Paddy Salmon has been President of ASIBA since 2009. He has been Head of English at Sèvres (Sections Internationales de Sèvres) since 1993 and is also responsible there for drama and university counseling.

He studied English at St John’s College, Cambridge 1970-73, where he was Tour Manager for the European Theatre Group, and he took his PGCE at King’s, London in 1974. After 13 years of teaching, 8 of them as Head of Department, in comprehensives and grammar schools in England, Paddy came to Sèvres in 1987, where he has stayed happily ever since. His wife, Vicki, teaches also in the department and their three children went through the Section.

In 1997-8 Paddy was instrumental, with a few other heads, in setting up the association, ELSA-France. This offers a useful resource to both schools and parents for finding out about educational opportunities in the Paris area and beyond, facilitating information-sharing between schools, and coordinating teacher development opportunities. He was elected President for the first four years of the association.

The development of the OIB (Option Internationale du Baccalauréat) is something he has been involved with almost since its inception (1985) and he has been examining, and training examiners, as well as moderating the oral examinations on behalf of the Cambridge Inspector for English since 2006. He has been working on the board of ASIBA, since it was set up in 2000 to support the British version of the OIB.

 

Ivan was born in Bordeaux, a very good vintage, and very soon (by the age of 11) he had a great interest in English especially with the private tuition given by the "Fab four" on his record player.

Consequently, his first reaction after passing the baccalaureate was to take a degree in English at the Sorbonne. After his M.A. in contemporary theatre, he taught one year in "sunny" Worthing as a French assistant (the year of the yellow bugs), then he came back to France and started teaching English.

In 1981 he became Deputy Head at the high school of the Ecole Active Bilingue in Paris. After a few years he discovered the O.I.B. (British version) which proved very challenging and enriching for both the students and his school.

Since 1997, when they opened the O.I.B. section, he has worked with O.I.B. teachers to preserve and promote the quality of the curriculum provided. He would also like to underline the fact that it has always been a real treat to work with all his colleagues as well as the dedicated parents with whom he founded ASIBA.

Long live the O.I.B.!

David Gage is a business lawyer who has been involved with ASIBA since its creation in 2000 when he handled the drafting of the Statuts and the legal formalities required to register ASIBA as an Association under the French law of 1901 on associations.

Born and brought up in London, David graduated in law from the University of Reading and qualified as a solicitor in 1981. After some years working in London and 3 years in Hong Kong, he came to Paris in 1990, becoming an avocat in 1992. He and his wife have two children at the Lycée International of St. Germain-en-Laye, one in junior high school and one in primary.

David has been the General Secretary of ASIBA since 2005 and his role includes taking minutes of meetings, piloting annual membership renewals and dealing with legal formalities.

Derek Erb was President of the British Section Parents Association of the Lycée Collège International Honoré de Balzac (APESA) for 5 years (2002-2006). He has been their ASIBA representative, and member of the ASIBA Board, since 2008.

Derek was born in New York City and moved often throughout his childhood. He was a working actor, musician and dancer throughout his youth. But he started playing with technology when he was 15; reprogramming pinball machines and working his way up to mainframes by the time he was 18.

He moved to Paris in 1984, worked at the OECD, where he met his English wife, and eventually created his own high-tech consulting firm in 1990 which has kept him eternally busy ever since. He has one daughter who graduated from Balzac with her British OIB in 2008 and graduated from University of Warwick (UK) in 2011 and another daughter in première at Balzac working on her British OIB for 2013.

Derek has been responsible for the ASIBA web site since 2009.

Peter Woodburn was among the founders of ASIBA, and first president from 2000-2005. He is Head of Programme at the English National Programme in the Lycee International de Ferney-Voltaire (near Geneva).

He was educated in the UK in Somerset, then at Cambridge University, where he studied English Literature at Trinity College from 1976 until 1982. He gained his PGCE at Bristol University, and was English teacher and then deputy head of department within state secondary schools in the UK 1983-7. He taught English for four years within the British section of the Lycee Victor Hugo in Colomiers (near Toulouse), working under Les Albiston, before moving to Ferney-Voltaire in 1991.

He has presented the OIB and the French baccalaureat in the UK at UCAS admissions officers’ conferences (in Leicester and Aberystwyth), and has more recently worked, with Philip Shaw-Latimer and others, on projects connected with the defence and the development of the British OIB and the International Sections. He has been a written examiner for OIB Language and Literature for some years, and edited the OIB Handbook from 2005-7. He has been deputy School Chair and, since 2008, Schools Chair of the British OIB schools group.

James was appointed Director of the British Section of the Lycée International in Saint Germain-en-Laye in 2010. Prior to this appointment, James taught History in the British Section at Saint Germain-en-Laye since his arrival in France in 2002. He is an Assistant Moderator for OIB oral examinations in History-Geography and led the working group convened by the Cambridge Inspector for History-Geography to devise and implement a new OIB oral examination in History-Geography for first examination in June 2010. James also takes a keen interest in promoting the OIB among institutions of higher education and delivered a workshop presenting the OIB at the UCAS Annual Admissions Conference in April 2009 with Nicholas Baker, the National Subject Leader for OIB English. James is a graduate of Oxford University.

A graduate of London, Granada and Aix-en-Provence, Shaun completed his post-graduate studies at Lancaster before entering the teaching profession in 1994. In addition to leading departments in a variety of British schools, he has been highly involved in examining and teacher-training, working with universities in England and across Europe. Over the years, he has enjoyed collaborating in numerous projects between the British and French education systems.

Prior to his arrival in France, Shaun spent eight years as Head of a large department in an academic grammar school in the north of England. Appointed Director of the Anglophone Section of the Lycée François Ier in Fontainebleau in 2010, he has been instrumental in establishing the school as the second (British) OIB oral examining centre in the Paris region.

Anna Perry grew up in England and Luxembourg, where she took the European Baccalaureate in 1984. She is a graduate of the University of Bristol (French & Spanish) and has an MBA from INSEAD. Since 1992, she has lived in Paris where she has worked on educational philanthropic projects for Wafic Said (benefactor of Oxford University’s Said Business School), as a strategy consultant at Bain & Company and as a case writer at INSEAD. She currently assists French terminale pupils wishing to study at UK universities with their UCAS applications.

Anna has a daughter at EaB Monceau and two stepsons at l’Institut de l’Alma. She has been an active member of the EaB Parents’ Association for four years with particular emphasis on improving the integration of the French and English curricula.