Governors 2025 Vision

We will all fulfil our unique, God-given potential

“I came to give life – life in all its fullness” - John 10 v10

“The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” - Irenaeus of Lyons

The Governors’ 2025 Vision is rooted in our Christian mission: ‘We will all fulfil our unique, God-given potential’ and our school values:

Service to Others;
Generosity of Spirit;
Commitment to Excellence.

It also seeks to meet our school aims that every student will:

Shine
Grow
Communicate

This is an aspirational document, written in February 2021, setting out where we wish to be by December 2025. It picks out five inter-related themes, which build on our existing strengths, aspiring to take these to greater heights.

By 2021, we had established ourselves as the school of first choice for local parents and were recognised as a caring and nurturing inclusive school where every child, regardless of ability, can achieve their full potential. In 2018 we were awarded a national quality award for the value of our career guidance and we were delighted to be recognised by Ofsted as a ‘good’ school whose provision for our students’ personal development and welfare is ‘outstanding’. Our 2019 SIAMS inspection also found us to be ‘excellent’ as a Church of England school living out our distinctive Christian vision. In 2019, a review by Challenge Partners accredited our professional development of staff as an area of excellence.

Going forward, achieving success in the future relies upon the prudent planning of our finances, the diligent work of our governors and the dedicated leadership of our principal and leadership team. Active engagement with parents, with our feeder primary schools and local community will continue to contribute to that success. The five key drivers of excellence we have chosen to focus on in this document do not encapsulate all that we do; rather they set out key areas which, we believe, will best help us to deliver a school-wide culture of ‘commitment to excellence’.

Our vision for 2025 is to be a school which achieves excellence in every aspect of learning for each and every one: always, in every subject, every year-group, every lesson and in the non-examined parts of the curriculum.

Our ambition for a graduate of Saint Gabriel’s College is that they will display a wholeness of achievement and character. We aspire for every member of our school community to believe wholeheartedly that it is good to grow in knowledge, skill and ability; it is good to grow in self-awareness and understanding; it is good to grow in maturity and consideration for others; it is good to become a fulfilled and successful proactive citizen in our society.

All these things are good; all are interdependent. Our school is based on a commitment that our students will grow, not just in any single one of them, but as a whole. So, we place great importance on the spiritual wellbeing of each student and fostering their generosity of spirit expressed in serving others. That does not mean just telling: it means listening to individual students and to each other; it means reflecting; it means acting together.

Delivering our vision requires teachers who are dedicated, innovative and inspired. To nurture our teachers, we give them ample time and resources to prepare their lessons with a calm focus. We encourage innovation and we have a strong commitment to continuing professional development of all our staff. We foster team-working, so colleagues can share their learning and growth in good practice. This means high-performing teams in the school retain their strength when team members leave or new members join.

By December 2025, we aspire to make the following an accurate description of Saint Gabriel’s:

1. Students leave Saint Gabriel’s having received an excellent education combining an interconnected academic curriculum with a first-rate enrichment curriculum.

Our curriculum is constantly evolving in the belief that knowledge and understanding do not exist in tight silos and that learning is most creative when it explores links across subjects and disciplines.

We have developed our ‘Big Ideas Curriculum’ to equip students with a sound understanding of the key concepts in each of their subjects. Then, where possible, our curriculum has been organised into cross-curricular themes, encouraging a multidisciplinary approach, so students understand how key concepts are interrelated across the curriculum. As a result, students are able to articulate the ‘big ideas’ and explain how they are linked to their previous learning and to the world, and they can transfer this knowledge into new situations and apply it to new contexts.

To complement our Big Ideas Curriculum, the school has developed an independent learning assessment system to ensure that conceptual understanding is underpinned by secure subject knowledge. As a result, students are able to recall key knowledge as required and to use technical vocabulary fluently.

In tune with the diverse, vibrant and exciting community which we serve, we have developed our curriculum to be inclusive, representing a diversity of experience and perspective whilst emphasising our common humanity and the challenges we face together.

Our curriculum also enriches by giving full access to the arts, sports, travel and leadership programmes. Our ‘cultural guarantee’ gives all students access to the rich variety of experiences available in our great city of London. Our ‘Explorer Programme’ gives extra curriculum time in Years 7 and 8 to alternative ways of learning, laying the foundations for our Duke of Edinburgh programme which starts in Year 9.

2. Students have high standards of personal conduct and communication. They know and show the attributes of great learners. They enjoy learning and show a thirst for new knowledge and for self-enhancement.

The school ‘SGC Learner’ GRIP capabilities (Growth, Resilience, Independence, Preparation) are deeply embedded in all aspects of learning in the school. As a result, our students leave us understanding how to learn new knowledge and skills fully and independently. They understand the frame of mind that enables great learning and they know how to question effectively; how to communicate with precision, how to seek and receive feedback and how to work as a team.

Our students understand that raising the standards they set for themselves and managing how they present themselves to others is a vital part of their learning at Saint Gabriel’s. To help students reach the highest standards of personal conduct and to help them form positive habits to sustain them in successful future lives, the school has developed ‘The SGC Way’ which breaks down high standards of conduct and communication into objective teachable components.

The school has also developed assessment, reward and reporting systems to motivate students to learn and raise their standards, and to celebrate their success in establishing positive learning and life-enhancing habits.

3. Professional development of staff is excellent. As a result, all staff teams are high-performing and resilient.

Saint Gabriel’s is a successful, well-led school with a supportive staff who are friendly, collaborative and enjoy enriching the lives of our students each day. The school is a great place to work with an excellent team of dedicated staff who feel privileged to work with such wonderful young people.

Saint Gabriel’s invests heavily in the professional development of its staff. The school quickly inculcates new members with its culture of pursuing the highest level of professional expertise.

As a result, individuals and teams perform to a very high standard with no areas of weakness in the school.

All staff have access to a wide range of development opportunities to support them to improve and refine their practice as well as support their career development. To help deliver this, we have developed three Professional Development Pathways: ‘Expert Teacher Pathway’, ‘Leadership Pathway’ and ‘Expert Support Pathway’. Each pathway sets out a development journey combining access to coaching support, collaborative working, training, further qualifications and research.

4. Students thrive socially, emotionally and spiritually.

Students at Saint Gabriel’s flourish, knowing that they are cared for as individuals. They have a clear sense of purpose and they understand that leading a fulfilled, healthy life includes developing their spiritual lives. They grow in emotional maturity. They know the importance of making a contribution, showing ‘generosity of spirit’ and ‘service to others’.

Encouraged by the school, students are confident in giving voice to their informed opinions and their hopes for their community and the world. In particular, they show by their actions that they are eager to serve their local community and help Saint Gabriel’s to be a highly valued resource for the whole neighbourhood.

Students have an awareness of what constitutes good mental health and have the resources to know how they can look after their own mental well-being and the wellbeing of others.

The school’s carefully developed spiritual curriculum gives students regular opportunities to reflect on their lives, the human condition and their relationship with God. As a result of the spiritual journey crafted for students, they graduate with a sense that they have begun to grapple with the really big questions about their sense of self, and existential questions about life and death, and right and wrong. As a result, they leave the school with a sense of awe and wonder at the complexity and immensity of life and the universe, keen to continue their spiritual journey.

5. Students are inspired by excellent guidance about the opportunities available to them in the future, including drawing upon the great riches available to us through our alumnae network.

Part of a complete education at Saint Gabriel’s is equipping each student with an understanding of the possibilities open to them for further education and employment; especially in jobs and professions that are not common in our immediate catchment area.

To this end, we provide an excellent careers service and we have made careers education a key component of our wide ranging PSHCE curriculum.

In addition, over the past five years, we have established our alumnae network as a powerful and effective way of fostering our students’ understanding of the world of work and further education and firing up their ambition. We believe that our alumnae are the best people to show our students what is achievable in life after leaving our school and what it takes to make those achievements possible. Also, these former students who have gone out from our school and built successful and worthwhile careers in all walks of life, are best placed to tell us what was truly valuable about their time in the school.

Saint Gabrielâ€™s College