Ensuring holistically, highly skilled individuals who are ready for the world.
In April 2021, Cranleigh Abu Dhabi shared exciting news about its then new Careers and Futures Curriculum, which was to be integrated into the school’s formal curriculum, to ensure holistically educated, highly skilled individuals who are ready for the world.
“We’re one year into the programmes now,” says Elizabeth. “Our Year 9 students take three lessons a week of the Core Curriculum in addition to their standard subjects.”
Elizabeth explains how the Year 9 students have already covered a Philosophy Course, which is accredited by The New College of the Humanities in the UK. The course itself was built by Dr John Taylor Director of Learning, Teaching and Innovation at Cranleigh UK, with responsibility for the development of independent learning across the three schools in the Cranleigh family.
“The students start off by exploring philosophical ideologies. They explore Plato and Aristotle in a language that they understand, giving them access to a philosophical thought process without them knowing it. It provides an opportunity to debate, to discuss, to engage with the world around them, and to think critically.
“Such debates and discussions are focused on current world events,” Elizabeth says. “Students are then able to explore something and not just be told what it’s about, but instead figure it out for themselves, dig a little bit deeper. What’s important for us [as a school] is how students can take it a step further, how they can make an impact, how they can change it or how they can influence it.”
Students then get to embark on their own project, encouraging them to engage further with the subject. “We feel, which is tied to Dr Taylor’s thinking as well, that students perform better when they make their own academic choices.”
Students are also expected to create their own questions, which is similar to the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), an independent research task. “For example, one student is looking at art and how different people interact and appreciate it. Another student is researching the question ‘does our clothing define us?’, and so on.”
Students then record a presentation of their answer to this question, which is rooted in theory and research and en-route, learn how to cite and source information, skills that are undoubtedly useful once students enter university.
There is also an optional element to the course whereby students can opt into a creative writing course. “A number of students who did this have won a scholarship to the Cambridge Summer Courses,” says Elizabeth.
Students are armed with such skills long before they reach university and coupled with that is The Futures Programme, which is also part of the three lessons a week. According to Elizabeth, students are future focused and have the opportunity to explore their future options and are developing skills that they can add to their academic CV and record on their university application.
“It prompts students very early on to think about what they want to improve on and helps individual students to be more holistically educated. Students are making choices that will help them along their induvial pathway,” she says.
Year 9 students have completed the first year of the Senior Core Curriculum and now are moving into the Higher Project Qualification (HPQ ), which is a more defined, independent research project compared to the Philosophy project. “It’s all about resourcing, researching, citing, bias and creating their own chain of thought and then their own question they want to research.”
The project culminates in students creating an artifact. “This year, one student created a dance performance, while other students chose a traditional route where they did a dissertation, exploring the question that they chose. It is a process that starts in Year 10 this coming September and when they move into Year 12, they take the EPQ.”
In the Sixth Form, students take five key modules which they engage in five days a week. “This is quite powerful in itself as in day-to-day life in Cranleigh, students are constantly working on skills development and the portfolio of skills they will need for university,” says Elizabeth.
The Reading Review is the underlying thread of the five key modules and a list of books has been tailored so that they speak to Cranleigh Abu Dhabi’s future doctors, humanitarians, lawyers and the more creative students. “Each student has the opportunity to choose four books across two years that are of interest to them,” she says, explaining how the books help students look at the world differently and critically.
Another of the five modules is Global Citizenship and Awareness, which, in part, is scaffolded around the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. “Students take concepts from this book and apply it to actions and reactions into the media in the real world, in a project we call ‘Newsflash’ from a social, economic and environmental point of view, applying it to why things have happened the way they have in the world.”
The Personal and Social Development module includes teaching students about ethics, relationships. The module creates awareness of specific topics that students will encounter when they enter the international environment. “Two students, Mona and Georgia, explored ethics, policy and gender equality through a paper they wrote and were thus invited to attend the International Women’s Forum that was hosted in Abu Dhabi in February, where Hilary Clinton was a keynote speaker.”
The EPQ module is mandatory at Cranleigh Abu Dhabi in order that every student is able to build the needed skills and development that stands them in good stead for their future life. “At the end of this module students, even those who did not like the course, say by the end of the module that they are glad that they did it and had learned tangible skills.”
Careers and Futures modules, which includes work experiences and opportunities with initiatives and programmes such as IRENA, is led by Elizabeth. The module deals with work experience, developing skills sets, supercurricular activities. “It’s also about being future focused,” she says. “Identifying what they want to do and how they want to do it.
“Students don’t focus on the destination. They are following their own path, gathering the pieces of the puzzle and eventually arriving where they should be.”
The Senior School Careers and Futures Curriculum at Cranleigh Abu Dhabi is a process that takes root in Year 9 and by Year 10, students are already thinking critically, and working towards what will be expected of students once they reach university.
However, it is not just about university since The Senior School Careers and Futures Curriculum ensures how students conduct themselves in the real world too. “It is a curriculum map that has been in the making for five years now,” says Elizabeth. “We are in our first year of delivery. What we are doing at Cranleigh Abu Dhabi is very different to what other schools do.”
For more information, visit cranleigh.ae
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