Specialist Tuition

Up to Year 4 (age 9) the children are largely taught by class teachers, with input from nursery by specialists in French, swimming, dance and music, and from year 1 in PE as well.

From year 5 onwards, they are entirely taught by specialists. We provide this specialist tuition in English, maths, French, science (physics, chemistry and biology), history, geography, Latin and Religious Studies, music, art and design technology PE and swimming.

It is less a case of deciding what to put in to the curriculum than deciding what to leave out these days. The working week is no longer than it used to be – and so the excessive introduction of too many subjects means a loss of time in other areas. Many schools advocate, for example, teaching several languages in addition to the traditional French and Latin. This is well and good – but invariably games and physical activity suffer first, and then time is chipped off the other core subjects too, like English and maths! Worse, the lost tuition time (after all, the children ultimately have to pass stringent exams to senior schools) is often passed on to the children in excessive homework!

We thus keep the curriculum simple and straightforward.