We are so excited to be celebrating the Independent Schools Council Partnerships Week, and the 24 outreach programmes we are currently running with 34 state school partners, this week!

We hold meaningful partnerships with The St Marylebone CE School, King Solomon Academy and All Saints Catholic College, with whom we have held two pioneering conferences, attended by Heads from all over the country: ‘Widening Access to Highly-Selective Universities’ and ‘“Teachers like me” Building an Ethnically Diverse Staff Room’. Alongside this drive to change the landscape of education, we offer transformational bursaries up to 100% at 11+ and 16+ and are looking to double our bursary provision over the coming decade.

One of our strongest partnerships is with St Marylebone School, where FHS teachers teach Latin, free of charge, to students all the way from Year 8 up to A Level. Kat Pugh, Head of St Marylebone, has commented: “Francis Holland’s provision of subject specialist Latin lessons to our students has been a tremendous success. Not only has this terrific curriculum offer kept alive an otherwise fading subject in state education, it has developed our students’ scholarship, commitment and academic confidence.” This initiative inspired us to host a Classics Symposium for over 100 pupils from schools all over London and the South East in January 2022.

Other local school partners include Swiss Cottage School, where our students work with staff to help children with special educational needs, and St Vincent’s Catholic Primary School where they volunteer to read with Year 5 pupils once a week, helping them with their spelling and pronunciation and generally providing one-to-one support.

In addition to local school partnerships, we recognise that schools have an important role to play to ensure that their students are ready to tackle challenges on a global platform and have embraced a new spirit of internationalism over the last decade. As well as exchanges with schools in Beijing, Singapore, New York, Berlin and French Guiana and New Zealand, we have held a longstanding and very special relationship with the Rainbow Centre in Sri Lanka, where, as well as fundraising for the Centre, FHS students visit biannually and teach groups of pupils, lead activities and assist staff, helping to enable the children to break free from the cycle of poverty.

#schoolstogether #powerofpartnerships