Academic

We achieve excellent examination results and yet St Bede’s is not selective academically. We believe that a wide range of academic abilities and talents are essential to providing a successful education in its broadest sense. We seek to understand and develop each student’s maximum potential and to give credit for attaining it, whatever the level or field of interest. The mixture of day and boarding students enhances learning through the wide exchange of experiences.

St Bede’s has an outstanding record of helping young people to achieve their maximum potential. Academic ability ranges widely, from the highly-gifted to those with particular learning difficulties, such as dyslexia and dyspraxia, for which we provide specialist help.

Developing our students’ ability to learn for themselves is fundamental to their success. From the start, every student has a personal tutor. Our aim is to provide each boy and girl with a high level of individual support and to lay the foundations of a trusting relationship that will grow throughout the student’s time at school. A one-to-one weekly meeting allows tutors and students the time needed to review in detail progress across the whole range of school activities.

In consultation with tutorial staff and their parents, students can choose from a very broad range of optional subjects and a huge extra-curricular agenda. Close contact between parents and personal tutors is therefore particularly important, providing another critical forum in which to assess a child’s progress.

Eventually, the tutor will also help to provide careers guidance and advice on higher education.

We teach our students how to learn, structuring the curriculum around individuals’ needs. This demands a very low student to teacher ratio. Close relationships help staff to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each individual, and to counsel them accordingly. Students can choose to follow courses placing an emphasis on the traditional, academic curriculum, or those that support their individual talents and interests. Computer skills are integral to everything we do and our wireless network gives open access to our learning resources from anywhere on the campus.

In the three years leading up to GCSE, the average number in a teaching group is around 16 students, arranged in forms and sets according to ability. In the First Form – Year 9 – they follow a common, widely-based curriculum to prepare them for their choice of GCSE courses, which they make during the third term. Depending on ability, they have the option of sitting a wide range of GCSEs, which they can choose from a total of over thirty subjects. All course options are treated with equal respect. Some students sit certain GCSEs a year or even two years early, enabling them to increase their range of subjects.

In consultation with parents and subject heads, personal tutors guide students in their choice of course, helping to build the curriculum around the individual’s strengths. The Fifth Form years – 10 and 11 – are particularly important since they lay the foundations for the final years at school. Here, students learn to organise their studies for themselves and to work more independently.

We have a dedicated Learning Support Department to assist both the exceptionally gifted, who require enhanced academic programmes, and those with special educational requirements. We have a wide variety of specialist subject rooms, studios and dedicated areas for small group and strategic one-on-one coaching.

Our excellent modern library is staffed throughout the day and during prep, providing a shared, calm space for working and reading. It is equipped with networked computer stations and our computer facilities include a campus-wide, wireless network and secure, filtered access to the Internet.