Our article as featured on the Cambridge Live…
Experts suggest that 80% of the jobs that our children will be doing in the future don’t currently exist. This, alongside rising life expectancies and costs of living, means children of today are facing working careers that far surpass the length of our own. This presents an interesting educational challenge and is one, as teachers responsible for preparing children for their futures, we are acutely aware of and are facing head on.
With a career span of over 60 years ahead, and with the world we’re living in changing at an ever-increasing rate, it is our job, and joy, to instil a passion for life-long learning in our pupils. This will help our children navigate a different structure of career. A love of learning and intellectual curiosity will be key to the continuous educational development needed as they forge long lasting, successful careers.
Sancton Wood is a small independent, co-educational Nursery, Pre-Prep, Prep and Senior School for pupils aged from 1 to 16. We are a family-oriented school whose setting allows for the provision of an outstanding contribution to the social, emotional and academic development of each child – creating joy in learning.
We have small class sizes of approximately 16 across the school and this excellent pupil:teacher ratio is key to the educational philosophy that focuses on the provision of a tailored educational journey for each pupil. Our unique environment allows for the early identification of not only strengths to be nurtured but the areas pupils find challenging which can be addressed with personalised support.
We don’t teach towards tests. We are creative in our pupil’s learning and this puts them in good stead for the careers of the future. In a future of artificial intelligence, robotics and other unknown forms of technology, it is crucial we nurture human characteristics; creativity, leadership, problem solving and kindness to name but a few. The main aim of the school is to make each and every pupil aware of his or her innate qualities and skills, and to develop these to full capacity.
This foundation of outstanding pastoral care leads to incredible academic success, as has been proven with our most recent GCSE results. 97% of our pupils achieved 5 or more 4-9 grades and almost 50% of all grades were at the top level. This meant that we featured in the Times’ Top 100 schools list, a remarkable achievement for a non-selective, mixed-ability school.
School Principal, Richard Settle said,
“I am particularly proud of this year’s results. It is a vindication of the school’s belief that by providing outstanding pastoral care pupils will thrive and achieve great results. We continue to be motivated by the huge difference between expected grades given to students when they arrive at Sancton Wood in year 7 compared to the actual results they achieve. However, as I always say – there’s more to school life than tests and results and we must simply ensure we keep providing our children with a memorable and happy school life; if we do this, the results will follow”.
Sancton Wood is part of Dukes Education. This extraordinary family of schools all share the same drive to “inspire, educate and support young people so they can be the very best versions of themselves”. Being part of Dukes Education gives us strength, stability, and access to a wide network of expertise, including strong Oxbridge admissions links, whilst celebrating our own unique character as a school.
Dukes Education have recently invested close to £10 million in the move of our Senior School to Bateman St. This has not only increased the quality of the provision we can offer for our senior students but has allowed us to answer the demand in admissions by increasing our capacity by 45%.
