Teaching & Learning Prep
Teaching and learning lies at the heart of St John’s. We aim to provide the finest all-round education for your child, within a supportive community and caring, family atmosphere. The curriculum consists of all the activities that we organise to promote learning, personal growth and development. The main aim of our curriculum is to offer a broad, balanced and stimulating education to every child, that extends our most able pupils while offering support for pupils who find academic work more challenging. Year 3 and 4 teaching uses topic-based learning and all years follow the broad outline of the National Curriculum but, as an independent school, the schemes of work are developed and extended as we feel best meets the needs of our pupils. We also prepare pupils for entrance tests and pre-tests for their next school. These most commonly happen in Year 6 and include maths, English, verbal and non-verbal reasoning.
The Pre Senior Baccalaureate
We want to ensure that our pupils not only love their time at St John’s, but leave well prepared for the next stage of their education and for life beyond school, so our pupils work towards Pre Senior Baccalaureate (PSB). We use the skills and ethos of the PSB throughout the school, giving every child a chance to shine.
The PSB allows teachers, who know our pupils really well, to design courses to excite, engage and challenge every one of them – from high fliers to those who need support to maximise their learning potential. This means that teachers can foster a love of learning rather than racing through learning facts for a final exam; we look at their progress across the whole time they are learning. The PSB is a framework covering subject knowledge, subject skills and core skills – these help pupils develop as learners. We nurture skills that we know our pupils will increasingly need in the workplace of the future such as collaboration, leadership, communication, independence, thinking and learning.
The Pre-Senior Project Qualification (PSPQ) is a real highlight of the Year 8; pupils have their own free choice of a project, and they love the opportunity to explore a passion in greater depth or discover a new one. Not only do our pupils enjoy completing their PSPQ, but they also learn task management, how to research and independence which will are skills that will help them flourish at Senior School.
One of the great things about the PSB is it gives us the opportunity to celebrate every child and their own particular talents: not only do we recognise pupils’ academic abilities, the PSB includes all the subjects children learn including languages, art, sport, music and drama. It also enables us to share a child’s extra-curricular achievements, whether that is singing in the choir, captaining the rugby team, being part one of our eco warriors or performing in a play. When pupils leave with their PSB certificate in Year 8, it is a real celebration of the whole child and all they have achieved.