EDUCATION CORNER PODCAST
EDUCATION CORNER PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH HEAD
Mr. Adam Pettitt FROM HIGHGATE SCHOOL, NORTH LONDON Mr. Adam Pettitt speaks to us about the values at Highgate School, as well as their partnership with London Academy of Excellence Tottenham, the importance of pupil voice and Highgate’s core teaching philosophy. Could you tell us about the values and ethos at Highgate School?
I was thinking about this, and I think our young people would say that we have three values: the first being to do what you love and what you’re good at. Exams are incidental; they may be an important learning experience, but how you travel to your destination is important. In boring grown-up speak, we call school a place for learning and scholarship there is an idea that you arrive as a dependent child needing adults to help you, but you want to leave having acquired the skills to set your own agenda and secure your own academic and employment aims. I think the children would also say that serving others, rather than your own interests, is a rewarding and fulfilling way to lead your life. We’re a well-resourced school, we’re an advantaged school and we have an obligation and ability to contribute to other people’s learning outside our community - we call that being a reflective community. We need to see the impact that we as individuals - and therefore, grossed up, as a community - have on others. The third value is that we all need balance in our lives, so what you do beyond work and beyond the classroom really does matter. That’s how you’re going to make and sustain friendships. What parents and teachers can do to build students’ happiness is provide ways for young people to spend time together, so that they find friendships that counteract the virtual world and create a 46 | EDUCATION CHOICES MAGAZINE | AU T U M N 2 02 3
lifelong ability to meet new people and take interest in them, regardless of their background. I think, broadly speaking, those are our three values. I think they’ll resonate with a lot of people because they are things that are important for all young people, but I suppose the argot we use to describe them probably helps them to become anchored in what we actually try to do, day by day. You work especially closely with London Academy of Excellence, Tottenham. Can you tell us a bit about your work with them, and how this partnership benefits the pupils there and at Highgate?
London Academy of Excellence is right next door
