Innovation across the School

We firmly believe that the prime focus of the drive for innovation in the school should be the students. Students are at their best when they are creative, imaginative, flexible, problem-solving and entrepreneurial.

As the school grows and develops, the Student Council will have the foremost role in our approach. It will be for them to suggest and promote ideas for changing the classroom and the school – physically and culturally.

We have started by introducing ‘green’ measures to save resources in the school and the work can extend to students taking responsibility for areas of the school’s operations. It is important to place the first responsibility with students but this does not mean that future work will be un-guided or unsupervised. Our experience is that students respond well to the responsibility and our belief is that this form of student engagement is going to be a growing trend. Indeed, we believe higher student engagement will be an innovation itself in the global development of schools.

The lead for innovation will be evident in the school as both a top-down and bottom-up force. The governors and Principal will champion innovation and enterprise.

They will constantly pose challenges to the student body. Teachers will follow this through in every subject. The students will be expected, encouraged and supported to find solutions to real-world challenges.

By working with students, we will examine how to build innovative thinking and responses into every school feature and process. We consider the important infrastructure to be cultural and intellectual: it is the whole school that should have ‘the expectation that students will respond innovatively’.