Alison Colwell loves nothing more than a challenge and since taking over as the Principal at Baleares International College five years ago, she has had to successfully navigate her “fantastic” teachers, students and parents through the pandemic and also confront the ever-growing threat of social media to young people.
She arrived in Mallorca after having spent seven years as headteacher of Ebbsfleet Academy, a special needs school, which was her specialty. During her spell at the academy in Kent, she turned the school around and her allegedly strict regime dramatically improved the performance of its 700 pupils.
But she was locked in a running battle with lawless parents whom she blamed for the pupils’ unruly behaviour, not only in her school but in a large number of state schools across the United Kingdom, Her approach to teaching and being at the helm of a school led to her being dubbed “the strictest headteacher in the country”, an accolade she has always laughed about.
She has now written a book about her experiences - No Excuses: Turning Around One of Britain’s Toughest Schools which is “eye-popping” according to the Sunday Times. She certainly takes ensuring that her students at the BIC receive the very best and rounded education possible extremely seriously. She admitted this week that she is very proud of the work her teachers have carried out and the excellent grades the students have achieved over the past five years, despite the pandemic. In fact, the exam results this year for both IGCSE and A-Level were the best ever, with a 79% and 84% per cent A-C grade pass rate respectively.
So, she and her team know how to get the very best out of each other and their students in a very international, multicultural environment, which the school makes a major point of embracing. “That is an important part of our philosophy. Yes, we’ve had the best exam results in the school’s history while in the UK they are still banging on about the fallout and effects of Covid on students. But, and I’ve said this to the British media, it’s being used an excuse. For the past three years, the exams results have constantly improved and these children, year 11 who have just sat their exams, had their early years in secondary school interrupted by Covid. They had the disruption, but with good teaching, which was obviously remote during the lockdown, they’ve got the great results.
"It’s interesting. The pandemic feels such a long way away now but in the UK they can’t let it go and move on. Covid’s the great excuse for poor results; not attending school, all of that. I was on LBC recently with Rachel Johnson and she was saying that kids see their parents remote working and think they don’t have to go to school; their parents don’t go out to work.
Very best results
“I told her she had a fatal flaw in her argument and this was that they are kids, not adults. The law says they should be in school, so there is too much excuse making. Apparently I really angered many of the listeners who called in saying that I didn’t know what I was talking about, how hard it is to get kids into school. Well, you just find ways of working round it.
“Fortunately, this is a great school and I love the school. We have a great team and we’re getting the very best results and grades. And you have to bear in mind that for 75 per cent of our students, English is not their mother tongue. We have 45 different nationalities. The two largest groups in the school are German and British, they make up about half the school almost equally. And the other 50 per cent are from 45 different nationalities, predominantly European, obviously Spanish, but other European countries. We have some Asian children, American, South African, but it’s predominantly British and European, and I love the fact we have a great melting pot of different nationalities, languages and cultures. I always say that we’re a British school with the very best of British education, teaching standards and expectations, but equally our internationalism is a very important element as well. It’s very enriching for us and the children and is important for their future development,” Alison explained.
Ground-breaking scheme
The biggest challenge or threat children face today, as far as Alison is concerned, is social media and the school has come up with a ground-breaking scheme, the first of its kind it Spain - to use Yondr pouches. Each student is assigned a Yondr pouch and when they get to school they have to lock their phone in the pouch. They get to keep it with them throughout the day and the pouch is finally magnetically unlocked once they’ve left the school gates.
“Combating social media and screen time is a major challenge and that’s why we brought in the pouches in September; they’ve been an absolute monumental success. It’s now global, being used in over 30 different countries in a wide range of environments from schools to the entertainment world for example. We’ve always been a ‘no phone school’, but kids are kids. They’ll sneak and smuggle their phones in, we know that and we end up having to confiscate phones and all that. So we carried out a lot of research and the outcome has been brilliant.
"No class disruption, no teacher time wasted on it and, most importantly, the children are not having their head space filled with the phone going off, checking for messages or asking to go to the toilet so they can see what’s going on on social media, how many likes and followers they’ve got. Kids do this the world over, so this is why these pouches are genius. The parents love it because it helps to protect the kids from all the damage done by the evils of social media, but the kids have also embraced it. I think they’ve felt liberated.
Anxiety and addiction
"They don’t have to worry about their phone pinging, all the anxiety that goes with being addicted to your phone, or rather social media, and what’s accessible by smart phones. The kids love it, so much so that some of those who are dropped off and picked up by parents and therefore don’t need to inform them when they are on the bus home, are now leaving their phones at home. It’s been a total gamechanger and they know, and this is important, why we are doing it - because we care about them, their well-being and their concentration.
"We love our kids, they’re great and they know the damage social media does and that we have their best interests at heart. They know phones aren’t good for them, but they get addicted to social media and that has to be confronted. It’s the scourge of our times and all schools are working to protect kids from social media,” Alison stressed.
Quick fire round:
What is you favourite food or dish?
Riñones al Jerez
What is you favourite film?
Dead Poets Society
What is you favourite book?
To Kill a Mockingbird
What is you favourite drink?
Chardonnay
Person you most admire?
My late mum
What is the first thing you do in the morning?
Play Wordle over coffee
What is the best career advice you’ve ever been given?
Be yourself
What was your childhood dream?
To be a journalist
What are you afraid of?
Spiders
Favourite music or musician?
Oasis