History

Recognise began in 2009 with just 1 student. It was Aiden, Ms Kate Rowan’s son.

Aiden had a particular style of learning that Kate felt was being neither acknowledged nor catered for at the school he was attending.

Kate left her teaching job and started schooling Aiden at home.

Two more children, with a similar situation to Aiden’s, came to Kate’s attention.

She started teaching them too.

Three children became five, and then eight. Lessons moved from a home setting to a classroom in an office block.

Kate and the parents began to notice great changes in the children’s academic ability.

Importantly, their social confidence and personal self-esteem also grew.

The relationships the children forged with each other and with their teacher was giving them a new sense of success and belonging.

They now enjoyed going to school whereas before, they were often feeling alienated from their peers and were afraid of failure.

Word of Ms Rowan’s services spread. It transpired that there were many families who appreciated the idea of a more personal approach to schooling.

Kate began being asked to also teach ‘mainstream’ children – ie those who did not have specific learning challenges, but who preferred a more intimate school setting.

Kate then found a small villa in Shekou for a school house.

Despite the growing numbers, and the more mainstream intake, she held onto the notion that the close, personalised approach was at the heart of what was important to a child’s well-being and attainment when at school.

In early 2013, Mr Ian Taylor, our Principal and co-Director, met Kate outside a bar.

Kate was looking fraught. There were dark rings around her eyes and her hair was a mess. She seemed unsteady on her feet.

Kate was finding her work very rewarding, but there were plenty of challenges too

Ian whisked Kate to his favourite restaurant, La Maison, – these days, our excellent school meal providers 🙂 – and over a small glass of wine, or two, he listened to her woes.

Ian had worked in UK and international education for a long time and he understood the issues that she was facing.

Within a year we increased from 18 to 33 students and we were quickly gaining a strong reputation for offering quality schooling within the local expatriate community.

Gratifyingly, we also started enrolling children previously attending larger schools in the area.

The next year, we joined the houses together and made our classrooms larger. We knocked down lots more walls. We created better outdoor facilities and we employed some great new teachers.

We further refined our curriculum, adopting the high expectations of England’s National Curriculum, and we added

many more extra-curricula activities and opportunities.

We focused heavily on ensuring that lessons were active and engaging, and that we clearly differentiated for every child. We enriched our provision for technology, science, the arts, languages, music and sport, whilst keeping a keen eye on developing the crucial skills of literacy and numeracy.

This attracted more children, families and teachers. We started to receive many requests from local families wishing to join us, but we wanted our school to remain genuinely international.

To this end, we took a long term view and we were careful about the balance of nationality and home languages that we introduced to our school.

Together, we continued to teach every child, and to support every family, to the best of our ability.

Along the way, we had lots of help from some very special people and our ties to the local community grew stronger.
We all had a whole lot of fun too.