By PAUL SIMS

Last updated at 00:30 26 October 2007

When Aleksander Kucharski arrived in Britain from Poland, he expected he would get a first-class education.







He was accepted at a Roman Catholic state school which boasts one of the best academic records in the country and is recognised by Ofsted as outstanding.

But after two years he is so disillusioned that he has gone home to his old school, saying his British classmates were interested only in shopping and partying.

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"I was treading water within the British education system," said 16-year-old Aleksander.

"The boys were childish, they didn't read papers and weren't interested in anything.

"And the girls only talked about shopping and what they were going to do on Friday night.

"In Poland you have to know the names of all countries, even the rivers. But in England hardly anyone could place Kenya or Poland on the map. The teachers didn't test knowledge, only effort."

Aleksander started at St Thomas More High School in North Shields, North Tyneside, after his parents, who are both doctors, came to England.

In June he informed his mother Anja, a psychiatrist, and father Robert, a medical consultant, that he was returning home to continue his schooling.

While they remained here, Aleksander went back to Lodz in Poland, where he has moved in with his grandmother and enrolled at III Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace, a state school.

Although he received glowing praise from his Tyneside teachers, Aleksander claims he was being held back by other pupils, whom he accused of having no interest in learning new things.

He said: "Here in Lodz I go to debates, I talk about films and I try to persuade people not to use plastic bags. During the elections here we posted flyers for my neighbour who was out campaigning.

"But in Newcastle no one cared about globalisation, the greenhouse effect, the EU, war or politics.

"Maybe it's because they get everything on a plate, because there was no communism there and there's no real poverty, they don't need to worry about their future.

"In Poland parents tell their children about financial problems. But in Britain I think they don't have them or they tried to hide them, to buy their children everything."

Aleksander said that before he left Poland he was an average student.

"In Poland, I only ever got average marks in maths, yet in the UK teachers said I was a genius," he claimed yesterday. "After a year I was top of the class in everything, and that includes English."

The excellent facilities at St Thomas More failed to improve educational standards there, he said.

"They would give me a list of terms and definitions. The teacher told us to put them into pairs and colour them the right colour - like at primary school."

Last night, the deputy head of his school in Lodz, Agata Jagielska, said: "We know that Polish pupils are better at acquiring facts and knowledge.

"Perhaps because we are poorer and we don't have such great facilities in Poland, pupils are more motivated to seek out possibilities for themselves."

St Thomas More is one of the best performing schools in the country. A total of 1,700 students aged between 11 and 18 attend the school which was established in 1988 following amalgamation and has won several national awards for excellence.

A spokesman for North Tyneside Council said: "Every child and parent has the right to choose the education they wish.

"We are disappointed that this pupil has decided to move away.

"Only weeks ago St Thomas More was recognised by Ofsted as being an outstanding school with 82 per cent of students achieving five or more A*-C grades. Among those, 16 came out with nine or more A*-A grades."