Welcoming a new era at Bright International School Algarve

The Sharing Education Group’s CEO, Miguel Ladeira Santos, whose background is in luxury hospitality and finance, took over Sharing Education Group almost 10 years ago in a bid to develop the family-owned business further.

The Sharing Education Group’s CEO, Miguel Ladeira Santos, told The Portugal News more about Bright International School Algarve’s pedagogical programme, stating that they are operating with the Cambridge International Curriculum and that “Most schools build facilities and do a programme that needs to fit the facilities, however at Bright International School we do this exactly the other way around, so we start developing a very solid pedagogical programme and once we have a programme that we are very comfortable with then we go to the buildings and the facilities, so we design the facilities around our programmes so we never sacrifice the quality of our programmes because we are limited in space. We always make sure our facilities match the programmes we have created.”

Adding that, “Our programme keeps in mind the different ways of working and is a more collaborative way of working which is more hands-on but includes independent working as well. We do not follow a traditional and standarised way of learning and teaching.”

Teaching for Future Jobs

It was interesting to hear from Miguel Ladeira Santos that continuous and adaptive learning is at the forefront of their programme “It is estimated that in 10 years from now 40% of the jobs that exist today will no longer exist, so our students will be working jobs that do not yet exist. At least 85% of them we cannot predict what they are going to be and of course, we cannot prepare the students for jobs that do not exist yet but we can teach students to be flexible and more adaptive because in the future they will need to use lots of different skills.”

Center of Knowledge

The CEO also shared that “Standarised teaching assumes that all students are the same and that the teacher is center of knowledge, at Bright the students are the center of knowledge and the teacher is the facilitator and so the teachers help the students reach their maximum potential.”

Further exemplifying that “The access we have today to the internet and AI means we need to equip students with the means of obtaining this knowledge, analysing all the data and being able to select from this data which is very important due to all the misinformation out there so they need to be able to select credible sources, develop it and present their findings back to the community which is how we have our programmes structured.”

Evolving Facilities

Miguel Ladeira Santos also explained that they have invested in three building renovations in order to increase their student capacity to 500 pupils. “The indoor and outdoor facilities at Bright have been designed by designer Rosen Bosch from The Rosan Bosch Studios who is someone we work with on all our projects and she helps us design these facilities and create more open working spaces for the teachers and the students so at the end of the day our school looks more like a Google Office lets say than a traditional school.”

Adding that, the pandemic was one of the reasons why they have prioritised open working spaces for students. The CEO shared that “A lot has changed since the pandemic so everyone had to work from home and a lot more people were efficient because they were working in an environment that was more comfortable to them so controlling your environment means you can adjust it your own profile and be more productive and since we saw this in adults we thought to apply it to the students as well.”

“Working in this way gives students the soft skills that they will not be able to develop in traditional structures such as time management, working with different people, and respecting the people around you because if you are working in an open space you need to be mindful that there are other people working in that space as well. We have small pods where students can work so if there is a student in there we need to know not to disrupt them and how to be flexible. It gives a lot of these different soft skills that students benefit so much from.”

The Cambridge International Curriculum is available from Pre-Reception to Year 9 and admissions are now open. For more information, please visit www.bright-is.com