Academic director of ‘Generations’ international school resigns

Rosa Bizarro

The academic director of Generations International School Macau, Rosa Bizarro, has stepped down from the post less than two months after the school project was announced, Portuguese language newspaper Hoje Macau has reported.

The idea for a new international curriculum school project to operate at Coloane’s Seac Pai Van area in the neighborhood of a residential condominium was announced in early January this year, a project headed by Bizarro, a former professor at the Polytechnic University of Macau.

The school, formally operating   the Macau Sino-Luso International School Association (ACSLIM), a non-profit entity, established on November 2021, has presented a new trilingual educational project in Macau, offering an inclusive approach to education, distinct from the existing schools in Macau.

Although confirming her departure from the project to Hoje Macau, Bizarro refused to state the reasons her unexpected departure, which comes just as the school is preparing for the enrolment of the first group of students who will commence the 2023-2024 school year in September this year.

According to ACSLIM, the association and consequently the new school mission aims at the promotion of Portuguese, Chinese, and English languages and cultures, as well as the promotion of Macau’s cultural values and to engage with institutions that pursue educational, cultural, and sporting interests.‎

In a previous interview with the portuguese media outlet in mid-January, Bizarro had said that the Generations School was to implement “an ambitious project, of great quality,” branding the pedagogical project as “very innovative and intended to have immediate and future outcomes.”

The professor, with a comprehensive background in language teaching as well as a scholar of intercultural matters, has also hinted that her appointment to the post of academic director was precisely due to those aspects that she wanted to see put into practice at the school.

A later report by the Portuguese language newspaper Ponto Final on the school noted that Generations School would be the most expensive non-higher education institution in Macau, charging an annual fee of around 126,000 patacas per kindergarten student. Those in primary will be charged 138,000 patacas.

The school is part of the larger projects promoted by the Education and Youth Development Bureau (DSEDJ) that includes two different schools, both offering an “international style” curriculum and located side-by-side.

As for the second school institution, the DSEDJ announced late last week the commissioning of this to the Pui Ching Middle School with a formal announcement to be made in the government official gazette next week.

Unlike Generations, the new Pui Ching School project will only accept admissions for the 2024-2025 school year.