HPL Commentary and Narrative:
We are a non-selective private school with pupils from 2.5 years to 13 years old (Year 8). Even though we are independent, in the past we have been led by the demands of the senior schools that our pupils go on to. However, with the recent changes to the entrance requirements from senior schools we have been able to move away from the confines of a Common Entrance syllabus. This meant we had more freedom to teach subjects as we wanted and to equip pupils with the skills needed to go forward rather than just subject knowledge. We wanted to move away from pure content learning to teaching pupils the long-term life skills they can acquire from subjects, rather than the other way round. The following article written to parents by our headmaster, Martin Barker, explains this shift.
We chose to go with the HPL program because it already aligned with many of our core values. Our Westbourne Way aligns closely with the VAAs (Values, Attitudes and Attributes) and our definition of a scholar is for all pupils and aligns with the ACPs (Advanced Cognitive Performance Characteristics). We felt however, that HPL could formalise and give a more systematic approach to these values.
Our first step was to introduce the language and the concept to staff and pupils. Our staff inset day included making scones and trying to use all the strands while working in teams of staff from across the school (photo from the day). We created our own Westbourne House superheroes so that the younger pupils could relate to the strands (Our HPL Superheroes). These are now in their second iteration. Our prefects dressed up as the superheroes and led sessions for younger prefects on the strands and how they helped learning.
Staff started to use the language in all their lessons and we have adapted our schemes of work to incorporate HPL. In the Prep School, we changed our credit system so that pupils gain credits for HPL strands for their houses (patrols) (example of credits tracking) and in the Pre-Prep the ‘Work of the Week’ was changed so that it reflected HPL core values.
In January 2020, we had another staff inset day where different members of staff from across the school talked about how they used different strands in their lessons.
We went into lockdown in our third term, but this provided us with a wonderful opportunity to showcase the skills that were needed to cope with the unknown and how HPL was helping the attitudes of pupils. It also meant that parents were able to see on a daily basis how the HPL was being used across the school in all lessons (Article to parents in newsletter).
Our students have always been socially confident, but through the HPL journey they have become intellectually confident, able to talk about their learning and how they learn.
This page runs alongside our HPL Self-Evaluation.
