Mr Steve Green, Head of Senior School:

High Performance Learning (or HPL) is a coordinated and communicable cross-phase educational philosophy that has helped us to develop a shared language of learning from 3-18 and which lifts the ceiling to enable even higher performance for all of our students.

HPL fits perfectly with the Queen’s ethos and mission to prepare young people ‘not for school, but for life’. We are now half way along the journey to ‘World Class School’ accreditation. Much of our work in the first year has focused on embedding the philosophical concepts across our school community. This starts with the genuine belief that all of our pupils are capable of high performance, and is coupled with the understanding that it is possible to explicitly teach and learn the skills and attitudes needed to make those performance gains.

As we embark on the second year of this journey, we will be developing the ideas and practice across all faculties and key stages. High Performance Learning is a teachers’ agenda and so our continuing professional development will be based in classroom practice. Teachers will be working together to help one another, visiting each other’s lessons to pinpoint ways in which HPL can be used to accelerate progress.

We will also be working on the relationship between High Performance Learning and developing ‘disciplinary literacies’ to help our young people to think, read and write in modes appropriate to each of their different subjects. You may see some differences in the way in which teachers provide feedback on pupils’ work, but please be assured that we will continue to keep our parent community informed and involved, every step of the way.

Keep an eye out for more on High Performance Learning in the new school year and, in the meantime, if you would like to know more about our ‘roadmap’ for year 2, take a look at the High Performance Learning section of the Queen’s website.