Dear Parents and Guardians,
I hope your children have had a good week at school. I would like to update you on two issues raised by parents.
Use of English
This week, I have spent a significant amount of time speaking with parents about use of English on campus as well as reaching out to other schools to get their perspectives and spending time in our common areas observing the levels of spoken English.
Firstly the one thing that both the school and parents are in complete alignment aboutis that we must take action to stop students using rude language. This is something that we have noticed develop over the last 6 months. It started with students using racist, then mysogynistic language (in English) before the more recent emergence of swearing (mostly, but not exclusively, in Thai). We believe that the origins of this were driven from online media consumption, particularly prevalent in 'manosphere' content.
In a meeting with parents this week, I discussed the history and origins of our current approach. Many parents will not be aware that in November and December of 2023, we had a crack down on speaking Thai in common areas and issued 133 detentions in a 3 week period. This led to significant parental and student complaints. After this, through our network with other British schools in Bangkok, we looked at the research evidence as well as what other schools were doing and aligned our policy. Speaking with colleagues working in 3 other top British Schools this week, we all have a similar picture with language use and a similar approach to dealing with it. I also spent time this week in our common areas, discreetly listening in to some conversations. I estimated that about 50% were in Thai, the rest were in English (except for 2 other languages that I heard being spoken).
This morning in our whole staff briefing, I gave the following directive:
1) English must be spoken in classrooms.
2) If students are heard speaking Thai in classrooms (except Thai class), they will first be warned and then it may escalate to a punishment if it continues. The exception is if they ask for permission to quickly discuss a concept in Thai.
3). Swearing in Thai will be dealt with strictly. Repeat offences will move to a higher level sanction in line with our behaviour policy.
4) Outside of the classroom, students will be encouraged to speak English through positive reinforcement. We will be developing a series of campaigns on this throughout the year.
We had our first campaign this morning which was launched in the Lower School assembly. Mrs Berry led the assembly on the theme 'The Power of Words' and included some excellent student modelling of appropriate language as well as an excellent video created with our new Lower School student leaders. Upper School are working on similar campaigns with student leaders but this will launch the week after next (due to the timeline for recruiting student leaders being one week later).
Campus Security
Understandable since the school shooting in August, there has been anxiety about campus safety. In August, the Ministry of Education issued seven recommendations on campus security. Our existing systems were already compliant. Since then, we are actioning the following:
- Increasing the number of security guards (3 more)
- Exploring upgrades to our turnstile entrance points
- Adding an additional school counsellor (from mid-October) to boost student mental health support
- Arranging further active shooter training for key personnel (please note, we do not intend to do student drills on this due to risk of injury when running down stairs)
- Revised our Crisis Management Handbook
We have excellent systems for monitoring student mental health concerns and liaise with several external agencies. We do regular drills (some with students and some with key security personnel) to test our readiness and we have a centralised command centre on campus with CCTV views of all areas allowing us to direct our own security and police if required. We have a system for bag checks but these are done privately, rather than at the entrance point.
We do not intend to add features like metal detectors. We avoid any systems which give the illusion of safety rather than an actual safety benefit. Metal detectors are only useful if a search is conducted after every beep. It would simply not be possible to effectively facilitate this at our busy entrance points each morning.
I hope this helps to clarify some key areas we have been working on.
Have a nice weekend,
Jonny Liddell
Headmaster
