Excellence in Teaching Recipients Announced

Our schools are ideally suited to creating sensitive young people who respond less well to the testing, pressured formal environment. Our learners are bright, inquisitive, and socially intuitive, often gifted or arriving to us with confidence damaged by other more formal settings. Many thrive with the love and respect we offer them and the contribution they can make to our society.

Aim for Equality

One of our goals is to create a level playing field in education. Every child has the potential to find truth and that is our responsibility. The potential is a wonderful resource that should never be wasted. Discovering what you are good at is like getting all the keys to a happy and fulfilling life early. Dreams that become ambitions, and the skills and ability to think that are formed as we seek to pursue these, give shape and meaning to the way we see ourselves and interact with others.

“It is not that hard to teach an academically able child. To a great extent, they will teach themselves. Yes, a great teacher can inspire an able child, we accept that. But the never-ending and exciting challenge for a teacher is when their knowledge of child development, their skills as a communicator, and their passion for their subject inspire a wide range of young people with all their different learning styles. ”

To pitch young people into a narrow competitive environment that dispenses with their creativity in pursuit of a narrow set of skills that are observable, and testable under exam conditions, is limiting. Then to make that the final arbiter framing their life changes is wrong and a waste of precious resources. No one knows what tomorrow’s world will want from its young people; economists can’t agree from one week to the next.

The creative, the innovative, the single-minded, the kind, the loyal, the rebellious, and the myriad of personalities and characters that make up the future’s mix need a broader and more inclusive approach. So, we do not select on ability, but on the promise and expectation that each young person contributes to our community positively. We do not test formally until the …public examination at WAEC, GCSE, and even then we do it in a low-stress way, using our own small intimate exam settings.