The Sharing Education Group’s board is composed of four brothers who have established an innovative pedagogical concept that will lead students to achieve excellence. CEO, Miguel Ladeira Santos took over Sharing Education Group almost 10 years ago, however, the group’s roots have a rich history as they have been providing international education in Portugal since 1980.

The Algarve’s Bright International School is the group's latest offer, following the opening of schools in Funchal, Madeira and Oeiras, Lisbon under the brand International Sharing School.

CEO Miguel told The Portugal News “We will launch the new working and learning spaces for our lower secondary school (year 7 to year 9) by January, where we will have fully new refurbished spaces, which match our pedagogical model and which will allow our team to implement in full our pedagogical concepts.”

Explaining that “When the school joined our group we saw that we have fantastic facilities for the primary school but we saw that there was a lot of room for improvement in lower secondary, which is why it was our top priority. From January onwards, our students will be able to experience our pedagogical model in full. We are also giving lots of training to our team and bringing heads from our other two schools in Portugal who will work with our team to manage this change very well. This is the big advantage of being part of a group, we are a community of schools that can help each other whether that be for teaching or learning.”

Bright International School has also appointed their new school principal, Tom Caston, who has had a distinguished career in Cambridge Schools across the UK. CEO Miguel affirmed that Tom Caston will be instrumental in leading the school's development and will be working closely with the board of directors.

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Innovation at its heart

“We work in a very distinctive way as we have our Sharing pedagogical model across all our schools, whereby we have a very specific concept that is really a breakthrough in what education should be, from our point of view”, shared CEO Miguel.

He also explained “For us, innovation is changing the way that we work and having a different approach to learning and teaching. It is about creating different working conditions and different environments for the students. Every student is an individual, if we have a classroom with 16 students, we cannot teach 16 students the same way. We are seeing a growing number of students requiring extra support, along with emerging educational needs, which means a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching is no longer effective. On the other hand, we can't teach high-achieving students using a standard average approach, as this can leave both those excelling and those struggling at a disadvantage.”

“What our pedagogical model does is it identifies the strengths and weaknesses of every student and we try to help students overcome the challenges that come through their weaknesses and pick up on what they are good at and give them the tools to run with it and reach even further.”

Why the Algarve?

The CEO told The Portugal News more about the decision behind this investment, “We decided to invest and expand our offering to the Algarve as we saw an opportunity in the market to build an innovative and forward-thinking school that will deliver something unique in the education landscape in the Algarve.”

Adding, “We follow the Cambridge Curriculum, which is delivered in a more organic and intuitive way due to our pedagogical model and the differentiated learning environments we offer.”

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Successes

Speaking of successes, the CEO affirmed that Bright International School “is an improvement of our previous projects as we have picked up what works and fixed what doesn’t. Today we have the data to back up the success of this project. We have had three cohorts successfully graduating into university, and all our students who graduated were placed in the universities that they have chosen. In addition, last year we scored above the global average for IB World Schools. This data is key, as it demonstrates that our pedagogical approach is effective, giving us the confidence to continue investing in and constantly improving it.”

Bright International School currently offers the Cambridge Early Years, Primary, and Lower Secondary Programmes, from Pre-Reception to Year 9. The school will continue to expand year by year, reaching the IGCSEs and A Levels, reflecting its commitment to academic excellence and future growth.

For more information, please contact Bright International School on (+351) 289 154 800.

Author

Following undertaking her university degree in English with American Literature in the UK, Cristina da Costa Brookes moved back to Portugal to pursue a career in Journalism, where she has worked at The Portugal News for 3 years. Cristina’s passion lies with Arts & Culture as well as sharing all important community-related news.

Cristina da Costa Brookes