Month: September 2019

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Veronika Bucharová

Teacher of Czech Language and Literature & Czech as a Second Language

Veronika originally comes from East Bohemia, birthplace of many Czech authors (B. Němcová, A. Jirásek, J. Škvorecký). After graduating from Náchod Grammar School, she studied Czech and English at the Pedagogical Faculty of Hradec Králové University. Veronika wanted to gain more experience as an English teacher so she worked at St Elphin’s School in Matlock in the north of England. She observed how modern foreign languages are taught in the UK and helped with the boarding side of the school as a housemistress. After her return to the Czech Republic, Veronika spent 15 years teaching at Riverside School in Prague. During this time, she organised trips to help in a children’s home in West Bohemia. She also travelled to Tanzania, Uganda and China helping schools and children’s homes. She joined the English College in Prague in 2014 as a teacher of Czech Language and Literature and Czech as a Second Language. She has been involved in the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award since 2005 and currently coordinates the ECP’s DofE programme.

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James Foster

Head of Modern Foreign Languages, Spanish & German

James is originally from Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, where he developed a passion for languages and chose to make language learning core to his future career. After graduating from the University of Nottingham with a degree in German & Spanish in 2018, James decided to complete his PGCE at Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln the following year. After this, the sense of adventure acquired throughout his year abroad during undergraduate study led to the desire to work in Prague. He later completed his Masters in Education degree whilst working at ECP. In his free time, James enjoys cycling and exploring the city by foot as well as travelling whenever possible.

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Katy MacLeod

Head of Arts Faculty

Katy MacLeod was brought up in a large family from the Scottish Highlands. She graduated from the University of Edinburgh after studying Drawing & Painting simultaneously with History of Art. After a year as a Royal Scottish Academy scholar in Florence, Italy, and convinced that one day she would live overseas again, Katy returned to Edinburgh to study a PGDE in Primary and Secondary Art & Design, deciding that the best way to address Picasso’s challenge on how to remain an artist when you have grown up was to get a proper job and become an Art teacher!

Three schools later, including a rewarding yet challenging time spent working in a community school in one of Scotland’s most deprived areas, a series of fortunate events led to her arrival in Prague in August 2013 – a city which captivated, and continues to indulge her interests in scenography, film, architecture and the Arts. 
Delighted to join the staff at ECP, Katy has a broad range of educational experiences having worked in primary, secondary and adult Art education. A passionate advocate for the Arts, and experienced in developing artistic and cultural departmental profile, she is familiar with the challenges of managing exhibitions, festivals and projects on a variety of scales, with a range of target audiences and stakeholders. She maintains strong interests in current Arts education practice, and is a contributing member of the International Society for Education through Arts, IJADE conferences, and the National Society for Art & Design Education.

CERGE-EI Projects in Applied Economics for Talented Students

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CERGE EI

This year, eight talented ECP students have been selected from schools across Prague to take part in the prestigious CERGE-EI programme. The lucky Year 5 economists will work alongside PhD students from Charles University. Therefore, they will gain a deeper understanding of economic theory and pursue a research project. Subsequently, it will culminate in a final presentation in December. We wish them luck!

CERGE-EI (Centre for Economic Research and Graduate Education – Economics Institute) is a joint workplace of Charles University and the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. This is a unique partnership with the aim to promote modern education and research in economics.

ECP has been taking part in this brilliant programme for three years now. The photograph and the video show participants from previous years.

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House Parents’ Meeting and ECP Family Barbecue

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ECP building

The English College held a House Parents’ Meeting and Family Barbecue in the second week of its 25th anniversary year. It was a great opportunity for parents to meet with their child’s tutor, Senior Tutor and other teachers. After a short introductory assembly in the Gym for all parents, there was an opportunity to meet with individual tutors in their house groups. To make identification of the houses easier, tutors as well as parents received lanyards in house colours. They are blue for Aqua, red for Ignis, yellow for Ventus and green for Terra. Everyone was then able to find people from their house more easily. There were also balloons in house colours to emphasise the importance of community values expressed through the house system.

The event was closed with a well-attended family barbecue on the school’s playground where parents could talk informally with ECP staff as well as other parents over nice food and drink. Thank you to everyone who contributed to making it a really successful event!

ECP’s 25th Birthday Party

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ECP 25th birthday cake

The ECP’s 25th anniversary got off to a cracking start this week. We held a birthday party in the playground, complete with tea and cake – lots of cake! How better to celebrate this significant milestone in the history of the English College in Prague than to hold our very own version of the Great British Bake Off?

Creativity and skill

The students’ brief was to bake and decorate a cake that represented either the English College in Prague, the number 25 or one of the many countries that are represented by students in school. 

There were some very impressive cakes, which were expertly judged by two of the English College’s Board of Governors. Dr Barbara Day is one of the ECP’s Founder Governors who has been involved with the school since 1995. Zdeněk Tůma has been a Governor of the ECP since 2001 and his son graduated from the College in 2015.

The judges awarded points for the design concept of the cakes and the execution. Mr Tůma said: “It was good to see students taking part in the 25th anniversary celebrations. The cakes all showed their creativity and skill and it was difficult to decide on only one winner.”

The winners

The results were very close, but when the scores were added up, the winners of the ECP 25th Anniversary Great British Bake Off were 4C – Mr Straughan’s Tutor Group. They had made a magnificent cake that impressed the judges with the attention to detail. The winning House, that scored the most number of points overall, was Aqua.

ECP’s iconic blue door

Year 3 Ignis students described their cake like this. “This cake is meant to represent the aspects of ECP that we believe make the school special. At the front of the cake is the iconic blue door that greets members of ECP every morning and bids them farewell at the end of the day. A beer glass and a teacup clink at the back of the cake, showing the way that two different cultures join together seamlessly. The cake as a whole is shaped similarly to the building – a place many of us have learned to call home in the last 25 years. This is more than just a cake, it is a commemoration of hard work, learning and unforgettable memories.”

After the judging, everyone tucked in and enjoyed eating the cakes, which tasted as good as they looked!

Over 1350 graduates with the IB Diploma

The ECP first opened its blue door to students on 4 September 1994. Since the first 103 students started studying at the English College twenty five years ago, over 1350 have graduated with the IB Diploma, an internationally-recognised qualification that opens doors to the most prestigious universities around the world.

PROBLEM SOLVING DAY at ECP

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Team building at ECP

On the second day of the new term we held a whole school activity called ‘Problem Solving’.  This involved students working in mixed year teams, but still in Houses, solving a range of problems. Those included, for instance, Design and Communication where teams had to come up with their own advertisement and design for a new breakfast cereal. In Engineering, students were challenged to build a 1-metre span bridge from 50 sheets of paper that could carry a load of up to 1 kg. In addition, there were two practical leadership challenges. The first one was to build the highest tower out of spaghetti with a marshmallow at the top, while the second one was to put up two tents. Most of the team were blind-folded for this, while the two ‘sighted’ members were not allowed to touch the tents.

All proved challenging and a huge success. The event was a great start to the year and also helped new students to get to know existing students. Congratulations to Ignis as the winning house.

And here you can watch how ECP staff were preparing for the event.

PSME

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PSME (Personal, Social and Moral Education) is a specific subject, which combines academic knowledge and personal approach to a range of areas. It also covers many civics topics. PSME is taught by tutors and it is also an opportunity for a tutor group to work together as a team. The PSME co-ordinator regularly invites specialists into school to explore different themes in depth such as drug abuse or a better understanding of various issues.

Discussions form an important part of PSME. Students learn how ethical issues are crucial in decision making, but they also learn that there could be many moral dilemmas. These discussions also help students to explore all aspects of the topic with moral impacts on an individual and on society.

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University Destinations 2019

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graduation

ECP graduates of 2019 are heading off to prestigious universities

While being in school and having many experiences is fantastic, we are of course always focused on life beyond school. This year, we had our second largest cohort ever of graduating students. All of them – not just a selected few – do the full IB Diploma. All students, who took the Czech Maturita exam from Czech Language and Literature, have passed. At least 88% of students (excluding the handful who chose to take a gap year) got into either their first or second choice universities. This is especially impressive given how aspirational our students are to get into the very best institutions in the world. The others either got their insurance choice of university or are still considering their options.

Oxbridge

This year we managed to maintain our 7-year run of having at least one student securing a place at either Oxford or Cambridge. Interestingly, the student who had been offered a place at Oxford got 44 IB points, but has chosen a different option. Instead, he will study Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, a truly world-class Ivy League university.

For the first time in many years, more students chose, of their own volition, to study in Prague. The increasing quality of Czech university courses (many offered in English) led just under a third of our students to study in places like Charles University and VŠE. The UK remains the second most popular destination. As usual, we have multiple students going to world-class universities. These include University College London, King’s College London, Exeter and Warwick. Our record of getting students into outstanding institutions worldwide remains one of our strengths at the ECP. The quality and variety of courses in English at Dutch universities draws our best students too. Notably Groningen University and the University of Amsterdam between them attracted 8 of this year’s graduates.

Over 1350 students have now graduated from the ECP with the IB Diploma since we opened 25 years ago. We wish them all well, but today in particular we wish all 77 of our 2019 graduates the very best at university and beyond. Please keep in touch!