As you read this, I would like you to think about your child’s final day at school. As parents, we often worry about our child’s first day; how we will allay their worries, encourage them to join in, cross our fingers in the hope they will settle easily and, of course, come home happy and beaming.
What I want you to do now is to think, really think, about what you want your child to be like on their last ever day at school. What do you want them to believe in, what aspirations do you want them to have, what skills and tools do they possess and what do they talk to you about? What was your conversation in the car on the way in? What values do they display? How do they interact with others as you drop them off?
It is a fascinating thought process and one that I do very regularly as both a parent and the Head of St Chris.
Our job, our real job, is to be able to mould, advise, nudge and direct our students so that they leave ready for the challenge of the world outside. A world that seems in an awful hurry these days and a world that may seem increasingly frightening to us as we get older. There will not be a school website, and I am sure you’ve now looked at a few, that doesn’t champion, proudly, its focus on ‘holistic education’, ‘a well-rounded education’, or a ‘child-centred education’. Actually, I would be rather amused to see a website that says, ‘actually not the whole child, just a bit of it’. A lot of them do it – and some rather well.
But I believe we do it, genuinely and fully, as we have done since the school was founded in 1915. When I think of our students’ final day, I think of them of being known and understood. Sounds simple, doesn’t it; known and understood.
But I would argue it is a rather more complex challenge, as things that sound simple often are, and its one our whole team focuses on every single day.
Excellence by a standard that isn’t applicable to the real world isn’t really excellence at all. We’re looking for excellence that’s relevant to the world in which our children will live.
My job, and one that I am passionate about, is to ensure that we remain the type of school that is committed to this as its core value: knowing and understanding your child as an individual, so that we can best support them in their personal goals – be they to study medicine, to create incredible props for the film industry, to become a professional sports person, or to set up a successful local business – all of which have been next steps for our students in the past year.
As well as university or employment destinations, for us those personal goals should also be more fundamental: to be a happy, well-rounded, and socially secure young person who has a zest for life, who knows themself, and who has the confidence and resourcefulness to take the time to find out what their place in the world is and how they can contribute positively to it.
We are, compared to many, a small school. The reason we proactively choose to remain this size is because we see the absolute, robust and evidenced-based value, the inherent significance, of knowing and understanding your child. Young people are not a homogenous bunch – they cannot be categorised as cohorts, groups and sets. And if you are looking for a school that does this – maybe we are not the place for you.
We are a school based on relationships and mutual respect and understanding. It is in those relationships that we see our students flourish and achieve more than they ever thought possible.
At St Chris, you can dive into anything safe in the knowledge that you’ll never ‘hit the bottom’. Not all students learn at the same rate, in the same way for the same reasons and we know and understand that. We place emphasis on developing trusted relationships with pupils so that we find the best way for them, for their needs, in their time and in their manner.
Perhaps, one of the aspects of our provision that is most well-known is that we have no uniform, and we refer to each other by our first names. This is true – however, in and of itself, it means very little, perhaps, ‘window dressing’ if you will.
However, it is part of a system, a structure, that helps break down formality and uniformity, so we know each young person individually – so in some ways it means everything.
Achievement and success is confidence, is growth, is experience, is challenge, is friendship, is exploration and is genuinely holistic. We put in place so much around our students’ educational experience – opportunities to travel, to create, to try new things; and we not only encourage it, we timetable it. You can debate, climb, swim, care for alpacas, discuss environmental issues, join a musical, play an instrument, be part of a sport team, laser cut, go-kart, engineer, cook, make soap, knit, pétanque and even help blow things up in a lab, all in one week.
Nothing is off the cards.
The world is changing. Employers and universities are no longer looking at mere grades and results. They are looking for a package – yes, they are looking at academic potential, but they are also looking to see if young people can do ‘the stuff’. If they can research, be resilient, work as part of a team, work independently, show ambition, get stuck in, problem solve and lead. We make it our business to know what we are preparing our students for.
The world needs self-starters, self-motivators, self-innovators. It needs problem-solvers and conflict resolvers. It needs people who care about others and can look after themselves.
This isn’t straightforward - and it might not always go perfectly - but nothing this special is ever achieved easily.
All this happens with a genuine emphasis on two things – kindness and respect. Nothing is ever made worse by being kind and respectful.
For us, to be a ‘progressive’ school is to be in tune with the realities of modern life and to ensure education doesn’t lag behind.
I asked you at the beginning to imagine what your child would be like on their last day of school and each year I see this unfold as students come in for their last day.
It is a real privilege for me, for all of us, to have been along a journey with them. Yes, there will have been bumps in the road and a need for the odd rerouting but what I see from our students is something truly special.
They have confidence, guile, are full of inquisitiveness, full of passion, full of kindness and full of determination.
They are ready.
