wellfield education
London
The key to success in education and the workplace is to be surrounded by
inspiring and competent people who can give you the tools you need to reach
their level, as well as the resources to do so. Our aim is first of all to
ensure that the children know and understand what they need from the curriculum
to pass their SATS, GCSEs and A-levels in order to satisfy the requirements of
the education system. Yet more importantly to we seek to braoden their minds –
to get them to want to learn and love learning by putting them in an environment
with highly educated, motivated and intelligent teachers who have been
successful in education and the workplace. Teaching staff include a mixture of
highly qualified teachers, graduate students and other professionals who are
keen to encourage children from all, and especially disadvantaged, backgrounds
in to their professions such as engineering, the sciences, law and writing. We
take those who are not professional teachers intentionally because many children
would not otherwise be exposed to such high level professionals in their day to
day lives, and these motivated, successful people have a wealth of specialist
knowledge not taught in schools. We hope the children will be inspired by these
people. Examples of what we have done outside of the curriculum include training
children for the Maths Challenge which can eventually lead on to the Maths
Olympiad and introducing some very basic ideas from number theory. One of our
teachers was a philosophy graduate and tried teaching basic propositional logic
and reasoning skills. Just before the last term ended, we started a program of
reading classic English literature in the oldest classes and initiated a
debating club. We also have an ambitious program in development to organize work
experience and internships at big city firms, engineering companies and civil
service institutions to show children what they can achieve if they put their
minds to it. Finally, we want members of the community involved. They might
teach, or act as classroom assistants or offer work experience or supervise
behaviour – anything that gets parents involved with their children's education.
