This week was our open week where prospective parents were given an impression of the school, the building, the facilities, the teachers and, perhaps most importantly, what the school’s ethos and ideology are like, what it is we stand for.
The latter was also the theme of a primary school talk I presented to prospective parents on Wednesday morning whilst Ms. Nienke relayed the same message in her EY talks.
Although you might have heard it before, we do tend to repeat the important stuff. So allow me to run a small recap in this newsletter.

As the Taylor’s slogan states, we wish to “Raise them Ready”, help our students to gather all that they need to be well prepared for the future that lies ahead of them. First, they will continue their schooling and at some point, a point that seemed to come so quickly with my children, we want them to become well balanced successful professionals with a high level of wellbeing. I believe that’s what ultimately, we all want for our children, staff and parents alike.

But when we aim to raise them ready, we obviously raise them ready for the future, the path that lies ahead of them. This then brings up a big and obvious question that is staring us in the face: what will that future look like? What are we raising them ready for? Ultimately leading to the question of how we need to design and deliver our curriculum to bring our students to a likely state of readiness?

When exploring what the future might look like, I often share a particular story when presenting on this. I might have shared this with you before in which case I apologise in advance. As an 8-year-old boy, I went on a school trip to an exhibition about technology and the future. One device really stood out for me. I still remember vividly looking at this huge machine where, when you would pick up the wired hand-held phone receiver, you could see the face of the person you were talking to on a black and white screen. This blew me away. Now we all walk around with mobile phones (cell phones for some) and think nothing of seeing everyone instantaneously wherever they are in the world and at no extra cost as long as you have your WIFI or 4G sorted.

I have more stories like this but for now, let me come to some conclusions.
Firstly, technology is heavily affecting the future and changes happen at a fast pace and the changes are significant. Things evolve at a high speed. This guarantees us that the future will be very different and very much difficult to predict.
Secondly, the world is getting considerably smaller all the time. Not in a physical sense but in the sense that it becomes incredibly easy to communicate with people across the world and we can also now witness what is happening at the other side of the globe in an instant.
All of the above will impact the future and it will greatly impact future employment, who you compete with for vacancies, what your contract will be like, the kind of collaboration, the kind of job etc.

So, what does this mean in schools, where we are aiming to raise them ready?

First of all, we need to accept that we don’t know what the future will be like and that it won’t be exactly clear what it is that our children need. Therefore, we aim to nurture and develop a passion for learning in our learners and offer them a broad curriculum, developing their knowledge, skills and understanding but also their mindset, their characteristics. Here is where the RECIPE comes into play for us.
We need our students to strive for the highest results possible so that all the doors will open for them in the future. But that will no longer suffice. The OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) has predicted that the global population of university graduates will double over the next decade. Standing out from the crowd by displaying extra qualities will be more important than ever when applying for university places or employment.

Secondly, we need to make sure that our students require a good set of knowledge, the mental building blocks, but they will also need to develop key skills that can withstand the test of time.

Thirdly, our children will, more than ever before, be citizens of the world. They will be linking up people from countries and cultures from around the globe, collaborating across nations and tackling global challenges. Therefore, our children need to develop themselves into global citizens. We need to support them so they can learn to explore the world, develop their communication skills, process different perspectives and be able to lead for action. The IPC (International Primary Curriculum) and the IEYC (International Early Years Curriculum) have goals to achieve this build in for every student.

In our school, all of the above is what we are aiming for, every single day.

We now take a small break over the weekend and welcome back everybody on Thursday the 17th of March. Just a little reminder to carry out the self-test with the children before returning to school and have the children bring the test along with them in the morning. Have a wonderful extra-long weekend!