We don’t take 11+ success for granted at St Christopher’s. Each year, our families, girls and staff funnel immense dedication and skill into the process. As a result, the success that invariably follows feels substantial. The girls are able to look back and say: ‘I did that’. This sense of achievement at a young age should not be undersold.
The aim of our 11+ programme (it is a programme – with achievement and growth at its core, its reach far exceeding test preparation), indivisible from our aims as a school: to produce literate, compassionate, strong, ambitious young women who can face the succeeding phases of their lives with steely gaze. Furthermore, they will be reflective, autonomous learners. The school’s Making Thinking Visible programme, an offshoot of Harvard’s Project Zero, plays no small part in this.
The girls’ success is not merely the consequence of what we plan academically. It is an expression of the plays, the assemblies, sports fixtures, concerts and the dizzying array of delights which greet them along the way. The girls learn to rise – and fall from time to time – in a safe-stakes environment which fosters growth. It is a glorious seven-year odyssey for our girls, not a fevered dash to the finish line at 7.
We are unashamedly a school for the ages, not for 7+. We urge our parents to take the longer view, not duck out at 7 when their daughters are happily ensconced within their cohort.
When our Year 6 girls tour prospective parents, they don’t swerve the reality that 11+ entails hard work. But parents see through the eyes of those pupils that their lives have been forged by so much more than VR, say.
We try to reverse the loose rhetoric about 11+ (if let unattended, it could become nothing more than the collected perceptions and projections of other people’s stress) and upskill the gains. Every year we stand back admiringly as we assess how far each individual and each Year 6 cohort has come.
The girls have learnt what deep camaraderie is, united in a common purpose. Their work ethic is sharpened, which will fortify them for the busy future lives they are fashioned to lead. They become hardier.
As importantly, as my predecessor used to say, ‘they start to imagine their future selves’. That self is one that has embraced change as a necessary concomitant of life and turned it into something celebratory.
A parent asked me recently ‘what will 11+ be like for my daughter?’ My answer was ‘what we choose to make it for her’. If we give her the space to grow, to augment her appetite for learning, further ignite her curiosity, then we will have been truly successful in satisfying our aims.
St Christopher’s School
32 Belsize Lane, London NW3 5AE
Tel: 0207 435 1521,
Website: stchristophers.london
