Head's Blog: 21st Century Skills

Dear Parents,

I hope that the term has started well for you and more importantly your children. I had a lovely afternoon yesterday (until 4pm… when the rain came!) umpiring and looking after the Colts A team – it was an exciting match with some wonderful cricket, not least a difficult catch (made to look easy) by our wicket keeper, Molly Adams. What celebrations and congratulations! It is a good little team in the making but I am sure that places will be hard to keep, with the other Colts players keen to show their worth.

I like my staff to be given as many opportunities as possible to progress their career, to learn from other educational settings and to have exciting professional development. It allows them to see the world beyond Handcross Park and West Sussex – away from the ‘bubble’. Last weekend, I allowed Mr O’Connor to attend an Educational Conference in Lisbon; there were a variety of teachers and educational thinkers from across Europe in attendance but he was the only UK Prep school teacher. There was a lot of discussion about ‘21st Century skills’ : critical thinking, creativity, personal and social responsibility, collaboration, learning to learn, digital competences, and communication – please remember that 65% of primary-aged children will be doing a job that does not exist yet!

The conference had an interesting programme and list of speakers who focused upon the following key areas:

• Pupils’ and teachers’ skills and roles;
• Learning styles;
• Learning environment design;
• Current and emerging ICT solutions;
• Societal trends that effect education.

Mr O’Connor’s feedback has given us lots to think about – Handcross Park continues to be progressive, especially with a new English classroom block on our strategic agenda. However, I want to finish on two observations, and those are the importance of ‘reading’ and our accelerated reader programme: please encourage your children to read at home; it is so important. Finally, it was mentioned in the news about children being unable to tell the time because they look at digital displays not analogue clock faces. This was a particular problem in examination halls for GCSE and A Levels… I assume that this does not include any Handcross pupils? What is the time?

Richard Brown,

Headmaster