Bourofaye Christian School is an international school which uses the English National Curriculum from Reception –Year 9. Students in Year 10 and 11 complete IGCSE courses. For more information on the IGCSE courses: http://www.bcs-senegal.org/study--bcs-mainmenu-44/igcse-mainmenu-43

BCS has developed a unique educational model that seeks to meet the multinational educational needs of our students by use of mother tongue classes revolving around a core English curriculum.

Students from Reception (R) to Year 9 are taught using the English National Curriculum (NC) as a foundation. This approach gives us certain advantages:

• We can refer to the objective definitions of attainment levels within the curriculum documents, allowing us to have an external frame of reference.
• The school is registered with the Department for Education and Employment in Britain for testing at ages 7, 11 and 14. These are standardised test known as SATS and cover learning during a key stage. This also allows us to refer to an objective external assessment of our children’s achievement.
• The UK is increasingly multi-cultural, especially in the big cities; therefore the curriculum is already designed to be a flexible framework rather than being rigid or culturally bound. It therefore allows us to create a curriculum suited to our needs.
This curriculum is however only the foundation and, where necessary, we modify and add to it to suit our own particular needs both as a Christian school and as an international school.

Subjects from Reception to Year 9
Core Subjects

• English
• Mathematics
• Science
• Information Computer Technology (ICT)

Non-Core Subjects

• Geography
• History
• Religious Education
• Modern Foreign Languages (French and German)
• Mother Tongue Unit- Portuguese, German, Korean, Dutch
• Design and Technology
• Art
• Music
• Expressive Arts
• Physical Education

It is possible a child will not be placed in their chronological year group if we feel they would benefit from more time being spent on the development of their language, or other special educational need. This is particularly true for those children for whom English is a second language.

The BCS Model

Seeking to meet multinational educational needs through mother tongue units.

 To see the diagram of this model :
http://www.bcs-senegal.org/downloads-mainmenu-35/cat_view/29-other-information

- A number of ‘mother tongue units’ revolving around a core English curriculum.

- All students take part in the English mainstream (or are working towards this, once they have acquired enough English language via the ESL unit, to effectively participate.)

- The English mainstream incorporates a wide variety of subjects and is based on an international curriculum, culminating in the IGCSE qualifications offered by Cambridge University. (Note that Cambridge also offers some first language IGCSEs in languages other than English.)

- A “mother tongue unit” is an integrated system in which a number of subjects – language, literature, history, geography etc. are taught in the mother tongue using national educational materials. The subjects that are taught in the mother tongue, as well as the number of teaching hours, can change from year to year depending on the needs of the students involved and the availability of staff.

- Students are released from certain mainstream subjects in order to take part in classes offered by the mother tongue unit.

- Students are also given ESL classes until their level of English is appropriate for their level of study. In some cases, senior students undertake a period of intensive ESL in order to develop their language skills more quickly and to better equip them for the demands of senior subjects (including IGCSE courses); during this period, these students study English almost full time, only attending a few of the more practical mainstream subjects. They then move into the other mainstream subjects when their English has reached an appropriate level.