Our Aims and Ethos

Our Aims

“Pupils at this school work hard and achieve well. They gain qualifications in a wide range of subjects, and this helps them to be well prepared for their next stage in education and/or employment”. ​(Ofsted May 2022)

We are a high achieving school which focuses on excellent teaching and learning and high standards of behaviour. All girls are given opportunities to develop their interests and talents in a wide variety of extra curricular activities and above all, they are safe and secure.

We want to get the best from every girl, raising standards even higher whilst maintaining the caring ethos of Swakeleys. We encourage our pupils to take responsibility, to make a valuable contribution to the running of the school and to become respected members of our community. We aim to:

• Create a school community based on equal opportunities in which each individual is valued, and where learning will thrive so that girls will gain a sense of achievement from the learning process.
• Provide a challenging and stimulating environment which will enable every girl to achieve the highest level of skills, knowledge and qualifications of which she is capable.
• Teach self discipline and a sense of responsibility to self and others and to foster a commitment to excellence.
• Widen the horizons of all our students, to make them aware of the rich cultural diversity of our society, and to prepare them for the wide variety of roles open to women on today’s world.
• Foster close links with the local community and to be flexible as an institution so as to evaluate and respond to new initiatives, both from inside and outside the school.

Our Ethos

At Swakeleys School for Girls the safety, happiness and progress of every child is paramount. Our focus is to ensure that students enjoy school, achieve well, aspire to fulfilling futures and feel happy and successful. Swakeleys is a very friendly school and a very welcoming community. We think our students are fantastic and want to do all that we can to ensure their success.

We ensure that every child is safe through our highly effective pastoral system which includes support from tutors, heads of year, pastoral mentors, place2be, welfare and attendance. Students’ personal development is supported through an effective tutor programme, assembly programme and personal, social and health education (PSHE lessons).

Students are happy and enjoy Swakeleys because they are supported exceptionally well pastorally and because they make progress in their lessons. They are taught by subject specialists, many of whom have worked at the school for a long time and are experts both in teaching, teaching their subject and teaching Swakeleys students in particular. Students are happy because they have fun together at school both in lessons and during break and lunchtimes. Students are involved with various activities from clubs to trips and competitions. Our house system is a key focus of the school ethos with every member of our community (the only exceptions being the headteacher and head of sixth form) being part of one of our 8 houses – all named after inspirational women. Students enjoy Swakeleys because they are recognised and rewarded for their efforts and achievements every day at school.

Students make fantastic progress at Swakeleys whatever their starting point. Our NVR test ensures that we have the full range of abilities in our student body and we ensure that students make fantastic progress and this is shown by our results which can be found by clicking here Swakeleys students achieve all sorts of amazing things during their time with us. They may be involved in our annual school production, take part in house talent, house debate, extra curricular clubs, public speaking training, be a member of one of our committed sports teams or be a leader for their year group or form and represent their peers’ views as part of school council.

Our aspire value is very important to us at Swakeleys. We work to ensure that all of our students have experience of the world of work throughout their time at the school. We have a weekly careers focus during term time, an annual careers fortnight, access to unifrog, outside visitors coming into school to share their experiences and support with interview skills, CV writing etc etc. We support all of our Year 10 students to access work shadowing knowing that it builds their confidence and helps them to be successful in the future.