On Sunday 12 May, COBIS (Council of British International Schools) announced that The British School of Brussels (BSB) has been accepted as one of its first training schools to join its pilot Initial Teacher Training (ITT) project. BSB submitted an application in February this year in the hope that this accreditation would bring an additional outward facing dimension to its developing Professional Learning Community (PLC) and International Hub for Learning and were delighted to be in attendance at the COBIS conference when this news was announced. ‘BSB continues to be at the cutting edge internationally in professional learning since its launch of the PLC in 2017’ said Melanie Warnes, BSB Principal.
BSB will join ten other schools across the world in Malaysia, Kenya, the Netherlands, Oman, Romania, Qatar, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Mexico and China to be part of a pilot scheme to provide ITT and become a hub for learning. ‘We hope that the COBIS training school initiative will help us to create greater professional networks with other schools in our community, to collectively be responsible for improving the learning of all our students, not just those in our own schools, or own classrooms, in addition to helping to create more teacher training opportunities as global demand for high quality teachers increases’ said Melanie Chambers, Deputy Head, Professional Learning Leader.
Being able to offer ITT programmes will open up practice for further reflection, allow for reciprocal skill and knowledge exchange between experienced mentor and trainee teacher and build our collective professional capital. We are excited to have this opportunity to work with other COBIS like-minded schools and explore the preferred future possibilities of working in this area.
BSB is also delighted to announce that it will host the COBIS Secondary Games over three days in March 2020. Continuing its mission to connect and collaborate with schools from across the world in partnership with COBIS, BSB will welcome several hundred athletes who will compete in swimming, football and athletics.