The joy of learning
To return to the theme of my very first assembly of this academic year, our lives need routine as well as excitement. The last few weeks have been punctuated with an awful lot of excitement. And so it is almost with relief that I have found myself popping into lessons to see the daily excellence that, in the end, makes the most significant contribution to a great education.
There is a lot of debate at national level at the moment about what the purpose of education should be. This is a debate as old as Plato, who talked at some length in his Republic about the role of education in his ideal state.
One of the big questions being asked by educators is how we can best prepare our pupils for the future world of work – a world where many jobs may be reshaped or even replaced by automation, and in which our pupils may end up following a number of different career paths.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers to this question but I do believe in a few core principles:
Firstly, a curriculum that encourages breadth and a range of different assessment methods will encourage pupils to work in a number of different ways and develop flexibility. Adaptability in an evolving job market will be critical. Our curriculum in Years 7 to 9 is broad by design and remains so in the GCSE years before specialisation in the Sixth Form, supported by an incredibly broad co-curriculum, leadership opportunities and intellectual enrichment programme.
Secondly, cultivating all those skills which are especially human would seem to be an important priority – creativity, leadership, complex decision-making, engaging with people’s emotions. We need to ensure our young people can do really well the things robots may never learn to do. I am sure there are algorithms to write novels and I know robots can already produce artwork, but there is surely a limit to their originality and ability to engage the human spirit.
Thirdly, encouraging risk-taking and initiative is something we feel to be especially important for girls. Many of our societies are run by the pupils for the pupils. Our Year 10 students impressed me last year with their response to the Tenner Challenge. As did our Year 7 pupils during their Pioneers project, as did all our finalists in the public speaking competition which we run annually and in which all pupils in Years 7 to 10 must take part. Finding opportunities to push pupils out of their comfort zone socially, physically and intellectually is important.
Alarmingly, a recent article in the Sunday Times claimed that only half of UK schools taught Computing. At South Hampstead, pupils learn to work with code from an early age. In the Senior School all pupils have a compulsory weekly lesson in Year 7 and can take it as an option for their Enrichment lesson in Years 8 and 9. It is a popular exam subject at GCSE here and we have just started teaching the A Level. However, we are looking for more opportunities in and out of the formal curriculum.
Finally, and perhaps more controversially, education is not just about work-readiness. A good education should inspire our pupils with a love of learning which stays with them for life. Not only will learning new knowledge and skills be critical in the workplace, but it should also inspire us in our lives outside work. Education should be an end in itself, not just the means to an end.
An awful lot of the stories you will read about on the website illustrate both the functional and inspirational aspect of an education here. The skills our pupils learn in these activities will prepare them in the workplace but also I hope sustain them in life with happy memories, a sense of joy and a desire to pursue interests ‘just because’. Among the recent highlights, I would like to pay particular tribute to our U14A and U16A netball teams who are both through to Middlesex regional finals; to the incredible music scholars who performed in the Year 10 and 11 concert last week; and to Mrs Boyarsky and her amazing team of Mitzvah Day helpers who came in on Sunday to take all the clothes down to Holy Trinity Church for collection by local charities. On their arrival at school, they were greeted by none other than a Chief Rabbi, a Cardinal and a Bishop – we don’t do things by halves at South Hampstead.
Blog post by Vicky Bingham, Headmistress from 2017 to 2023.