Building a Future-Focused School – RWIS

Transcript

Welcome to Mallorca Living with Helen Cummins

Hello, I’m Helen Cummins, and this is Mallorca Living, a space dedicated to those who want to create a life here in Mallorca. Today, I’m very excited to meet the leader and CEO of the new Raoul Wallenberg International School, which follows the British curriculum. We’re going to hear how Dr. Matthew Schulte moved to the island and established a school which is now rapidly growing. They’ve over doubled their numbers in just one year. We’re going to find out what’s fueling this growth and how their holistic approach to education is making such a difference to their students. Let’s dive in.

Hello, I’m Helen Cummins, and I’m here from Mallorca Living today. I’m interviewing Dr. Matthew Schulte from Raoul Wallenberg International School in Mallorca, and I’m excited to hear what they are doing for children’s education here in Mallorca. You’re very welcome, Matthew. Thank you so much for being here.

Helen, thank you for having me. Nice to see you again.

From Australia to Sweden, Hong Kong to Mallorca: Meet Dr. Matthew Schulte and his journey through global schools

You’re from Australia originally, so how did the journey take you from Australia to Mallorca? It’s a long story.

It’s a long story, four or five international relocations, but I am Australian from Melbourne. Dad’s German, Mom is Australian from Scottish parents. My wife, Jana, is Swedish. Our baby, Olivia, we joke, she’s Mallorcan born, born here.

So, you’re an absolute international family.

We often say we represent the families that join our school, our truly international families. But I grew up in Australia, educated there, did my undergraduate and master’s degrees, and that’s where I learned to teach in Victorian public schools.

Great experience. So, was teaching always a passion for you?

It was, yeah. I started off with sports science, and I played Australian football at a fairly significant level, but never really made it. I realized that physical education teaching was what really engaged me, and I found my passion in teaching other kids.

Okay, and so you embarked on your studies to follow that career.

Yes, and in the back of my mind was also the understanding that teaching is a great profession to travel. I always had this Aussie adventurous spirit and wanted to trace my heritage back to Europe, and the first opportunity I had, I moved to Stockholm.

Okay, why Stockholm? Want to have a guess? You were following love.

Yes. And so I ended up teaching at Stockholm International School.

And did you learn Swedish?

A little bit. My Swedish is okay. But that’s where, at Stockholm International School, a fantastic international school, that’s where I really fell in love with international education and the idea of international-mindedness and global citizenship and really opened my mind to what exactly is the highest quality teaching and learning. But there was another love I found at the school, which is my wife.

Oh, your wife. So, she was teaching the program.

I was teaching middle school science. And then we, we actually took two years off to travel. We went to the US, South and Central America.

Can I ask you, is your love of travel even more than your love of teaching?

Oh, interesting. And you know, I’ve found a way to really combine them with international education and the work I do with international accreditation and volunteering with schools in Cambodia, Laos, Nepal. So, I found a way to sort of marry them together.

Your two passions.

Anyway, we took off for two years and traveled the world, Southeast Asia, Australia, back to Europe. Ran out of money, so went back to our exact same jobs at Stockholm International School. But this time, a bit more professionally minded, and within six months, I became the vice principal and Jana the finance manager of the school.

So, then you’re starting to move away from actually teaching on a day-to-day basis. How did you find that transition?

I found it quite natural for myself. I still love teaching and I still teach. I spend a lot of time in the classroom, make sure every day I’m visiting classes, team teaching and sort of co-teaching with teachers. But it’s felt like a natural progression to me and I just wanted to have more impact on the school and be involved in more aspects of the school and the best way to do that was to step into leadership. And it’s been 10 years now in senior leadership in international schools, five in Stockholm, five in Hong Kong.

Okay.

Where we really, we had a really transformative experience in our life in Hong Kong. We have a real love affair with that city.

So, tell me about that journey.

We were ready for a change. So we, we ended up taking some positions in Hong Kong. Myself as the Head of Local and Global Engagement at the Canadian International School of Hong Kong. My wife first at one of the leading British international schools as the Business Manager and then the HR Manager at the German Swiss International Schools. These are exceptional international schools, really leading the way in Hong Kong. And the level of education in Hong Kong is, it really is a hub for the highest quality teaching and learning. And that sort of being a hub with it is really quite competitive. It really drives innovation in education.

But it really is where East meets West, isn’t it? And therefore, and you have such a huge expat community, so of course it’s natural that the demand and the requirement for international education is very high.

Yes, both the expats, but also the growing global middle class of Asia are also accessing international education. That’s actually the biggest driver of international education is a local, we call it, aspiration of the middle class.

I have to say, I think it’s quite similar here, but we can get into that later. But it is a very interesting point that I see the mirror of the same thing happening here, which is really interesting. So, yes, absolutely. From there, five years in Hong Kong, a complete love affair. And we actually didn’t plan on leaving, but professionally, I was ready to lead my own school.

So, you were running an international school there.

I was on the leadership team of a large Canadian international school there, and I was ready to step up and lead the school. You know, 10 years in leadership and a lifetime of education and finished my doctoral studies, I thought it’s time I take the lead, and I thought that that would be in Hong Kong. And it didn’t eventuate. Nothing really grabbed us or I wasn’t successful in some roles as well. We looked at Ho Chi Minh, Singapore, Bangkok, back in Australia, and after six months of a really intense search, nothing. There were some options, but nothing that really excited us.

Okay.

So, we decided, Jana was six months pregnant by this stage, so we decided to have Olivia in Hong Kong and then move to Bali and buy some villas and surf.

And so, you were giving up your career aspirations at that point.

We thought about just taking six months off or 12 months off and just learn to be parents. We have the most important job to do, which is new to us. But at the same time, this opportunity here came into my inbox through a recruiter.

Creating RWIS: Founding a values-driven school from scratch

And you go through the pros and cons, you know, we sit down as a family and look at the pros and cons of the opportunity with the school and the position I’m in my career, the opportunity to come and lead a truly holistic and values-driven school from the ground up and build everything from the curriculum, the team, the approaches to teaching and learning, every policy from the ground up was just super exciting opportunities. And it was also a very popular place in Europe to locate to, like there’s a big difference perhaps from Palma de Mallorca to other locations in Europe that could have been calling at the time. So how much was that a factor in your decision?

It’s interesting when I’ve watched the other podcasts you’ve done, most people sort of had this almost like lifelong ambition or a long-term plan to be in Mallorca. It really is a place that draws people in.

Had you been to Mallorca?

We had been, come on a rock climbing trip.

Okay, at least you’d experienced something.

And my wife had been here and we loved it here. We just never considered it as somewhere we would call home and raise our child. We never even considered Spain, in fact, we weren’t even looking at Europe yet. Europe was sort of future plans for us. But we went through that checklist, you know, ticking the boxes and we realized we just kept going down the list, ticking every box and Mallorca really, what we’re looking for at this stage of our lives as a young international expat family, it ticked every single box except one: proximity to Melbourne. It’s far from home. But otherwise, it really is the best.

But I mean, I have a sister living in Australia, in Sydney, so I visited her now three times and I just think it’s, it’s a one day, it’s 24 hours to get there. There’s many things you can do in 24 hours. But you can get to the other side of the world, catch up on sleep for me recently, yes, yes. And you know, if you catch up on the movies, catch up on the reading and so on. It is a kind of a mindset though, isn’t it really? Because in this day and age, we’re not very far from anywhere really. It feels far when you’re there, but at the same time, do you feel very far away from home here?

I do. Particularly recently, my little brother passed away recently and that’s been hard being far from home at this time. It’s a challenge for us expats when you’re away from home and you can’t support family in the way you should. But so it does feel further at the moment, but with technology and being able to get on a video call two or three times a day, it makes a huge difference.

Yes, absolutely. Great. Okay, so you decided for Mallorca, you decided for this challenge I think, no? Because it’s like, it’s one thing moving into a leadership role in an existing established school, but you had a blank canvas to create, which is super exciting.

So exciting, but I was also very nervous.

Okay, yeah. But so how, tell us about that journey, that chapter.

We, we had six weeks to plan the move. From the time we, we pulled the trigger, yeah, we had six weeks to plan the move, and that included, you know, finding a hospital to give birth in and somewhere to live and trying to focus really on getting the school operational. A lot of work was obviously done before I joined. And this isn’t the company’s first school outside of Sweden.

Exactly.

It’s the first international school, but the company’s done this 20 times in Sweden.

So, what do you mean international school? What’s the, why is there a difference in the class before? Was it just a Swedish curriculum?

Yes, so they’re private schools running the Swedish curriculum in Sweden, whereas in this environment, you use the Cambridge, you follow the Cambridge education curriculum. Exactly. And we found it was such a natural fit for me for this role, I think, being a Swedish company and having understood Swedish culture and language and the way of working, but being a truly international educator. And we have this really strong board from Sweden. And our founder, Peder Johansson, our founder and CEO, an exceptional man, very ambitious, very, very visionary and ever optimistic, always optimistic. And so I’ve learned so much from his vast experience in that.

But isn’t that incredible for you as a new principal or leader of a school to then have this more senior mentor? You know, this is incredible. But listening to you, it sounds like it was the perfect opportunity for you, actually.

Yeah, I think it was for me and I hope I think for the school as well, because I sort of filled the gap in what they’re looking for, a real expert in international education and high quality teaching and learning in this context. But Peder has this real understanding of business and operations and leading and building teams, which I’ve learned so much from as well.

What makes RWIS different: balance between structure and creativity

Okay, so that’s really a good intro into your international school here. Tell me what makes your school different from, and maybe before I even go there, when you arrived on the island, what was your, what was your thought or your evaluation of what was existing here on the island in terms of international education?

Yes, obviously I did my research into the market to sort of understand what the options are for families. And there are many great options. I think that’s very important to acknowledge. There are some really great schools here. Where we feel like there’s a bit of a gap in the market is there’s quite a lot of quite traditional high academic schools. There’s quite a lot of very alternative schools.

Okay.

So you have kind of the polarity. So you have more the traditional side and then you have more what we kind of call the hippie side, where it’s more like unstructured forest education, which is great depending on what you’re looking for. Right. Yes. And I think we’re following the sort of international education pathway that really finds a balance between those things. It is a focus on holistic learning: academic, social, emotional, physical development, a real strong focus on character development and emotional intelligence. And it’s through this pathway that we will get the high academic results, not in spite of these things. So I think we’re filling a bit of a gap in the market.

Do you think the holistic approach is the pinnacle of what makes you different?

That but also tied in with how we go about it and how we’ve defined it. So we’ve gone to pretty extreme lengths to define exactly where we’re heading, exactly what is the highest quality of teaching and learning within our context.

A holistic approach: Future-focused learning and emotional intelligence

That started with what we call future-focused learning. And we actually took a photo of a student, put them up on the board as our first graduate in the year 2030. So that’s when our first student will graduate from our school.

So, that’s your vision.

That’s our goal. And when they’re leaving us into the world, what might that world look like socially, environmentally, geopolitically, economically? What might education look like? What might the workforce look like and technology? So we defined that a little bit and then we looked at what are the 10 most important learning outcomes that young people will need to be successful in that future world? It’s a little uncertain, it’s rapidly changing, we don’t know exactly what it will look like, but we can still define what knowledge, attitudes, attributes, characteristics will help students be successful in sort of an uncertain future world. And that’s things like, number one on our list is self-awareness and purpose. Our number one role as a school is helping kids find their purpose.

Yes, but it’s what people have never been taught. I mean, I know from my own journey in education, and before we move on though, I just want to pick up on some of the things you’ve said because I think they’re very important and I don’t want to, I want to highlight them because I think we can jump too fast. And the thing is that one of the big criticisms in today’s world of education is that it hasn’t changed. It hasn’t moved, so it’s stuck in the past. So how children learned 50 years ago actually hasn’t changed, but the world has changed dramatically. So what you’re saying is that your school, how you’ve built your school, is future-focused, not past-focused.

You summarize that better than I.

No, but it’s so interesting because when you go on the internet, social media, whatever it is, it’s really the biggest criticism of education today. Children say it’s not relevant for me. And they are, you know, we know, I left school a long time ago and probably wasn’t even relevant for my generation, and they’re still kind of continuing with the same. But the world has changed. So I love your idea of taking your first graduate and saying, okay, what are the skills and needs that they will need to go out and be successful in the world? And what you’re saying is that this comes down to purpose and self-awareness. And we call it in the spiritual world, dharma, living your dharma. And self-awareness is probably the number one factor in order to achieve that, right? How many schools have that as a clear learning objective for their students? I love it. I would go back to school.

We take it, we take it a significant step further. We then go in, and you can look at this on our website if any families are looking to go into a little more detail, but we go into specifics on exactly what the learning environment should be to achieve these learning outcomes and things like purposeful, meaningful learning is one of them. Things like inquiry-based learning where students are exploring big questions following their own lines of inquiry so they have some voice, choice, and ownership over the process. And then we, it’s sort of an onion, that’s why I’m doing this with my hands. And then the second layer is what type of teaching will allow us to support this learning? And we go over the types of teaching: very adaptable, very individualized. We talked a little bit about before, making sure we’re understanding individual students and what their individual needs are. Then we go one step further and we look at the school environment, what does that school environment need to look like so that that teaching can take place and that learning can be achieved? And this is what we call the RWIS way.

How do you know you’re doing it right?

That’s a really good question, and it takes self-reflection as a team. It takes the will, a sort of lifelong learning approach as a team, and we do a lot of work on professional development, support, and evaluation. So that’s what the framework is called. And I lead it for the whole team where we work together doing peer teaching, peer observations. We have peer mentors. I’m regularly in classrooms giving feedback. And we have what we call…

And what about getting feedback from the children? I mean, how are you facilitating that?

Absolutely. We have various forms of feedback that we give to students, but getting feedback from them on the approach is very important as well. And I think that just comes down to conversations and dialogue. Where we do that in our program is what we call Class Connect. We start every day with our advisor teachers or our class teachers in primary and advisor teachers in secondary meeting with their class and having conversations about the education process, emotional intelligence, building relationships, and some of these sort of fundamental building blocks that will allow students to have a good educational experience. So I think that’s probably where those conversations of getting feedback from the students about…

And probably the parents also know, you put them in the feedback loop also because they will be able to see in the home environment the impact that the school is having, no, the education’s having on their children.

Our home-school partnerships are something we’re really proud of. My first message on the first day of school when we opened the doors, we had all of our founding families, students, and teachers. Let me see if I can quote myself. I said, great schools are built on strong communities and strong communities are built on trust. Yes. And we’ve put in our strategic plan, we have a section in our strategic plan for building community, and a big part of that is building trust with the community. How do we do that? Daily check-ins. Our families don’t drop kids off at the gate, they come into our beautiful courtyard with the gardens looking up at the beautiful old convent with the towers and the chapel on the left and the teachers come out and they interact every morning and every afternoon. They have direct contact. We do. So it isn’t a them and us. It’s very much a partnership. We’re a community-based school and we build that into the way we operate. We do parent coffee mornings on different topics where we sit around and generally a staff member will present something, whether it’s our approach to well-being, which we call restorative justice, whether it’s our approach to assessment and how we build our curriculum, or whether it’s we looked at climate anxiety for one morning and we sit around and have a discussion, sometimes some activities and a coffee with parents just to really make sure we’re in touch, listening to our community, because in the end we’re there to meet the needs of the international community here in Mallorca.

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How much of the values and the whole operating system of the school is connected to the Swedish culture?

Yes, that’s a really interesting question, and some of it we’re still working out. It’s a new school and I think that’s okay that we’re still exploring some of these avenues. Our value system clearly comes from Raoul Wallenberg, our namesake.

Yes, and that’s what I wanted to say about that, is that I mean, in the end, he was somebody that risked his life because he believed what was happening in that moment was wrong and he was willing to risk everything for the benefit of others. So that’s a really individual thinking in my opinion, so how are you bringing even that down through the education system? Because in the end, it is individual thinking, it’s not going with the masses.

Critical thinking and stepping up and taking action when needed. Look, it was actually my first question to Peder, the company founder and owner. I said, “Hey, why Raoul Wallenberg?” And so he went on and explained the idea of values-based education, saw the philosophy behind that, that education should be built upon a foundation of core values, completely understand, aligns with my approach as well. So I asked why Raoul Wallenberg, and he went on to explain that to do this in a meaningful way, you need a role model, you need a hero, you need someone to look up to, an exemplar. And that’s what Raoul Wallenberg is to the school. He provides that example, the role model, and that value system of the core values: honesty, compassion, courage, and drive. These were his core values, and we’ve adopted them as our watchwords for the school as well.

We did talk just before we came, we started recording, about, you know, when I read your website and even what I listen to, I love what I’m hearing, really. I mean, it’s just, it’s honey to a bee, right? But in reality, how do you make that happen? Because words are easy to say, but like I mentioned to you, the more individualized you offer as an education for each child, the further away you get from the systems, the procedures, the uniformity. So it becomes a much bigger challenge to run a school on the scale of what you’re doing. So how do you manage that?

It’s a really interesting point, and some good avenues to discuss. I think the first thing is our systems and procedures are inclusive in nature. So it’s not a different system that we’re trying to adapt to understand individual needs and meet them. The second thing is, operationally, we have the lowest class sizes, a maximum of 16 kids in a class with extremely qualified and experienced teachers who are very well supported. Teachers are the backbone of a school. They’re the school’s greatest resource, figuratively and operationally, financially. They cost the school the most as well, and we invest a lot in our teachers. We have the best, we’re very proud to recruit the best from all over the world. We have teachers coming next year from all corners of the globe, from the UK, from South Africa, from Sweden, from Cambodia. So we’re really ensuring that we have the people in place to deliver the highest quality program, and we’re giving them a very reasonable workload to do that. The idea of differentiation, which is how we meet the different needs for various students, once you understand and practice that as a pedagogy, it’s not that difficult. I think it’s more about the commitment to meeting all students’ needs and ensuring they all reach their potential.

Yes, it’s nurturing them to be the best that they can be. But of course, there’s such a difference in terms of one child to another what can be the best. You know, maybe one child is super talented creatively, and another one is super talented academically, and another one is very sports-orientated. So you have to have that fluidity and that adaptability to be many things.

Yes, and that loops back to that holistic approach that we started with. Absolutely. A holistic, values-driven school. You know, where we’re really understanding the kids, as you said, their passions, helping them find their purpose, and really celebrating when they have different abilities and really celebrating when they don’t, when they fail at something. We spend a lot of time helping students embrace challenge and embrace failure and develop grit and resilience. We think these are really important aspects definitely for being a valuable member of a global society.

Yes, yes, yes. And it’s going through life, it’s given the tools to go through life. So I wanted to ask you as well, with the holistic approach and you’re very future-focused, how do you integrate technology?

Technology in the classroom: using it with purpose

Because it’s such a big part of young people growing up, it’s such a big part of their lives now: social media, the phone is kind of almost an extension of their body. Soon it’ll be. So how do you embrace that, but at the same time, move beyond it, let’s call it, embrace it but balance?

With balance. Balance is a good word. I think that the word I’d use to explain our approach is intentional. We need to have a high level of intentionality with technology and making sure we’re moving from replacing learning tasks with technology. So if it’s a simple writing task that becomes a simple typing task, it doesn’t seem to actually positively influence the learning in any way. But if we’re finding a way to actually transform the learning activity to do something that they couldn’t otherwise do without the technology, so maybe it’s a writing task that then turns into a podcast or a play, or a media presentation, then that’s where we’re enriching the learning. So it’s not replacement, it’s purposeful, and it’s very scaffolded across the year level. So we use iPads throughout the primary school. We’ve got some class sets which can be borrowed out, but again, it’s borrowing them when it’s really going to improve the learning for that lesson. Then in our secondary program, we have Chromebooks for each student, and again, it’s not about walking to class and opening the Chromebook. It’s analyzing what the lesson is, what are we going to be learning today, and will using technology enhance the learning outcomes in this lesson?

Okay, and that’s a challenge for all schools to get the balance right. But for every parent as well, it’s the same because you can’t, you know, it’s an avalanche, so you can’t stop it from happening, but it’s like how do you make it more purposeful and meaningful and get the balance right with the time and then with the other activities that will also help the children to grow?

This is actually interesting. Now you mentioned that this is where the home-school partnerships, having really strong home-school partnerships becomes valuable when there’s issues that transcend home and school, like technology and mobile phone devices, particularly in secondary, making sure we’re on the same page with the expectations between home and school. And we’ve done a little bit of work on that and as we grow into the secondary, which we are doing, very excited to grow year on year into our secondary and IB diploma program, but this is an area where those strong home-school partnerships are really helpful.

So tell me, you started just last year, in 2024?

Just last year, yeah.

And you started with how many students?

So we opened with 45 students, September, from the 8th, I believe it was, from classes 1 to 7, so we had primary school and then one secondary class.

How many nationalities out of the 45?

So currently we’re at 95 students, so we’ve over doubled throughout the year, which was unexpected and we’re really excited about. And in that 95, we have 20 nationalities represented. So I think we’re, it’s a very diverse school. I think we might already be one of the most diverse on the island.

Multilingual and multicultural: languages and embracing diversity at RWIS

Surprise, because we’re running a truly international program. We don’t want to be seen as a Swedish school, a British school, an American school, a German school; we want to be an international school for all expatriate families who are looking for a high-quality international education. So, coming to the point about languages, it’s a very hot topic in Mallorca—languages. So, how are you facilitating the language with 20 different nationalities?

Yes, it’s a good question and it’s a question in all international schools. We’re an English-medium international school, so our language of instruction is English, so that’s the predominant language you’ll hear around the school. We also offer Spanish and Catalan as the host country or host location languages, which is normal in international schools as well, to teach the host…

And is that mandatory for every student?

It is. All students take Spanish and Catalan. But the way we do it is really exciting too. Like all subjects, it’s integrated learning in our inquiry approach. So we have these big questions which all students are answering collectively through different lines of inquiry. So for example, the first unit of the, I’m testing myself now, was “Who am I? Who are you? Who are we?” So it’s a big question, and then every year level is answering that question, a different line of inquiry that I collectively come up with through Catalan, Spanish, art, music, science, math, literature. So this is the idea of inquiry-based learning. Back to the languages, it is an integrated approach. We also really value and want to support families with their mother tongue language. This is an area we will do more work in the future. Currently, we offer German and Swedish and EAL as language options in our after-school program, and that’s really to support those native Swedish or German speakers who are looking to maintain a level of their mother tongue. That’s a program we really want to build in future years, and we’re looking at various languages for next year to add to that program.

It’s super important. My own daughter, she learned German. Her father always spoke to her in German, and she didn’t necessarily, she wasn’t so motivated when she was a kid, but now she’s so grateful for that. So I think kids…

I’m jealous, I never learned.

I know, I was going to ask you, did you? No, so it is a shame because I mean, in the end, you’re 50% German, and you miss that. So it is a lovely quality for, it’s a gift really, for kids that grow up in Mallorca in such a beautiful international setting, but that they can maintain the connection to their roots, because of course, in the end, I mean, they have some roots in their home country, right? So that’s a really nice, so it’s something that you’re aspiring to expand.

And not just linguistically, we want to celebrate the various cultures in the school as well in different ways and make sure that they’re recognized when there are national celebrations and so forth. And we feel like that’s a strength of the school. The diversity and the inclusivity of the school is really a strength for our community. So finding ways to celebrate that beyond just their language is…

So that brings us to this point that we touched on earlier, the local community. How are they embracing your new educational approach for the island?

Building strong partnerships with parents and local community

I’ll give two answers that are a little different. First is the local La Vileta community. Obviously, it’s a historic building. I don’t know if you’ve been yet.

I haven’t been, but I mean, it’s my neighbor.

You could. We’ll invite you down. It’s an exceptional facility. It was a convent run by the Abbesses nuns, and there’s an amazing chapel that holds about 250 people, phenomenal gardens all closed in a beautiful stone wall. We were so lucky to find this location in Mallorca.

Wow, incredible. I think that’s another whole story. We could do a whole podcast on that building and the story of how it was acquired.

In the end, it’s been really tastefully and respectfully renovated into a really charming, calming learning space where we find the balance between sort of the historic building and charm, but also the modern teaching and learning approach. Anyway, big development in the La Vileta area, and the local community have been phenomenal. They are so supportive. We’ve held various community events. We’ve invited the local community in. At times when I was there putting IKEA furniture together late one night, a family walked in and in my broken Spanish, they explained to me that they were married in our chapel. Very nice, beautiful story. So the local community has been super supportive. One of the ways we’re hoping to, we talked about this a little bit earlier, one of the ways we’re hoping to give back to the local community in the future is looking at some sort of scholarship program, and it’s a language program or a full school scholarship for students in the local La Vileta area. And that’s something we need to, being a new school, it’s very easy to put things off, but when things are important to you, you need to prioritize them. So that’s something we need to…

And I mentioned to you, I really think as a parent of a child who benefited from an international education here on the island, I think there are many parents like myself that would be very enthusiastic to support a program like that where local kids, who maybe financially don’t have the opportunity to go to an international school, are given that chance. So we should connect over a coffee, I think. Because I think, you know, we all feel that we want to give something back to this island because the quality of life that we’ve enjoyed here is just phenomenal. So I think programs, and sometimes it’s just you start and then it grows from there, because I’m sure you’re going to find there’s a lot of support locally for that.

So I want to talk next about your family life here on the island.

Life in Mallorca: family, lifestyle, and choosing where to live

How old is Olivia now?

Seven months yesterday.

Seven months yesterday. So how has your life changed not only moving to Mallorca but becoming a parent?

We sort of joke that we just tipped the table upside down. We did it all at once: new country, language, new position. And most importantly, I finished the thesis then as well. But most importantly was learning how to be parents, having this gorgeous little human welcomed into our world, and it’s the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to us. And it’s sort of beautiful coming here, starting fresh, knowing that we’re starting a family and we’re building a lifestyle, a community, and also a school for her.

For her, you know, in the back of my mind, I’m always… What an opportunity that you get to create what will be her future school. That’s amazing. Where on the island did you choose to live?

We had six weeks, I mentioned before, to sort of get going. So we ended up settling. We decided to lease. We looked at buying and thought we’re invested in Sweden, Australia, the property market and we figured, take our time before pulling the trigger on something in Mallorca, because it is so diverse the areas, there’s so many options. We need to understand them first. So we settled on leasing for a year or two while we find our feet and we, we literally looked at the center of Palma, the school, and looked halfway in the middle on the Sa Rapita area, just on the city side of the freeway near Palma Racket Club. And we sort of drew a circle and looked in this area so we could be walking distance to the city, 12 minutes into central and about 12 minutes walk to the school.

Oh wow, so good, nice way to do it, right? So where, what is the name of the area where you are?

It’s Sa Rapita.

Oh, it is Sa Rapita. Which is a lovely, traditional area. It’s a nice suburb of Palma. Although it’s, I mean, it’s connected now, super well connected.

It’s calm, there’s a lot of families in the area. We have the best neighbors in the world.

Yes, and lots of Natalie.

Yeah, good, very good. And there’s some lovely children’s parks, there’s a lot of green area. You’re very close to the highway, so when you want to go to another part of the island, it’s very easy to access. We’re very happy with the area. But long term, we want to find our community, our space and something long term. So we’ll…

And what are you? You’re Australian.

It’s tough. I want to be at the beach.

You want to be at the beach? Okay, good luck with that. Yes, we all want to be at the beach, but I am waterfront. So something along that, something a couple minutes walk.

But you know, you can do the Mallorcan lifestyle where Monday to Thursday, you have a place in the city so they don’t, they walk everywhere and the kids walk to school so they don’t use the car. And then they have their weekend residence which is in winter in the mountains and in summer by the sea. That sounds perfect, right?

I think, you know, many foreigners, maybe I can get some advice from you later on about the areas, but actually it’s kind of just living the Mallorcan way because they know best. They’ve been living here forever and they know that having not one property on the island but actually having two or three makes a lot of sense.

That’s a great tip. My brother always said, “Do as the locals do.”

Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. So what is a typical kind of day in the life of Matthew at the moment?

It’s been busy. That’s for sure. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Starting the school has been a real challenge, but we have an exceptional team. Our leadership team is very strong, very passionate, dedicated, and I’ve had to be out of school for times and they’ve stepped in and really not just kept things moving but moved them forward, which is great to have that support in the team. Look, it’s been busy, it’s a lot of long, long days, it’s a lot of long nights with Ollie at the moment as well. But you know, we find space for the finer things in life. We love getting to the beach on the weekend, we love the markets, we love Alaró market. That’s our favorite, a coffee and a curry. It’s beautiful.

And do you feel at home in Alaró? Actually, it’s just a matter of, it could be an area, it could be a community. I mean, it is a very popular community for expats.

Alaró, and the market is the highlight of the week. We love it there. We’ve been four or five times and we keep going back there.

It’s funny because the island, I think, calls you to your place somehow. It really does. So, do you see Mallorca staying as your long-term residence? Because I know you have expansion plans underway, right, for other parts of Spain.

Long-term vision: growth, expansion, and staying grounded

Yeah, we do. We’re ambitious with the RWIS way. We want every child to have that experience, so we do want to open more international schools. But we are at the moment focused on the first, you know, the blueprint, getting it right. But there are some plans for future expansion here in Mallorca for an early learning center, and we’re very interested in a senior learning center. So it would be for an early education center, and we’re looking at options for the IB diploma program as a sort of specialist learning space for that. More information to come. Exciting. There are also some other options around Spain and the rest of Europe, but we do see RWIS expanding with Mallorca being the base. So for me personally, we hope that Mallorca will be our base, and you know, we’ve moved a lot, Helen, and we’re excited to settle.

You think, and you think Mallorca is it?

We’ll see. It’s very close to Stockholm, which is also home. We have a place there and family there. I have family in Germany, but it is very far from Australia, and we have to sort of find that balance. Mom’s here at the moment, she’s visiting, and I was home recently.

Practical tips for families relocating to Mallorca

So one tip, something that you wish you had known before you moved here, what do you think that would be?

We didn’t have much time to think about it. Initially, it was just get moving, and I think we fell on our feet with getting legal support with all of the paperwork for your NIE number, for all of the residential. So having a good professional to help you. And I think that’s advice I would give, a good expert to help. Don’t try to do it on your own, particularly if you’re moving and setting up a new home, or starting a new profession, or you’ve got kids starting in a new school, and you need to be there to support them. Spend the time on that, and have someone Mallorcan who knows the system to support you.

Actually, support your teachers now when they’re moving here with that kind of infrastructure also?

Yes, we, to recruit the best teachers, we have to look internationally as well as local. We have some exceptional teachers who are local, but when you’re recruiting internationally, you have to offer the support with the paperwork and the relocation and visas.

So if somebody is listening and they’re an educational professional, they could perhaps send their curriculum to you for consideration?

Absolutely. We still have two positions available for next year due to the extraordinary growth. We’re looking at over 200 students for next year already. We’ll have two classes from years one to eight, so we’re growing in width and then also in…

But I think that’s also partly due to the individual attention you’re giving the children, with a maximum of 16 per class, so it’s phenomenal. I think when people visit the school, they see the difference. So if there’s any families who are exploring schools, can I give some advice to families looking at schools?

Of course, please do.

Yes, and this is advice I give to all families when they’re looking for a school is start with the mission, vision, and values of the school and make sure it aligns with your own philosophy and expectations for education. So it’s as simple as going to the school’s website and look at what they say they do and what they stand for, and if that aligns, shortlist them. Pay them a visit, make sure they do what they say they do. If it doesn’t align, put a cross through, and that might help families who are looking at a potential eight to 10 schools to narrow that down to two or three schools.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with you totally. And I think asking other people who have children on the island now for some recommendations, some advice and so on is really important. Just as a question, do you have people traveling, parents who bring children from afar on the island, or most of the students kind of more Palma-based locally?

We have had, we have families coming from all over, from all parts of the island. So we’ve had some families who maybe haven’t had the best experience at other schools and are willing to commit to sort of the 45-minute or hour commute to be with us. We’ve also had a family move to the island to join our school.

Wow, that’s amazing.

From Sweden. Which we’re super proud of.

Yes, yes. And it’s come up again and again on this podcast that the parents fear for the educational options available on the island when they’re moving kids, but in actual fact, many times it’s the reverse. It can be a massive positive for the children, is that right? Is that your experience?

Yes, I think it can build resilience and intercultural understanding and to experience a new education system that’s maybe a little bit more modern, diverse, individualized, I think is a super exciting opportunity for young people. But of course, it’s the biggest decision families make with their children is which school they choose. But starting with the mission, vision, values, getting out and visiting the schools and really sort of feeling the energy and the atmosphere and the culture of the school, I think is very important. The other advice I’d give is start early. Schools have waiting lists. We are already full in one class and nearing full in others. So I presume we will, we’re starting waiting lists for some classes as well. So I think starting that process early so that you get a place in your school of choice is really important for families also.

Okay, great. But so families can contact you or organize a meeting and a tour of the school?

Exactly. We have a really robust admissions process which is really about making sure that we’re the best fit for the student. We want to make sure it’s a real marriage of values and approach, and that we’re the best school to meet the needs of that individual child. We have regular open days at the moment, so every second or third week we have open days. They’re advertised on the website and on our social media. And if families can’t make those days, we host them for a private tour and show them around the school so they can really experience the RWIS way.

Yeah, well, sounds great. So I wish you would have been an option, your school would have been an option all these years before, but I have to say in my time in Mallorca, the educational options on the island, it’s expanded enormously. But I do think what you’re offering is something truly unique. And from what I’ve heard today, I absolutely love the approach. This idea of a holistic approach to educating your child, I think is so obvious, but it’s so rarely given as an option. So I think for parents who are currently looking for where’s the best option, I’m sure you’re going to be very high on their list of considerations. So I wish you many more years of success and growth in Mallorca. I wish you and your family a lot of success and happiness in Mallorca.

Final thoughts and thank you

And I want to thank you so much for being here today to tell us more about your journey.

Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Great.

Thank you. So if you would like to know more about the Raoul Wallenberg International School in Mallorca, check out their website. And if it’s an open day that you’d like to pass by the school or if that doesn’t suit you, make an appointment, visit the school and hear more. Thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you for tuning into today’s episode of Mallorca Living. We hope you found it inspiring and uplifting. If you’re planning to relocate to Mallorca and buy a property here on the island, we would love to guide you and support you in your journey. Reach out to us today, book a consultation and let’s start your journey together to move to Mallorca.