Harrow International School’s Prep School enters its second year. A Preparatory School, or Prep School in the United Kingdom is an independent school designed to prepare a student for a Secondary Independent School (public school).Whilst many Prep Schools prepare their students for entry to a range of senior schools, some are closely associated with a single school. Harrow UK for instance receives the majority of its students from Prep Schools and we have already developed links with some of these schools - such as Northwood Prep and Orley Farm School to name but two.

The Prep School at Harrow International School caters for students in Year 6 and Year 7. The school is housed on the top floor of the current Prep/Junior building and has a dedicated social/play area for its students. An experienced team of Prep School staff teach many of the lessons within the Prep School building. However, a number of lessons are taught in other areas of the school.

The teaching team teach specialist subjects as well as acting as Class Tutors and having pastoral care responsibility for Prep School classes. Additional specialist teachers are used in certain areas of the curriculum.

The school moved in this direction for a number of reasons some of which are listed below :

Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3 transition

• There needs to be a more natural progression between Key Stages. Students transferring from the Primary are suddenly moved from a sheltered environment and expected to cope with many different teachers whilst not getting the contact with one teacher that they received in Primary. A Prep School will provide an easier and less disruptive progression towards the expectations of Secondary School.
  

KS3 Curriculum developments in the UK

• Major curriculum changes were implemented regarding the KS3 curriculum in the UK at the start of the 2008/09 academic year. This is in response to calls for a more creative curriculum for students of this age. We have discussed being more creative with our KS3 curriculum for some years at Harrow and by developing a Prep School it allowed us to embark on a major KS3 curriculum review.

Cross-curricular links

• Cross-curricular dimensions provide important unifying areas of learning which help students make sense of the world and give education relevance and authenticity. A team of teachers who teach a combination of the same subjects and in the same year group will be able to develop cross-curricular bridges more readily than has been the case previously.

Using English as the Common Language throughout the School

• Pupils in the Primary School use English widely as the medium of conversation both inside and outside the classroom. With the closer pastoral care involved in Prep School and a separation from older students this was more easily achieved.

Advantages to Secondary School

• The Prep School prepares the Year 6 and 7 for a Secondary type of Education. Already we have seen our last year’s Year 7 move easily into the Secondary School for this current year.
• By creating a Prep school we are freeing space in the main Secondary building for senior students and classes.
• By reducing the number of year groups which Heads of Houses need to monitor and support, we are increasing the levels of pastoral care and supervision that will be given to the other year groups.

As a school we continuously seek ways to improve the quality of educational provision for our students. In particular, developing the Prep School was another step towards achieving our goal of ‘Creating Leaders for a Better World.’