In our last newsletter, I spoke about ‘raising them ready’, referring to parents and schools preparing our children, our students, for the future. I argued that, in order to ‘raise them ready’, we needed to explore what the future could hold for them and what that would mean for our young learners. Our newsletter readers needed some extra reading time as I did take the liberty of expanding on this a bit. Therefore, let me limit myself to a very brief summary: the future will hold rapid and unpredictable change. This will particularly hold true for changes in the workforce. Due to technology, the world will be ‘shrinking’, the future will be global. The issue of ‘certification inflation’ is also a growing trend and the next generation will also face global challenges on an unprecedented scale.

Looking at those future prospects, we believe that we need to offer our learners a balanced and broad programme aimed at developing every aspect of a child. We will continue to strive for excellence in academic results; we will continue to provide our learners with all the factual knowledge that they need; Quantum learning helps us to achieve that, amongst other gains the system offers. But it is evident that more is required than solely building their bank of knowledge and hitting the best exam results they can get. We need to help our young learners to build and grow their skillset and their attitudes.

Developing skills has gained special attention from educators over the last decades and there is a good reason for that. Unlike knowledge, which is context based and ever growing at an enormous speed, skills are limited in number and their value can stand the test of time. An example could be orienting your position on a map, the instruments may have changed but the skill remains relevant. Our IEYC and IPC curricula are structured to develop key skills throughout their schooling.

Throughout our teaching, we are constantly inviting our students to reflect and to make connections. We help them to approach a topic or an issue from multiple perspectives. All of this leads to a greater capacity for understanding.

By approaching learning as gaining knowledge, developing skills and building their thinking skills, we feel we are preparing them for the future. But there are still some essential elements that are required. Or should I say ‘ingredients’, because this naturally leads to our RECIPE! We believe that character building and developing the right traits is hugely important to ensure that our children grow to be successful learners, professionals and citizens. In our primary school we also focus on the remaining Taylor’s outcomes of ‘Global Citizenship’, ‘Leadership’ and ‘Resilience’. This week, our discussions with children were about resilience. A trait which is both a condition for being successful in learning right now but also a character trait that we wish to develop for the future. The theme of resilience was wrapped up in our Friday assemblies where we turned for inspiration to the resilience that Walt Disney, J.K. Rowling and Colonel Sanders displayed before they eventually came to more fortunate times. More on “Raising them Ready’ in our next newsletter!

In one of the lessons that I observed this week, children shared what they had for lunch before they dived back into their learning. For a seemingly low key activity, it was interesting to see just how much the children actually enjoyed their sharing a great deal. They obviously feel a great need to stay connected. Although it might not be necessary for parents to share their lunch adventures, we all feel that we wish to keep the feeling of connectivity in our community. Therefore I would invite you to save the following dates in your calendar: