Parent
This school has been a major disappointment in terms of academics, and a production line approach to teaching, plenty of box ticking, excessive screentime which will increase as children get older. Materials come from Twinkl (aside from Maths) and resemble that of a poor level language academy ...they often use colourful positive marketing vocabulary in communication that bears no resemblance to what is done in the classroom. There is sadly nothing dynamic about printing out materials from Twinkl. Art and Music were often completely skipped for lengthy periods of time as the focus was a couple of months preparation for a 'show' to please parents. We often corrected spelling mistakes from 'teachers' that were left in our child's notebooks. One main teacher was incapable of writing a simple email communication in English. Our child had no PE teacher this year, simply some games, activities led by the assistant teacher. Great facilities that our child saw, but never used. Anything creative was done at home and brought to school. Most of our child's milestones were completed with homeschooling. The no homework policy is what initially attracted our attention in a positive way, however when seeing how poorly the whole programme was 'thrown' together, it was clear that regular homeschooling was necessary. Teacher did not correct notebooks, writings..initially stating that it was better to do so, then when we followed up this common complaint by several parents, it was said that indeed writings were corrected. Untrue. We feel that this school excels in marketing but most certainly not in academics nor in genuinely knowing the children and what they are capable of. I would not recommend this school to any parent who cares about the quality of the education for their children. Thankfully we were able to find a reliable school. Several families have not been able to do so as waiting lists are long for other schools in Valencia.
1 other review for Shackleton International School - (Reviews aren't verified )
Parent
We had experience with the Shackleton (and changed to another school):
The academic level is low compared to most other British schools, and they don't have enough experience, certificates and teachers for better. "40 years" is not true; the current school building was built after 2020.
Several best teachers left this school a year ago because of the toxic environment. There are still very good teachers in primary, so if you are lucky with the teacher, it will be okay. But if you are shocked by some teachers and start to ask questions, they will try to push your child out of the school (for our child, they just didn't give her the option to pass the tests when she was ill, and all other classmates had this option). When we started to ask how she could take part in testing again (as all others did), they ignored our questions and wrote that they wanted her to leave.
