Westminster International School in Tashkent Reviews (7)

The best international school in Tashkent.

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Let's begin with the positives. school building is brand new and very beautiful. Tashkent is a lovely place to live and the people are very friendly and welcoming. Resources are very hit and miss. There was an excellent secondary library installed over the summer, but the school doesn't seem to be able to stock the science labs. The storage facilities for chemicals are so unsafe that science teachers have been known to be poisoned and had to take time off school to recover. Some book orders arrive, some don't, pdfs are not uncommon, either online or printed out. The curriculum is equally chaotic. The school had intended to be an IB school all through, but hired administration who didn't know how to do that, so decided to do IPC and IMYC with IGCSES and A levels instead. The IPC kind of works, although alongside Cambridge checkpoints which is odd (suitcase curriculum anybody?) but the IMYC has been disasterous and teachers have wandered off into UK Key Stage 3 instead. There is a mix of Edexcel and Cambridge for exams. A level students had to drop their Maths at the end of the first year as the wrong units had been done and substitute another course to be done in a year. The school refused to continue a student's A level History course because he was the sole student. There is no university counseller. Through no fault of the teachers, we do a shitty job for these students who deserve better. There has been a school leaving certificate introduced this year to entice students who were failing their IGCSES at other schools and come and join the school for year 11. You can imagine the effect that has had on those classes. There are a disproportionate number of boys, and an uncurrent of misogyny which makes classroom uncomfortable for some female teachers as the students get older. The business manager is ever present, issuing edicts that contradict those from the education leadership, doing favours for his special students, brown-nosing those from the most important families, setting a tone that undermines the educationalists and generally making himself important. The idea of professional development is laughable. A business office that can't organise itself to pay for resources can't see the point of professional development. Teachers don't come to WIST to grow. They manage to survive before moving on. The beautiful building is a sham. ...

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