This academic year we are delighted to launch our own Middle School Diploma, a qualification developed in-house to enhance the education of our students from Years 9-11. The qualification will sit alongside GCSE, IGCSE and our own Sevenoaks School Certificates, and aims to help students develop soft skills, such as self-awareness, creativity, collaboration and social responsibility, which are needed for university, the workplace and general life. Sevenoaks is unique in its development of the curriculum, and the Middle School Diploma is a further statement of our belief that education can be ambitious, broad, inclusive and exciting. More details available here
This has been supported recently by the latest Prince’s Trust report, Results for Life 2017, which concluded that soft skills are equally as, if not more, important than grades. Read the Prince’s Trust report here
Our Middle School Diploma was endorsed by Lord Lucas, the Editor of the Good Schools Guide, who said ‘I am delighted to see a school taking such clear steps to emphasise and celebrate crucial aspects of education, absent from performance tables but vital to a happy and successful life. The recording of achievements beyond the curriculum, and pupils’ reflections on them, provide pupils with a substantial base of confidence and self-awareness to which they can refer for years afterwards. Sevenoaks has shown, with its Sevenoaks School Certificates, that it can command the respect of pupils, parents and universities for the academic judgements that it makes about its pupils’ work; they clearly intend to apply the same standards to their new Middle School Diploma.’
