Your school and your family
Your school and your family: are you happy in this relationship?
There’s no doubt you and your child’s school are in a relationship. But what kind of a relationship is that? Is this a warm friendship, a business partnership, or more like a cold war? What’s normal, anyway? And what would a “perfect relationship” with a school mean to you and is it ever possible to achieve that? We know lots of questions are bugging you on everyday basis. Those are just a few we’ve heard from you:
Help! My child has a teacher who can’t control the class/shouts/doesn’t smile/can’t teach.
My child hates her teacher. And so do I. What to do?
I’d like to talk to a teacher but she seems to never have time for me.
Why so much homework? What’s considered “right” for different ages?
It irritates me when the school asks my child to make things at home. Why do they do it?
When it comes to after school activities, why is the English approach to do everything at an “amateur” level rather than choosing one thing to do very well?
My child’s school doesn’t seem very concerned about helping my child to prepare for entrance exams at (7+/8+/11+) - what can I do?
Everyone is doing private tutoring. Should I?
Panic no more. We’re going to address those and many other questions for you*. Following the success of our previous event, we have top education consultant Dr Patrick Fullick again who will chair a discussion with the headteachers of two leading prep schools to address these and other burning questions. Come prepared to ask all about those things that you want answered - candidly and fully!
*The discussion will be focused on the private school sector
Dr. PATRICK FULLICK
Dr Patrick Fullick is personal education consultant to globally mobile families from around the world. Based on over 30 years’ professional experience, his advice is founded on his strong personal conviction that education must be treated as any other investment, where potential returns have to be understood and where each family’s individual values also play a key rôle. His forthcoming book, Unlearn Education, is a guide for families who wish to achieve personal growth, family learning and succession.
HELEN SNOW
Helen Snow is Headmistress of Sunny Hill Preparatory School (3-11) IAPS, part of Bruton School for Girls (11-18) GSA in Somerset. She has a great breadth of teaching experience involving elementary teaching in the US, secondary teaching in the UK together with time in Berlin, and is totally committed to primary teaching. ‘I’ve taken the best bits of the National Curriculum and left the rubbish’, she told the Good School Guide.
Bruton School for Girls is known for its ability to get the very best out of its pupils - “added-value” in education-speak. Although the school is non-selective, GCSE and A-level results are very comparable to selective schools. This year the school received its best ever examination results, bucking the national trend of falling A*grades, with two girls off to Cambridge, one to Oxford and one to do medicine from an U6 year group of 24. The prep-school is similarly high-performing, in the top 12% of the country for added-value. But excellent academic results are only one aspect of the school. Girls may choose from weekly riding, judo and archery lessons, as well as enjoy dance, hockey and netball, the Leiths cookery school course, numerous music and drama groups.
GILES TOLLIT
Giles Tollit is Headmaster of Horris Hill School near Newbury, a prep school for boys aged from 7 to 13. He was educated at Holmewood House in Kent and then Sevenoaks, where he was an academic scholar, going on to study classics at Bristol on an army bursary. However, a gap year job as Head of Classics at a prep school led to a career in teaching, with 10 years at Caldicott and then Bilton Grange as deputy head.
Horris Hill School is a small school, with no year groups. Instead, boys are taught in small classes (average 12) based on their progress, remaining in that class until they have reached the required level. The school understands that parents looking at the school want their son to succeed academically, to enjoy a 'second home’ environment and for him to move on to a top senior school. The school is set in a beautiful natural setting with woods and plenty of open space - no boy will feel confined such an environment! There are sports pitches, a golf course, a kitchen garden and woods, with den-building, camping and bushcraft some of the favourite year-round activities.
29 September, 09.30 am
MariVanna restaurant, Knightsbridge
£40
