Speaker Brian Burton - Assignment Berlin.

After a career as a teacher ending as headmistress of Moorfield School Ilkley Tish Burton (Brian's wife) started working as an education officer for Nord Anglia. They ran 40 international day and boarding schools are located in 15 countries across North America, Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Each education officer was responsible for about 8 schools.

Tish enjoyed life travelling around the schools under her wing but her travels were interrupted when she was asked to go sort out the British International School in Berlin. The female head teacher had registered a formal complaint against a male educational officer. When she got to the school she found that it was failing and the head was not in control. In the UK the school would have been put into special measures. She was asked by her manager to stay at the school for 2 week to do a detailed report which she did. She was then asked to go back for one term to get the school back on track. She agreed and in February 2004 she and Brian packed up and moved to Berlin.

There were 42 different nationalities at the school with several major groups of children - Diplomats, Expats, Russian Mafia and German. The main problems were: -

• No head mistress - she had left suddenly following the report.
• The Bursar had done a runner as he had had his fingers in the till.
• The education officer had been suspended.
• There was low morale and a lack of discipline which was causing serious upset with the parents.

The managing director of Nord Anglia told Tish to sort it out. On her first day there there had to be a mass evacuation of the school because somebody set off a stink bomb. Also the head boy was poisoned in the chemistry lesson. The police were called in over the poisoning and she had to persuade them not to arrest the child who had done the deed.

To get things back on track she came up with a four part plan: -

1. Deal with the staff - she placed a rallying call and those staff that wouldn't respond were fired - 25% went.
2. She had meetings with all the parents telling them what she was doing and what she expected from their children.
3. The buildings and estate needed tidying up which involved bringing in bulldozers to sort things out.
4. The finances were in a mess - a number of parents were not paying their bills. Some withdrew their children but most paid up.
   

Some of this was out and out corruption. One ambassador had 3 children at the school. He was being paid by his country but was not paying the school. Another Korean diplomat wanted her to give his son 8 good grades even though he was only taking 1 subject and tried to bribe her to do this. The Russian mafia came in with carrier bags of Euros to pay for their children's bills.

Another interesting occurrences was one day when there was a lot of high pitched screaming in the school yard. It turned out to be a wild boar with it's head stuck in the school gates. Another time during a football match one African lad had to leave before the end of the match because his chauffeur was waiting for him.

Eventually things improved and Tish started to get favourable comments from the parents such as the Afghan ambassador said he was impressed with the improvements as the "wine was better".

One big surprise was a wealthy German widow with land by the school which she wanted to sell to the school to build a gym. She wanted the money to give it to the RAF benevolent fund because of the work they had done on the Berlin airlift.

One time they were invited to the Indian embassy for dinner as the ambassador was trying to impress Trish because he wanted his daughter moved up 2 year grades. Another time they had been invited to a dinner by the Bangladeshi embassy but they couldn't get through the Brandenburg gate because of massed police who wouldn't let them through. Once they showed their invite to the dinner they were given a police escort to the Deutsche Bank Atrium where the dinner was being held.

Once the school was back on track Trish was asked to stay indefinitely but she said no. In July 2004 they returned to the UK and Nord Anglia sold the school. The new owners asked Trish to return but again she said no. She did come out of retirement in 2008 to look after the Ripon Choir school.