International Schools Blog

The 11th annual BTEC Awards are your chance to recognise and celebrate the outstanding achievements of BTEC learners and educators around the world in an unprecedented year.

We hoped you enjoyed running your in-school Twist on a Tale competitions this year and if you didn’t get a chance, you can still organise your own writing challenge for the new year using the resources in this post.

If you’re wondering what we’re talking about, esports is simply short for ‘electronic sports’, a term coined to describe competitive video gaming. There’s a common misconception that esports is a ‘playful’ qualification, but this couldn’t be further from the truth, so we’ve teamed up with our partners at the British Esports Association to answer some of the most common myths people believe about esports and education.

Despite being a year of global upheaval, 2020 brought about a number of major developments in digital solutions in education, such as the widespread switch to online schooling, the rise in the use of apps and hybrid learning. It’s likely that teaching will continue to make use of digital technology for the foreseeable future. With this comes new challenges and developments.

Since its launch 10 years ago, Bug Club, our blended whole-school reading programme, has been capturing the imagination of almost 2 million children across the globe, helping them to develop a love of reading and with it, nurturing lifelong readers.

If your school is like countless others around the globe, the first half of 2020 saw you diving overnight into “remote learning” in response to the pandemic. Your teachers embraced Zoom; your department heads scrambled to digitise homework; your parents pitched in (perhaps grumbling a bit); and your students adjusted and kept on learning.

The International School Awards celebrate learning, teaching, community, wellbeing, leadership and strategic initiatives at international schools. They provide the opportunity for international schools to share best practice, creative endeavours, community participation, and innovation.

Enforced home schooling during the first lockdown was tough for many parents around the world. But now, a growing number of families are taking their children out of schools altogether, despite many having fully reopened for the new academic year. Indeed, in the UK, the Department for Education in September reported that 800,000 pupils were still out of school a few weeks into the new term.

The discussion about the future of work and skills is a hot topic in the current economic climate. With a trend towards remote work, rapid changes in technology, and the automation of repetitive jobs, the idea that current students will leave school and enter a job for life has become a thing of the past.

Sharon Hague, Senior Vice President of Pearson Qualification Services, shares her thoughts on the clear challenges ahead as global education makes the switch to online learning.