classroom and Classdojo accounts within the first week. 100% of Year 5 and Year 6 are connected to MS Teams.
March – May: Continuation of Home-Based Learning: Teachers conducting online lessons using various teaching strategies such as Video Conference. To augment learning, teachers provide pre-recorded instructional videos (up to 40 videos a week) of their lessons. Microsoft Stream serving as the main video streaming platform for all students to access. Within eight weeks, more than 200 videos have been recorded (Early Years to Primary).
3rd June: Introduction of Blended Learning: The school shifts from full online Learning to Blended Learning in preparation of partial re-opening. HSE procedures are strengthened, along with health screening stations.
8th – 12th June: Online Diagnostic Test: First test conducted to monitor and assess student’s progress and at the same time evaluate the effectiveness of the online programme. All students took the online assessment using MS Forms and Google Forms with 95% participation rate. Year 5 and Year 6 take the digital assessment in school using their own devices.
15th June: Remote Instruction: Class size restrictions require Remote Teaching to be introduced for core subjects (English, Maths, Science) with split classes to conduct parallel lessons using video conferencing and live streaming of videos within classrooms.
Outcome
The result of this concerted team effort is apparent in the following data:
80% of all SMSIS students have met their learning targets since the start of the pandemic
Over 200 class videos have been created, most between five and ten minutes duration.
300 class videos will have been created by the end of July.
A growing catalogue of emails and social media comments from parents and students, all praising the work of SMSIS in handling this crisis and especially “the great e-learning lessons”; “impressive efforts put into home-based learning” and “commendation for what you and other teachers have done in these unprecedented times by being resilient and persistent in ensuring continual positive learning for the students – thank you for all the hard work!”
At the end of July the Bruneian Ministry of Education put the seal on the achievements of SMSIS during the covid pandemic by visiting the school and inviting them to showcase their online learning for the Brunei Teacher’s Day celebration in September.
SMSIS is not the biggest international school in South East Asia, but in many respects it has demonstrated a model response to the Covid-19 pandemic. But how does this happen? Is it all down to good leaders having foresight? Is it the quality of the students? Is it the patience and appreciation of the parents? Or is there some other intangible quality which enables a school of limited physical resources to favourably compare with the giants of International schooling?
When I asked Chong and Joel what they considered had been the biggest contributing factor in their school’s ability to respond to positively to Covid-19, they both came up with the same answer: ‘a strong sense of community across the school and the goodwill of everyone from teachers to students, parents to administrators’.
Joel: “Most of our teachers are what I would call ‘natural performers’, it is in their DNA and this has made it a lot easier to transfer teaching and learning onto video. The teachers found it a little strange at first, but very quickly they adapted and in fact we’ve had a lot of fun doing this task. There has been no negativity from anyone. We all realised the importance of this and the result has been very little serious disruption.”
Chong: “While the whole experience has been stressful at times, and no one likes this level of uncertainty, especially in a primary school, in truth this has not all been bad for us. A lot of very good and positive things have come out of this Covid-19 experience and even if it continues for some time to come, I am confident that SMSIS, and Sarjana Education Group, have the skill base and experience to adapt.”
FREEBIE & DETAILS
If you would like a free sample copy of some of the classroom videos produced by SMSIS teachers in response to the school shutdown, please contact Joel at joel@smsarjanais.edu.bn
Interview conducted via zoom on 16th July, with Chong Wee Meng (Principal) and Joel C. Espiritu (Deputy Principal), SMSIS.
Photo credits: Daniel McCullough, Bima Rahmanda and Jerry Wang on Unsplash
FREE BOOK CHAPTER
A free introduction chapter from International Schooling: The Teacher’s Guide is available here.
If you sign-up to access the chapter we will put you on our advance purchase list (you’ll get early access and a discounted price).
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