Ultimately we believe education itself should be about self-empowerment for people, self-empowerment now and for a lifetime. We define education here in its most literal and fundamental sense of ‘e-ducere’ meaning ‘to bring out’ that which is in all of us.
‘Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges. It should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die’
John Taylor Gatto.
…the vision assumes a deep rooted faith in humanity and the vision expects fascination with the individual.
‘The same things which are helps to one person towards cultivation of his higher nature, are hindrances to another….Such are the differences among human beings…that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable.’
John Stuart Mill
…the vision is framed in the present: the premise being that if we want to make the world a better place, we need to start right here, right now…with the people and the resources we have in front of us;
‘Education is the process of living and is not meant [solely] to be the preparation of future living’
Dewey 1897.
‘How might education be received by children if the long term promise was not employment but a fulfilling life? And if that promise was not held as a long term goal but started now- our fulfilling life started in the here and now?’
Debra Kidd, 2014.
‘Realise deeply that the present moment is all you ever have’
Eckhart Tolle, 1999.
…by focusing on the present we believe we can deliver outcomes in the long term, both in terms of what can be achieved by the school as well as what can be achieved by the people in it. We are mindful that too often these days people are in the habit of ‘diverting energies from the long term process of building a great (school) to short-term tricks’ (Collier 2019), so we like to imagine how the present could impact on people in 5, 10, 15 years’ time – we want our school to be a ‘life-long learning incubator’.
‘We can combine the needs of the future and the present by very simply giving children an education that they love now, in which they thrive now… in which they become happy, articulate, resilient, agentive people with the capacity to embrace whatever future they eventually inhabit’.
Debra Kidd, 2014.
…it follows that it has to be about all of us, adults and children alike…
…and it follows that we are committed to an education that benefits us all, to a socially just, more equal society.
‘Through greater equality, we gain a world where status matters less… where social anxieties are less inhibiting of social interaction and people are less plagued by issues of confidence, self-doubt and low self-esteem’
Wilkinson & Pickett, 2019.
‘Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no-one should be denied it’
Alan Munro.
’We feel equal in class. Other people don’t come across as better than me. They may know more about something but the teachers want us to share our learning.’
Pupil self-report 2020
…our starting assumption is that we are all born with a desire for knowledge and we must do everything we can, as a primary school, to maintain and nurture that desire as well as offer pupils the opportunity to think beyond their own experiences and enable them
‘to think the unthinkable and not yet thought…’
Bernstein, 2000.
‘We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development’
Jerome Bruner.
‘The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.’
Plutarch.
… it follows that we believe everyone has something to offer… that therefore one size does not fit all.
“It’s not how smart you are that matters, what really counts is how you are smart”
H. Gardiner.