A former Telford College student, now running a school in Moldova, has been helping the government shape the nation’s education.
Rob Ford, from Madeley, is now headmaster of the Heritage International School in Chisinau, which was visited by the country’s minister of education, Corneliu Popovici.
Rob, who attended Telford College’s former King Street campus, told the Shropshire Star: “The state secretary of the Ministry of Education had requested an urgent meeting with me and the leadership team.
“She wanted to discuss our distance-learning plan, which had been running successfully for the past couple of weeks. Oh, and the minister of education, Mr Popovici, would be coming too.”
He said: “Heritage International School is the first truly international school in Moldova, based on the IPC and Cambridge International curricula, and has a different approach towards education than the state system in Moldova, still slowly moving away from the legacy in the post-Soviet period.
“Our campus is three years old and doesn’t look like or operate like most schools in Eastern Europe.
“As such, my team and I realised the importance of the moment – here was an opportunity for us to engage with our national education community to develop a common strategy for all children in Moldova, state or privately educated, share expertise and ideas and build a collaboration that could benefit us all.
“When the day arrived, though, there was, of course, that awkward moment when you suddenly realise you have the government in your meeting room.
“So as we sat with minister Popivici and the state secretary, the only way I could think to break the initial awkwardness was to offer to make tea for everyone – with the local press watching on.
“But minister Popivici immediately smiled and saw that Heritage was genuine in its full support and recognised what we could do here for the national education community.
“From here we were off and my colleagues soon took over – discussing our distance-learning plan, how we operated our daily schedule of synchronous lessons, and the training we had undertaken.”
For the full story, see www.shropshirestar.com/news/local-hubs/telford/madeley/2020/09/17/telfords-rob-helps-shape-education-in-moldova/
