Parent's Review of El Kalimat School in Bouzzareh, Algeria

What is the name of your child's school? (Please report on one school per survey.)

El Kalimat School

In what town or city is this school located?

Bouzzareh

How would you describe this school? (i.e. American, British, International, Local, etc.)

Supposedly

What grade levels are represented at this school?

Grade 00- Grade 12

How do most children get to school everyday? (bus, train, walk, etc.)

Private transport

How would you describe the facilities at this school? What extra-curricular activities are available?

Facilities are extremely limited. The pupils are not allowed to play on the lawn and are thus restricted to a small paved area on the side of the school to utilise during the breaks.

The few times I have been inside the school building (parents are not allowed to enter except for parents evenings)- the stench from the toilets could be smelt meters away!

Not a single extra-curricular activity is offered by the school.

What has this school done to help your child transition from the curriculum in your home country into the curriculum in your new country? Are there programs to prepare your child for repatriation?

DO HOMESCHOOLING IF YOUR CHILD IS ENGLISH SPEAKING, LOOK INTO PRIVATE FRENCH OR ARABIC SCHOOLS IF THEY ARE EVEN SEMI FLUENT IN EITHER OF THESE LANGUAGES.

Here are some reasons to back up my statement:

The school advertises itself as an International School but places very little emphasis on helping international students with the transitions they have to deal with.

There is only one ESL (English second language) teacher for the entire school so her time is quite spread between learners, thereby rendering the programme ineffective as the individual learners have lessons with her only once a week... if they lucky!

Also, French and Arabic are compulsory for all learners irrespective of the duration of their schooling in El Kalimat or their fluency in these languages. No extra classes are provided to help disadvantaged learners catch up.

How would you describe the social activities available for parents through this school? Are there parent-teacher organizations?

There is unfortunately no Parent-teacher organisation present at El Kalimat. The school has a completely closed door policy and is not open to any suggestions, critisism, or discussions.

The administartions decisions are final in all matters and the head teacher refuses to entertain parents who have a complaint. The general attitude of the school is if you don't like what they are doing, then take your child out because they don't need your money.

What advice would you give to someone considering enrolling their child in this school?

at no point in the last year have I come across one lesson that incorporated a teaching resource. The children are not encouraged to explore their surroundings for science, they take no field trips for lessons on nature, the teachers do not use any aids besides a white board. The children are required to take down notes the entire day for all subjects concerned and that is the only way that lessons are taught. There is no interactive or stimulating teaching provided at all. In terms of training and professional development for the teachers, I have counted over thirty incidents where the teacher used incorrect English, ranging from spelling errors and poor sentence construction, to tense errors and misuse of punctuation marks, and thats just in the last month!!! the children for PE play table tennis with no tables, soccer with no goal posts, most of the lessons they run up and down between cones. The school has a sports day with races run on a paved area that spans no more than 20meters in length. The children practise for two or three days before and are not presented with any medals etc for first place. Truth be told, running 20 meters hardly counts as a race to begin with. There are no music lesson provided, and arts and craft lessons have thus far rotated between drawing and colouring in a house, or making a card for the teacher- that's it! The pupils have yet to make anything in the design and technology class. The ICT teacher quit at the end of last year so the form teacher has taken over these lessons, the result is that the pupils have almost no hands on computer based training which is crucial. The french teacher cannot speak more than two words of English which makes for an extremely difficult learning experience for pupils in all grades! the only method of assessment in the last year has been formal written tests. No other method of assessment is employed- observation, oral examinations, stimulated role play, portfolio, assignments, group work, etc. Completely off all the above topics, I would like to further add that the school provides no -speech contests -concerts or recitals -awards ceremonies -year end functions When I approached the school last year regarding why the young pupils were subjected to the same long hours as 16 and 17 year olds, I was told that El-Kalimat had the same hours as all Algerian schools, which was true. I accepted this at the time. However, at the beginning of this schooling year, the Algerian public schools drastically reduced their schooling hours. When I enquired about the hours this year, I was told that they would remain unchanged as El Kalimat was an International School and was unaffected by the Algerian schooling hours. The long hours were necessary to complete a very "burdening" Cambridge syllabus! As you can very clearly see, the administration changes reasons as and when they wish to suit their purposes. The parents have no say in these matters and are not allowed to question any further. The fact that Headmistress Miss Hadi only arrives at school at 11am (at the very earliest) on any given school day could be a contributing factor to the poor manner in which the school operates.

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