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Academic Life

Providing a first class, liberal education and developing the whole individual.

Academic life at Latymer centres around our primary aim of providing a first class, liberal education where pupils achieve their full potential and show consideration for others. As such, our academic vision is focused on developing the whole individual so that they can not only take their place within society, but also strive to shape it for the better.

Through a shared vision of excellence across all departments and their curricula and an absence of prescriptive ways in which to deliver them, our teaching strategies aim to deliver a high level of challenge, to stimulate, to captivate, to question and to go beyond the confines of the National Curriculum thereby helping pupils to develop lively and enquiring minds; another of our school’s aims. This can be witnessed in the debates and reflective discussions that take place in the many student-led societies and in the inquisitive and creative minds of those who contribute articles to the numerous student magazines and journals that are a feature of so many departments.

Equal importance and appreciation is placed on learning. Students are frequently asked to reflect on how to approach particular tasks, to monitor and evaluate their thinking when carrying out activities and are encouraged to not only become better independent learners but to how to get more from themselves. Our initial collaboration with Thinking Matters and the University of Exeter, will, ultimately, lead to our students being able to adapt to the unknown, to acquire strategies to make progress at whatever they set their mind to and to be increasingly future-proofed.

Whilst value is placed on the experience of school itself, we understand the importance of preparing our students for their life and learning ahead, and as such we place considerable emphasis on opportunities beyond the confines of the classroom. Here, just as in the classroom, we aim to develop team-players, risk-takers, resilience and leadership skills and for a state school, both the co-curricular and extra-curricular offer is unique in size and wide in choice across all three Key Stages, thereby allowing even more of the students’ full potential to be met.