This blog isn’t particularly about moving to Mozambique – although doing so certainly hasn’t made things simple – but more about the challenges of trying to keep the children active, engaged and motivated to learn when schools are closed and their daily lives are so restricted. This is more a long-winded essay than a nice blog with stunning beach and animal photos, so be warned…!
Imogen has now had four different learning types in the last year (year 6 in Hull Collegiate School in the UK; home-schooling in Mozambique; grade 5 online learning in Aga Khan Primary and now grade 6 online learning in Aga Khan Middle Years). Harriett has had 3 of the 4 different learning environments, having immediately joined the Middle School in Aga Khan. Is this amount of change a problem? Or has it perhaps helped to generate more interest during a difficult time? I don’t know.
Going into year 6 at HCS in the UK, we already knew that Imogen would not be in the school for the full year, even though in September 2019 it hadn’t even occurred to us to move to Africa. Imogen had been in primary school in the UK for long enough and was ready for something new. So she was enrolled to attend Chateau de Sauveterre, a school in the South of France aimed at English first language students who wanted an adventure of a term living abroad, being taught exclusively in French. Imogen was working hard to study French in her spare time, supported by HCS (who were hugely supportive of Imogen’s adventurous plans) and she was very excited about her adventure.
As an extra activity to look forward to, Imogen was also offered a place on a summer CISV Village to spend a month on an international camp in Norway in July. Harriett had already been away with CISV for the last two summers (a month to Portugal at age 11 and a fortnight to Brazil last year when she was 12) so Imogen knew what to expect and couldn’t wait!
Just as the school year began in September, completely out of the blue, I had the chance to move to my new role in Mozambique. In the middle of a busy time at work, with no time to research the option myself, my now infamous text message to Sam (“Sam, you don’t have to say yes, but what do you think about moving to Maputo? I don’t know where that is – you’ll have to Google it. Let me know – I need to answer in a couple of hours”) was sent and that day we spoke to the children about moving to Mozambique and everything was settled very quickly. The relevance to this blog being, of course, that it meant a change to our schooling plans.
We visited Maputo in October and looked at the school options. The main choices were the American School, Maputo International School or Aga Khan Academy. It was interesting seeing the girls consider their potential new schools. The American School they found off-putting at first with forceful security, followed by a long-winded explanation of the fees, but it had a nice atmosphere once we were finally allowed to see the actual school. But the Aga Khan Academy was somehow immediately welcoming and exciting. Arriving unannounced, the person at reception was hugely enthusiastic and talked animatedly about the ethos and purpose of the school. The facilities, pupils and other staff were equally inviting. The children and we loved it. The girls returned the next day to take their entrance exams (waiting for the results was nail-biting; the girls would have been devastated had they not been admitted). We arrived to collect them after their exams and they persuaded the head teacher to let them stay for the rest of the day….and to go back again the following day!
Back to the UK and we had to break the news to Imogen that spending the summer term (UK summer) at school in France would not be sensible. She didn’t really agree at first that it would be too much to spend term 1 in a UK school taught in English, followed by term 2 at school in Mozambique, taught in English and Portuguese and term 3 boarding at school in France, taught wholly in France! She did ultimately acknowledge our concerns, however, and at least she would still be able to go to Norway for a month.
Our move to Mozambique was delayed and we were eventually booked to move in April, 3 months after we had expected to go. As the time approached, the coronavirus news from China had spread to Italy and finally grown into a global pandemic. Alongside this, of course, travel restrictions were being implemented around the world. We brought our flights forward to the end of March to try to move before any lockdowns. Then again to the middle of March when South Africa announced border closures in 48 hours – including for transit, which we needed to do. So having gone to bed on Sunday night, we woke the girls at 6am Monday morning with the news that they weren’t going to school as they expected today, but to the airport to fly to Mozambique.
So the way the girls left their school in the UK wasn’t ideal – in common with many children around the world, they left their friends and teachers without saying goodbye, and with lots of their things left behind at school.
A few days later, in quarantine, in an apartment in Maputo, we decided to start home-schooling the girls. They needed the distraction and the focus provided by learning. We created a timetable that included a few lessons each day as well as physical activity – swimming breaks and Joe Wicks featured prominently. That went well; Sam generally taught science and maths, I taught humanities and Portuguese (somehow!) and on the whole, the girls engaged with learning well and Sam and I enjoyed being able to teach the girls subjects that we felt were under-represented in the UK curriculum. But it was a lot of work; doing this alongside working full-time was hard and couldn’t last for too long.
Once we were out of quarantine and in a house, it was soon time to accept the girls would need to join their new school, even if it would be online. Aga Khan were fantastic; they did everything possible to integrate the girls into the school, despite it being online. I was impressed with how well Aga Khan handled online learning; so many schools around the world have had to manage suddenly being plummeted into a new way of teaching and Aga Khan seemed to manage this as well as the best I’ve heard of.
The girls at first integrated well. Harriett being more outgoing and more confident than Imogen is chatting on WhatsApp and on her laptop engaged particularly well; she is great at reaching out and making friends. Imogen engaged well in the lessons, but is less inclined to communicate remotely with people; she wants people to be in the same room. Imogen doesn’t even willingly call family in the UK, although when coaxed into doing so, she often forgets her inhibition and enjoys a good chat.
Over time, the girls became less excited and eventually quite bored by online school; Imogen in particular started to find the Zoom calls draining and by the end of term in June was more than ready for the long holidays.
The new school year has now begun and the girls are back at online school, with Imogen now in the Middle School with Harriett. Getting Imogen into senior school is a relief; she enjoys the variety of teaching much more than the single teacher approach of primary schools (why does that continue so long? It doesn’t seem a good approach for the teachers or for the pupils). However, Imogen is still struggling with the concept of online learning, coupled with trying to integrate into a new school; if she had already known her classmates and teachers, I think it would have been easier, but clearly she doesn’t and now many new joiners in her class are in a similar position. Harriett is still coping better, although she isn’t enthusiastic about online learning and doesn’t tell us much about school, which isn’t normal for her.
The impact of the coronavirus on children around the world seems disproportionate; children do not generally suffer badly from the disease and there is increasing evidence they’re also not severe carriers who pose a significant risk to the more vulnerable. And yet globally, children’s education and wellbeing is suffering badly; the impact is worst on the most vulnerable and least advantaged kids. Ours will be fine and eventually catch up what they miss; but the advantage gap is growing and children without a safe home are suffering dreadfully. Why is this necessary? And why in many countries are schools one of the last things to reopen? I hope school opens soon for all children…
What’s the best approach to educating children in this environment? Is it best to try to keep a semblance of routine through all the change? Or to allow more variety to stave off the boredom and the feelings of being trapped that the current restrictions cause for many children? We’ve erred towards the latter; it’s probably our nature to be more adventurous in our approach, but who knows if that has been the best choice. Certainly we have never before seen Imogen showing signs of what at times looks like depression, but it feels as though the situation would have been worse without the changes we have made.
Aga Khan have helped; following a single conversation about our concerns for Imogen’s wellbeing, the Academy had agreed a mitigation plan and a revised timetable for Imogen within 2 days. Now we are trialling yet another approach with Imogen mostly joining online school, but with Sam teaching her some maths at home and a local teacher visiting to teach her Portuguese in person. So let’s see how a blend of face-to-face teaching with online learning goes.
Once schools reopen, I’m still excited for the girls to be joining Aga Khan; we loved it when we first visited and what we have seen in the meantime has reinforced those first impressions. Whatever happens in the next few weeks, I’m sure the girls will be fine once they’re back in school and they will have learnt a lot of valuable lessons during this time, however hard it feels right now. But I still fear the effects on many children will be long-lasting and they will not forget 2020 for all the wrong reasons; how do we learn to stop treating children as an electorally unimportant demographic and start placing them at the centre of global policy-making?
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