What are the schools in Algeria like?

"Save your money and don't send your child or children here they will be scared for life with the way in which they are taught and treated," said one parent with children at El Kalimat School in Bouzerrah.

"at no point in the last year have I come across one lesson that incorporated a teaching resource. The children are not encouraged to explore their surroundings for science, they take no field trips for lessons on nature, the teachers do not use any aids besides a white board. The children are required to take down notes the entire day for all subjects concerned and that is the only way that lessons are taught. There is no interactive or stimulating teaching provided at all. In terms of training and professional development for the teachers, I have counted over thirty incidents where the teacher used incorrect English, ranging from spelling errors and poor sentence construction, to tense errors and misuse of punctuation marks, and thats just in the last month!!! the children for PE play table tennis with no tables, soccer with no goal posts, most of the lessons they run up and down between cones. The school has a sports day with races run on a paved area that spans no more than 20meters in length. The children practise for two or three days before and are not presented with any medals etc for first place. Truth be told, running 20 meters hardly counts as a race to begin with. There are no music lesson provided, and arts and craft lessons have thus far rotated between drawing and colouring in a house, or making a card for the teacher- that's it! The pupils have yet to make anything in the design and technology class. The ICT teacher quit at the end of last year so the form teacher has taken over these lessons, the result is that the pupils have almost no hands on computer based training which is crucial. The french teacher cannot speak more than two words of English which makes for an extremely difficult learning experience for pupils in all grades! the only method of assessment in the last year has been formal written tests. No other method of assessment is employed- observation, oral examinations, stimulated role play, portfolio, assignments, group work, etc. Completely off all the above topics, I would like to further add that the school provides no -speech contests -concerts or recitals -awards ceremonies -year end functions When I approached the school last year regarding why the young pupils were subjected to the same long hours as 16 and 17 year olds, I was told that El-Kalimat had the same hours as all Algerian schools, which was true. I accepted this at the time. However, at the beginning of this schooling year, the Algerian public schools drastically reduced their schooling hours. When I enquired about the hours this year, I was told that they would remain unchanged as El Kalimat was an International School and was unaffected by the Algerian schooling hours. The long hours were necessary to complete a very "burdening" Cambridge syllabus! As you can very clearly see, the administration changes reasons as and when they wish to suit their purposes. The parents have no say in these matters and are not allowed to question any further. The fact that Headmistress Miss Hadi only arrives at school at 11am (at the very earliest) on any given school day could be a contributing factor to the poor manner in which the school operates," commented one expat when asked about El Kalimat School in Bouzzareh.