Dorothy Haile, MA, serves as the international personnel director and MK education coordinator for SIM. She works in Fort Mill, South Carolina, in the United States. Dorothy has a BA in geography and an MA in geography in education. She grew up in London, England, United Kingdom, and taught there before going to Zambia as a teacher with Africa Evangelical Fellowship (AEF). After serving fifteen years as a teacher and school principal, she became involved in missionary personnel issues and moved to the United States after AEF merged with SIM in 1998.
Bingham Academy, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was opened by Serving in Mission (SIM) more than fifty years ago as a school for its missionary children, especially those in Ethiopia and Sudan. The largest enrolment at Bingham has been about 250 missionary children, and at that stage it was a “traditional” MK school with a very clear focus on meeting the needs of the missionary population. The school has developed a strong elementary and middle school programme, serving families until their children have completed grade eight. Because of its location, the school has of course been vulnerable to the political challenges in both Ethiopia and Sudan, and its enrolment has oscillated greatly because of the changing political scene. Its location in Addis Ababa has also brought opportunities of opening up some spaces to nonmissionary families as the diplomatic community has grown, although the government does not allow Ethiopian children to be enrolled unless they have a second passport or a letter from the Ethiopian Ministry of Education granting permission to attend Bingham. Currently, almost half of the students are from non-mission families. In previous years, after grade eight most North American families were served by Rift Valley Academy (RVA) in Kenya for high school education, while some other families favoured Sandford School, which has a British curriculum, in Addis Ababa. Sandford is now not usually considered an option. Bingham has also developed a strong programme of support for homeschooling families.
During the late 1990s, pressure on spaces at RVA and families’ desire to stay together created a growing desire for high school grades to be added at Bingham, and some education options previously available in Addis Ababa had not reopened after the Communist years. Eventually, two bold decisions were made: to develop a high school and to move to governance by a multimission board. (SIM still has a majority on the board, but other missions have a strong role.) Further grades have been added each year since 2002. The Bingham board chose to adopt the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) as its high school curriculum, meaning that initially the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) exams were introduced, and in the last two years the first-year courses of “A” (Advanced) Level (AS) and second-year courses of “A” Level (A2) exams were taken in grades eleven and twelve. At present, enrollment in the high school grades is beginning to grow, although classes are still very small. (The overall number of students in the school is about 230.)
In the last five years, the school has gone through many changes that were sometimes traumatic, but it has also had some notable successes, including excellent IGCSE and AS exam results. The students are proving that they can succeed in this system, and some of them have become the greatest supporters of the new curriculum. There is growing general acceptance of a curriculum designed to meet as many needs as possible from various home countries, combined with a growing vision for the school’s wider purpose of reaching the international community in Addis Ababa as well as of providing quality education for missionary children. A strong and unified board now provides good governance to the school, and in 2006 a recruitment coordinator was appointed to liaise with all partner missions. School policies to assist in teacher retention are being developed, together with a five-year plan for Bingham’s future.
There have also been serious challenges in this growth and transition process. Needless to say, there have been misunderstandings about the new curriculum, and differences in educational philosophy and practice have been difficult for some of the teachers and parents to grasp. These differences include the testing patterns, curriculum composition and timing, and methodology of marking (grading). Some families of high school students have complained about the heavy load of homework, and some parents still prefer the wider options offered by RVA and its U.S. orientation. Teacher shortages and high turnover have also meant that workloads have been very heavy, and the school always has new teachers needing to be oriented to the syllabus-based curriculum as well as to the general environment of the school. There is also the practical difficulty of managing a two year exam system (IGCSE) in an environment where families are constantly coming and going. There has been a general perception that IGCSE is oriented to the academic elite, and there has been concern about the lack of provision for students with learning difficulties—or even for the average kid.
These concerns have often been expressed from a specifically American perspective, especially in relation to the lack of choice in grades eleven and twelve: the fact that results are not as high as expected because of the different grading system and that IGCSE doesn’t mean anything in the United States. Communication of the philosophy and exam system has not been sufficient to convince all the families, and some have disliked the exam pressure, especially if they see it to be irrelevant.
In response to these issues, and especially because of its concern about the constant shortage of teachers, in February 2006, the Bingham Academy board convened a short consultation to address the issues. They invited me, Dorothy Haile, personnel director and MK education coordinator for SIM International; a regional director (recruiter) for SIM in the United States who was a student at Bingham forty years ago while his parents worked in Sudan; and the director of SIM in the United Kingdom, who came with his wife, a teacher. For several days, this group met with the board chair, other board members, and faculty members.
The board wanted to look at issues that needed to be addressed so that the CIE curriculum could be accessible and effective for students from a wide range of national backgrounds. This effort is part of the challenge for a school that began with a specific focus on missionary families and that needs to review its purpose and function in its current environment and with its current opportunities for strategic involvement in God’s purposes. Following the meetings in February, a number of important steps have been taken.
The vital importance of clear and frequent communication to present and prospective missionary families was recognised. It became clear that the board itself must understand (and then communicate to parents) the flexibility in the CIE system, meaning that, for example, IGCSE is not just for the academic elite. This communication process has been started. At a parents’ meeting earlier this year, a British and an American teacher, who work together at the high school level and who both strongly support the CIE curriculum, made a presentation to parents.
A report card in U.S. format is being developed to reflect differences in grading practice. Some other steps are being taken to meet specific needs of American families for help in preparing for college entrance. An American parent who is also a board member says, “Everyone seems to be fine about that. The U.S.-format report card for those returning to the U.S. will include the U.S. grade equivalents proposed by CIE and will also weight the IGCSE and AS/A Level courses in the same manner as U.S. high schools in northern Virginia offering the CIE curriculum have done.”
As far as SATs are concerned, it was already possible for students to take SATs at another school in Addis Ababa, but not at Bingham. Because they were taken at the other school, Bingham did not see the results (and could not evaluate them as a whole). Now the administration is working towards registering Bingham as a centre for SATs, and an American teacher has been appointed as school counselor to provide advice on college entrance issues, especially in relation to the relevance of CIE for college entrance. She is taking training as a guidance counselor. These steps are being taken to supplement the CIE curriculum, which has already been effective in helping American students apply successfully for college on the basis of good IGCSE and AS results and has already helped some parents to reduce college tuition fees because these results have given the equivalent of AP exemptions. However, the specific steps should be helpful to even more parents.
Because the board recognises the benefit that would be gained from having more teachers who are already familiar with the British/Commonwealth educational philosophy and from having fewer adjustments to CIE, recruitment from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, and other Commonwealth countries is being emphasised. Effort is going into building links with some consultants in the United Kingdom who could provide training for teachers in CIE and IGCSE, offer curriculum advice, and assist in keeping current with changes. There is also discussion about the possibility of offering IGCSE spread over three years, rather than just in grades nine and ten, in order to allow for families who will be absent for one year out of the three. The story of the last five years is a valuable case study of challenges faced, changes made, and prospects enlarged! In summary, good progress has been made. All these changes would of course be much easier to implement with a consistent and adequate number of teachers, and the board chair stated it this way:
The breadth of the flex we can give [in the CIE system] is determined largely by the teachers we have, but the CIE is flexible in its own right. However, more teachers, more flex.
Flexing study for IGCSE over a three-year period…we are working on this and again it is limited by staff at this stage.
Doing online courses. A great way for Bingham Academy to add choice. Still being developed but again needs people to run it.
And as a final thought from the chair of the board:
It is encouraging to see that with a focused effort on understanding our existing issues and teacher needs, and clear and respected leadership committed to meeting teachers’ professional and social needs, the number of teachers in the recruitment pipeline is increasing. We hope to retain and develop a core of long-term teachers who see Bingham Academy as a vital ministry in God’s work in this part of Africa and the world.
The latest word from Bingham (as of September 2006) is that there is a strong feeling of momentum at the school this year. This momentum builds of course on the foundation laid in the last few years, but the new director’s experience and leadership style are already building staff morale and a sense of direction
Bingham Academy Update: A Case Study in Change Q1 2007