English School In Barcelona

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32252, 21 March 1970, Page 2

English School In Barcelona

In a hiHy suburb of Barcelona, a young New Zealander runs a P.N.E.U. school With 86 'pupils and has a waiting list of 300. She is Miss Marjorie Wellwood, formerly of Masterton.

A trained kindergarten teaeher, Miss Wellwood, founded St Gebrge’s English School nearly nine years ago, under persuasion from friends. “I decided to use the P.N.E.U. system of teaching because it is a. link with j Britain,” she said in Christchurch yesterday. “This ' system sends out programmes of work for each class which are adaptable to local conditions, and very helpful in teaching backward or difficult children.” Her pupils are mainly Spanish girls and boys from well-to-do families aged from three to nine: Some English children, whose parents are living temporarily in Barcelona, also attend. “I am always being asked to take pupils up to 17," she said. "Some parents even offer to put capital into the school and form a board of governors, so that we. cab ex-

pand, but I want my school to stay as it is. I am very proud of it” The school has a staff of 10, including part-time teachers. Miss Wellwood teaches seven, eight and nine-year-olds singing, reading and arithmetic.

The school day is a long one in Spam. It begins at 9 a.m. and finishes at 6 or 7 p.m., Monday to Saturday. ! “We close at 5 p.m. at St George’s and even then i English teachers think the day is too long,” she said. I “Some Spanish parents, how- ; ever, think we close too | early.”

This does not mean that small children work from 9 to 5. After lunch at 1.30 they have a well-supervised play break till 3 p.m.—the Spanish siesta time, which is not now used for an afternoon nap in Barcelona. The school is in an old Catalan house, which opens on to the street, with a Spanish-style garden at the back including a swimming pool.

A feature of the school’s curriculum, not shared by most other schools in Spain,

is an emphasis on nature study.

“Our children live mainly in city apartments and don’t seem to know much about animals, birds and. flowers. So we have day excursions into the country for nature study. We take a pifcnic lunch and stay out till about 8 p.m., often including a visit to a cathedral or monastry," she said.

Miss Wellwood originally went to Spain on a tour of Europe after a bout of bronchial pneumonias'in a Scold London winter She left the' tour in na, arranged a job for herself at the British Institute, returned to England to collect her belongings and went to Spain to live. ‘ At the institute' she taught English to adults and students, learning Spanish in

her spare time. After about five years many friends told her she should open an English kindergarten. When she did so she had a role of 30 infants, and it is this kindergarten that has grown into her present preparatory school.

Though she is very happy living in Barcelona, Miss Wellwood makes frequent visits to England.

She also prefers to buy her clothes in London, where they are much cheaper than in Barcelona. Miss Wellwood is revisiting relatives and friends in New Zealand for the first time since she left on what was intended to be a year’s working holiday in Britain. Yesterday she spent the morning at Selwyn House, the P.N.E.U. school in Christchurch.