Welcome to a glimpse of St. John’s Prep and Senior School. We are delighted that you have chosen to consider us as a partner as you travel on your educational journey. Whilst our ethos cannot easily be passed to the reader through the limited medium of these pages, we do hope that you will find this insight to be of enough interest to encourage you to visit us.
The information that follows depicts the joy that is life at St John’s. Whether it is the smiling faces, the scenes of competitive sport, the clear love of the performing & creative arts, each image represents a part of our story and is a reflection of our way of life here. Our pupils enjoy a diversity of experience and community that we believe are essential to an effective learning environment.
However, there is that other most essential side of schooling – the side that young people do not fully appreciate until later in life, but whose value will be recognised immediately by their parents and other adults. We are referring to the discipline which comes from a good education, namely: the ability to do what you have to do, when it ought to be done, and to take pride in doing it well. Whatever else we do as a school to prepare our boys and girls for the world outside, this must be an indispensable aspect of a fine education.
There is also a third far less obvious role, which as teachers we may play in the lives of children. We do not see our school as an institution with clearly defined limits. Rather, St. John’s is a very active, living community which permeates the lives, attitudes and minds of its boys and girls. We, who have taken on the responsibility and privilege of teaching young people, do so conscious that from us a child may catch a dream. Who knows when something we say or do may open up the windows of a young mind to a particular road leading to a fulfilling future.
Finally, when we are asked what the school wishes for its pupils, the answer is firstly that they should be taught well to enable them to embrace the future with confidence and enthusiasm, and secondly, whilst they are in our care, a quote from Oscar Wilde encapsulates our ethos:
“ A school should be the most beautiful place in every town, so beautiful that the punishment for undutiful children should be that they be debarred from going to school the following day”.
We look forward to meeting you soon.
