Bernadette Kaba is a lovely person who is friendly and dynamic. She has surrounded herself with a strong, tight-knit team, creating a pleasant, reassuring and highly motivating atmosphere at Ecole VINET in Lausanne. She has a degree in biotechnology and built up her experience at the school teaching maths and physics for 11 years until she took over as head in 2011, when her predecessor retired. At VINET, the headmistress, teachers and supervisors embark on a new challenge at the beginning of each year in a quest for continuous improvement, in order to hold on to the excellent rating enjoyed today by the school.
What makes Ecole VINET unique? It is a small school with a maximum of 200 to 250 students, which gives it a family feel. All the students know each other, and also know the teachers very well and they all get along very well together. Students enjoy being at Ecole VINET; they stay and that's what makes the difference. We work as a team, with the main philosophy being to place importance on the individual at the heart of the group. We are working on forming the individual, within the life of the community and the school environment. The goal is to teach the student to deal with others, and to engage in relation to others. We work with them so they can manage to solve any situation by themselves. One of our goals is that every child should come to school with a light heart, so they can love what they do. We teach the students to accept one another with all their differences and peculiarities, because the difference in itself is worth valuing. We are always listening to our students, and we talk to them a lot, so they focus all their positive energy in learning. We help them to overcome everyday worries with good teaching, and in full cooperation with the parents. The most important person here is the student, we always explain to them what direction we are taking, we value them. Our philosophy is to help students make progress by highlighting their strengths. We look to the future, recognising their efforts and showing our satisfaction with their results. The idea is not to focus on weaknesses. We may have children with dyslexia, with attention deficit disorders, or who lack motivation. We show them their potential, and we tell them that they are able to go far with it. Broadly speaking, what are your specific methods ? We work in workshops to help students acquire certain concepts. Teachers at VINET pay particular attention to how the message is received by the students. Each teacher always checks the message was understood as expected. We are working on adapting mental management. In our school, this takes place at the level of teacher training. We make teachers aware of the impact of the message they will be putting across. Describing point x to the students, each of them will imagine differently. Hence the importance of making the message clear and checking that it has been understood, in the mind of the student. The aim is to give a clear purpose to the children, so they know what is expected of them. Telling an individual "you must work" for example, is meaningless. The child does not know what is expected of him, since each discipline will require a different methodology. The teacher’s role in the classroom, is to explain what the student is supposed to do for his subject when he is asked to work. If he has to work on his vocabulary, it is clear that he must memorise it and so there are certain steps to take. If he has to work on his maths, he needs to practise, so the teacher teaches the student mental tricks that will help store the information in his memory. The teacher also helps students develop a schedule for work to be done at home. Sometimes the student refuses to work outside school. With his parents, we help to spread out and organise the working hours to make it easier for him. Once a schedule is in place on paper, we check that it is helping the student to improve, and that he is sticking to it. For revision, we focus on diagrams, this allows the student to check the knowledge he has acquired, to review it and learn what he does not know. We ask students to close their books and tell us what they know; by telling us, they realise for themselves that there are certain points that they do not know and that they need to work on again. If necessary, we use the principles of mental management to help the students understand how they learn, to understand how they can make progress. How do you prepare secondary school students for their professional future? It is important when they get into the 11th year that students are clear about what they want to do in the future. At the school we have a department that deals with “Romandy formation” (Romandy training centre). Our students are expected to take the skills and personality tests of the employment centre. The idea is to help children clarify what their interests are, what skills, and weaknesses they have and what opportunities and types of training exist. Then each student, accompanied by a parent, gets an individual appointment with Romandy formation to explain the results of his tests. Our specialist helps students prepare for interviews by organising mock interviews; they learn how to make an appointment and to inquire about the outcome of it. We try to direct our students towards what might suit them in relation to their character traits, and their actual skills. We support them throughout the process, giving constant feedback to parents. We collaborate with the employment centre to help our students to focus on either vocational training or getting an apprenticeship. Students take part in this process, which often gives them a clearer idea of the direction they want to take. The final choice is not necessarily made at that age, but we have a range of possible options. Therefore, the student will try the examination for vocational training, but with a plan b, which is an apprenticeship. Is there a link between the VINET programme and the public school programme? Our programme is very similar to the programme in the Vaud. We want students leaving our school to be very similar to those that come from the public schools, so that potential employers don’t get sidetracked by the candidate’s background. Throughout the course, we ensure that students are as well-equipped as possible to open doors for themselves in the future. We do not systematically prepare all our students for the Ecole de Maturité, because not everyone is cut-out for an academic route. We also, among other things, offer an additional year called pre-vocational education, for students who have finished their compulsory education in a public or other private school and have not found an apprenticeship. This year builds the foundations to consolidate and enhance learning outcomes. In that class, every year, everyone finds an apprenticeship. And there, obviously, the student holds the key to his or her own future. Ultimately, our role is to help students grow in confidence and to take charge of their own future. Parents and teachers must have the same goal in the interests of the student. Vers le site web Ecole Vinet