This week Mr Steve Rochester, one of our highly qualified, experienced and passionate Early Years teacher at The British School of Barcelona, has been interviewed both on COPE radio and Es.radio (Libertad Digital) to share his views about the benefits of following an Early Years curriculum in a purpose-built school setting for a child’s physical, emotional, social and intellectual development.

The podcasts can be listened in full following the links below, but we have selected some highlights of his interviews:

  • One of the most important benefits of sending children to an educational centre is socialisation: it is an environment where children spend a lot of time with others of the same age, which helps both on social, emotional and personal as well as linguistic aspects of their development.

 

  • One of the advantages of sending children to school from an early age is that it helps them develop their communication skills with other children, they learn how to play well, and they count with the assistance of adults that join their games and helps them develop new ideas.

 

  • English is the formative language at BSB. Most young children can’t speak it at home before joining us, but we count with body and facial language, bilingual resources, and use English exclusively in order to help them acquire new vocabulary, which they do very quickly, and they are capable to start using the language in their next educational stage.

 

  • Children are like sponges, especially when it comes to language: if they learn a language when they’re very young, they will be able to acquire it quickly and they will grow to use it on a bilingual level that will be a very useful advantage for the rest of their life.

 

  • At BSB we offer the English Curriculum, created specifically for younger children and, as well as teaching Maths or Phonetics, it focuses on the child’s personal, social and emotional development, how to manage their emotions, and how to communicate both in their native language and English.

 

  • Although ours is an English school, we offer an international education thanks to the large number of children from different countries and cultures, which also helps children communicate and socialise with different people before starting their mandatory education at age six.

 

  • Learning a new language from an early age can help children be more confident; if they start at a later age, they might feel afraid of making mistakes.