Welcome from the British School Division Head
Welcome!
Within Seoul Foreign School, the British School (SFBS) offers a curriculum based around the English National Primary Strategy and National Curriculum for Reception to Year 9. In essence we offer a UK-style primary and early secondary education from Key Stage 1 to the end of Key Stage 3. We have an emphasis on quality, motivation and enthusiasm and expectations of the children are high and not just academically. As well as swimming, SFS’s extensive facilities enables us to offer a range of sports, both within the curriculum and in our extensive after-school activities’ programme.
Teaching and learning
The curriculum we follow is one that you would expect a child to experience in the UK. The creative and physical development of the children are part of our holistic approach to learning – Art, Drama, Design Technology (DT), Physical Education (PE) and Music are as much a part of their lives as the core subjects of Literacy, Mathematics, Science and Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Because the children need to be aware of their place in the world about them, our curriculum includes Christian-based, comparative Religious Education (RE); Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE), Citizenship and Modern Foreign Languages (Korean in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, French in Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 and, from August 2007, Spanish in Key Stage 3). The children also need to be able to put this learning in a physical and social context so geography and history schemes of work have been adapted to reflect the international nature of our children and our location in Korea.
From our teachers’ experiences of working in both the UK and around the world, we have identified three key areas to enable our children to learn in these curriculum areas:
- Our teachers have a good subject knowledge and can make it accessible to the children.
- Our teachers have a good knowledge of their pupils and how they learn.
- Our teachers act as facilitators in the process of learning.
Each involves understanding and skill and each is dependent for its success on the other three.
Our hopes for your children
What do we hope for the children under our care? We would hope that when they leave Seoul Foreign British School they would do so having enjoyed learning and that that enjoyment had encouraged them to become life-long learners; we hope they have learned to value others, however different, and to feel a sense of having succeeded to the very best of their abilities.
We have great hopes for the fulfilment of this vision as we have an excellent staff who are committed to making the children’s education a fulfilling and rewarding experience. But SFBS, like any school, cannot work by itself. We rely on the whole school community from you, the parents, to Governors and Board members.
Getting involved
For parents, we have lots of opportunities to get immersed in the school – through the lively and involved PTA who spend a great deal of time and energy helping us to constantly improve the social development of your children, helping in class with reading or project work or accompanying the children and teachers on field trips. To get involved, all you have to do is talk with the teacher or the PTA!
We look forward to having your children in our school and we sincerely hope that they feel at ease here as they continue their learning adventure in Korea!
Timothy J Gray BEd, MEd, MBE
SFBS Headteacher
