Barney Durrant, Head of St Lawrence College, discusses the key factors of choosing any school for your child
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As a head teacher with three children, one of the key factors in making a decision as to where I want to teach is whether my children will thrive in that school. There are a whole host of factors that I look at when deciding which school to choose, but fundamentally it comes down to one thing – will my children be happy.
This may seem like an interesting thing for a head to say, but it does not mean that I don’t value academia and nor does it mean that I am not expecting rigour within a school. Ultimately though, my children will thrive in a school when they are happy ? but this does not happen by chance. For schools to genuinely develop positive wellbeing amongst their children, there needs to be a clearly thought-out programme of social and emotional learning, and this needs to run throughout the school. St Lawrence College
So, why do I think that this is so important" The explicit teaching of values, respect and compassion are vital to developing empathetic learners with the soft skills necessary to thrive in the 21st century marketplace. Schools should not just be places where we learn subjects, but places to learn about our position within the global society, to learn about different cultures and customs and to understand differences.
They provide opportunities for our pupils to develop tolerance and to understand how diverse...