Child comes first before content and syllabus for British educator

Private banker turned headmaster switched to education because he believed the sector was not reforming enough for the needs of the 21st century.

Mark Parkinson, the executive director and head of schools at Aspam Indian International School in Sharjah, worked in private banking before gaining a teaching qualification. Rebecca Rees for The NatiShow more

Mark Parkinson is the executive director and head of schools at Aspam Indian International School in Sharjah. After graduating with a law degree, he worked in private banking for 11 years. The Briton, now 51, left finance in 1996 to gain a teaching qualification. He went to India two years later to start his new career, and moved to the UAE in May 2013.

6am

I am up to make sure my 13-year-old son is ready for his bus. He attends school in Ajman and the bus leaves around 6.15am. During that process it is a case of cranking myself up with my first mug of coffee. I do not necessarily rush straight to the office but use some time productively at home for reading and writing. I write a blog on matters related to education, children and parenting. I have been writing it for almost five years and I have written over 800 articles – I am kind of shocked myself.

8am

I live just across the Sharjah border in Dubai. A car comes to get me and I often read on the way to work. One of the first things I do is take a walk around the school. I like to pop into two, three or four classes and interact with some of the children: it allows me to get an instinctive feel for what the mood in the school is on that day. I also review my to-do list, which I write the night before. I went very far, very quickly in private banking but I just could not see myself doing that for the rest of my life. The fact that education was not reforming and changing the way it needed to for the 21st century got me pretty fired up. I ended up in India because I wanted to go to a part of the world where the issues were starker and more challenging.

Midday

I take 10 or 15 minutes out when the KG children leave at noon and then again at around 2pm when the primary schoolchildren leave. You can have some fun conversations with children at that stage in the day and gauge their enthusiasm about what they have been learning. The school opened in September 2013 with pupils up to Class 5. This year we added Class 6 and in April there will be Class 7. We currently have 17 classes and 320 students. Come April, that will more than double. Almost all the pupils are South Asians, with the majority of those Indians.

2.15pm

After the last of the children leave, it is time to do my own work at my desk, whether it is working on marketing plans or meetings with the team to plan the academic year. We are going to have a big influx of new students, so there is a lot happening in the admission process. We also need to get all the new furniture in, the learning materials, and we have just had a large supply of additional books for the school library. We are also securing municipality approvals for creating our sports facilities. For me, a 21st-century education means a far more holistic education; it is about really personalising the learning experience according to the needs of each child – putting the child first rather than the content and syllabus. Some of it is about how we harness IT to do that.

5pm

In terms of heading out of school, it varies depending on whether I want to go to the gym or not. It can be any time between 5pm and 7pm, by which point my son has arrived home and he is doing his homework. If it is not the gym, there are mundane things like the supermarket, then obviously preparing some food for the evening. I am a voracious reader, so that figures somewhere in the evening. When I moved from India about two -thirds of the possessions I carried were boxes of books. Occasionally, I do a bit of housework.

6.30pm

I have taken membership of the Sharjah Wanderers Sports Club, a sports and social club, so sometimes we will head over there. That gives my son a chance to hang out with the other children and for me to meet a very eclectic group of expatriates from all over the place.

Midnight

I am trying to move bedtime earlier, but that takes self-discipline; it tends to be somewhere between 11.30pm and 12, which can have a cumulative effect over the week.

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