Helping Children to Understand: The Roche School’s Distinctive Features by James Roche
We provide stimulating teaching, and personal attention and encouragement in small classes so that everyone is engaged, and no one feels unworthy or left out.
This helps pupils to appreciate the issues raised in their studies, to express their ideas clearly and to develop a secure understanding without feeling under pressure. Such skills bring strong academic results and are valuable in every walk of life.
Where children don’t understand, the matter is carefully revisited since essential ideas may take time to grasp. This helps pupils to surmount difficulties, so they gain a buoyant confidence.
We help and encourage pupils to appreciate the issues raised in their studies, so they acquire the assurance to express themselves clearly and effectively. Such skills are valuable in every walk of life.
We continually monitor each pupil’s progress to see where bespoke assistance could be useful. Such timely personal help exemplifies the school’s ruling ethos.
Since different children learn at different rates, most of our Year-Groups are taught English and mathematics in Sets, with all members of a Set having a similar level of understanding which the teaching matches. Parents regularly receive reports on their children’s progress and attainment.
The children are encouraged to develop and expand their interests in sport, art, music and drama, and in history, science, literature etc in lessons, in our library and through the internet – and in our wide range of extra-curricular clubs.
A visitor asked one of our older pupils to describe the school in one word. She replied, “Fun.”
Spanish and English
Spanish and English. For our younger children, one class in each Year-Group is wholly in English, while in the other one, the full English syllabus is followed in the mornings, but afternoon classes are in Spanish.
Young children learn languages naturally. Exposure to proper Spanish develops their language skills without at all holding back their English. It opens wide possibilities for study, cultural understanding and employment both in Spain and in America.
A Parent’s Appraisal
“With 4 children ranging from 21 years to my 9-year-old daughter [who is] at The Roche, I have experienced 8 junior and senior schools, and I can genuinely say that none of them reached the high standard of The Roche in terms of inclusiveness and emotional and academic support, not to mention the amount of outdoor exercise they receive. Kindness, support and equality are all reiterated on a daily basis… In a world where mental health issues are on the rise among adolescents … I can’t help but feel that all my children would have benefited if they had attended The Roche.”
As they get older, pupils are introduced to vital social issues which can include: –
1). Capitalism – employees and investors; its great power and the social problems it can cause.
2). All sections of society should see The Rule of Law (as considered and agreed in Parliament) as existing for everyone’s benefit, whatever frustrations people may feel. Judges and police enforce the law uninfluenced by power, whether political or financial.
3). Farmers need ways of producing more food from each hectare of land without polluting it, so no one need starve, and forests and wildlife thrive.
4). Ever since Newcomen’s steam engine of 1710AD, heat-engines have been polluting the air and causing Global Warming by burning coal, oil or natural gas to move machinery, cars, trains, ships and aircraft – or (since the 1880s) to generate electricity in metal circuits when magnets rotate near them.
5). Map-Making. Once a single distance is measured on Earth, all other distances on Earth, or from Earth to the planets and the nearer stars, can be found just by measuring angles (“triangulation”). So, Eratosthenes (240BC) found the Earth’s radius by using trained walkers to measure the distance between Aswan and Alexandria, and then measuring the angles there at midday on June 21st between the Sun’s rays and the vertical. Bessell (1830AD) used triangulation to find the distance to the nearest stars.
6). Knowing the radius and the time-period of the Moon’s orbit around the Earth (or of the Sun’s orbit around the Galaxy), pupils can use Newton’s Law of Gravity (published 1687) to calculate the Earth’s mass (or the Galaxy’s mass including its Dark Matter).
To hear more about our aspirational, challenging curriculum, reserve an individual tour or come to one of our Open Days.
