Life-long Learners

Developing students as life-long learners is an important part of our core purpose as a school. We also believe that we, as adults, should also model this learning process and continue to challenge ourselves to learn new things, strengthen our strengths and seek to improve ourselves. Our professional development programme is designed to do just this. The programme is matched to our strategic priorities as a school, one of these being to develop and strengthen the leadership within the school. Each year members of our Extended Leadership Team complete the International Leadership and Management programme (ILMP), with our latest cohort having just successfully completed the course. As part of the course, each of these leaders identified a change project - a Leadership Impact project - linked to the school’s strategic priorities. The ILMP is a course that usually takes place over a span of two academic years with two residential aspects as well as the Impact Project and various online elements. This particular cohort was in the middle of their course when the global pandemic hit. Despite this, the course continued, and in addition to showing exceptional resilience and strong leadership during the pandemic, these three leaders continued to complete the course remotely.

Please join us in congratulating all of whom successfully completed the course at the highest level of ‘Mastery’:

Louise Banthorpe (To develop approaches to enquiry in Lower Primary in order to facilitate deeper learning).
 

Tara Palmer (Embedding Formative Assessment and Developing a Culture of Peer Observation in the Upper Primary).














Michael Brooke (Staff are growing and developing in a strong professional learning culture through the development of an evidence-based professional growth and development cycle).

Tara, Louise and Michael join the previously graduated ILMP leaders Jon Burke, Tom Rains, Dan Norbury and myself.

This year has we also have a cohort of middle leaders completing our in-house Middle Leadership programme with an external consultant Mary Van Der Heijden.

This Middle Leadership programme again involves a set of extremely dedicated and resilient leaders completing the course during the global pandemic and in periods of lockdown. We wish these leaders every success in completing the final part of this course and look forward to celebrating their success with you soon. They will join Jo Stedman and Hannah Halford, who successfully completed Middle Leadership courses in the previous academic year.

We are proud to have these amazing leaders as part of our team and have been inspired by the growth, development and resilience that they have shown during this challenging time. I would like to also express a big thank you to our Director of Professional Learning and Growth, Sarah Dore, for organising these leadership programmes.

Dr Nicola Mason
Head of School