St Faith’s is honoured to have won ‘Strategic education initiative of the year’ at the prestigious Tes Independent School Awards 2018

St Faith’s has won the ‘Strategic Education Initiative of the Year’ award at the prestigious Tes Independent School Awards 2018.

In 2015 St Faith’s took the bold step of introducing Engineering as a core curriculum subject for all pupils in Year 3 and up because we believe firmly in a future-focused education preparing our pupils for the needs of the modern world.

Our projects explore all forms of engineering: chemical, mechanical, robotics, structural, civil, electrical and aeronautical. Crucially, our Engineering curriculum links directly with pupils’ topics in Science, Maths and Computing. We expect our pupils to draw on their knowledge to solve a variety of problems while encouraging them to find their own areas of strength while working in collaborative teams.

Thus we were deeply honored to be selected as finalists and to ultimately win in last night’s Tes Independent Schools Awards in the Strategic Education Initiative of the Year category for our introduction of Engineering (we were also finalists in the Prep School of the Year category).

In the words of one judge, it is ‘a STEM dream’, and it is producing ‘our engineers of the future’.

The judges said: ‘An admirable, innovative and challenging project, using local expertise and encouragement, with superb results. To introduce engineering as a curriculum subject from age 7 is a bold and inspirational step. We were deeply impressed.’

Commenting on the school's win, Headmaster Mr Nigel Helliwell said: ‘The introduction of engineering has been an exciting venture for St Faith’s, largely driven by our Head of Science, Alison Price, and Deputy Head Academic, Margaret White. It is their foresight, ambition and dedication which has made it possible and led to Engineering being one of the most popular and successful subjects in our curriculum. This prize will give us the encouragement to keep going and help other schools that might be interested to do the same.’

The black-tie awards event – hosted by author, broadcaster, actor and entertainer Gyles Brandreth – was held at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London, where more than 400 attendees celebrated all that is outstanding in independent schools.

For more coverage of the awards, profiles of the winners and photographs from the evening, please visit isawards.co.uk

For further information on St Faith’s, please contact marketing@stfaiths.co.uk or Kelly Pangalos, Marketing Manager 01223 229427