WELCOME FROM OUR HEADTEACHER
CHRISTOPHER JONES
At NBH Senior Hampstead, we are a school that truly believes in taking every opportunity for learning. One of my favourite educational philosophers is Kurt Hahn, who escaped from the Nazis and founded two leading schools: Gordonstoun in Scotland and Atlantic College on the Welsh coast. Reflecting on the young people he worked with he said, “There is more to you than you know”.
Our aim here at North Bridge House is to create the opportunity for our young people to exceed their own expectations and achieve the ‘more’ in them. The physical environment is important but equally as important is the atmosphere, and at NBH, we create a place where young people feel confident in understanding themselves as learners.
Along with exceptional teaching, we are committed to providing a broad and creative curriculum, which prepares and allows our children to make informed choices come GCSE. We ensure our students have access to a Visual Arts carousel that includes subjects like Photography and Textiles, as well as workshops with our artist in residence.
Year 8 benefit from an innovative Art History programme while our Year 7 students embark on digital skills lessons when they join the school. We champion language learning by taking the time to embed core skills through a carousel of Modern Foreign Languages, as well as allocating time for students who need extra support in English and Mathematics.
And in Years 10 and 11, we not only build our GCSE timetable around the interests and aspirations of our children, but we ensure they make well-informed choices through events like our annual careers fair. Our Year 10 World of Work programme further informs students’ future career paths via talks from industry professionals.
Many of our students challenge themselves beyond the main curriculum, taking advantage of the LAMDA and instrumental lessons we offer, or individual language lessons in Mandarin, Russian and Italian, to name but a few.
Our enrichment programme always ensures a high-energy end to the week, connecting students with their peers in other year groups to enjoy activities as diverse as philosophy and chess, music appreciation and charity work in the local community.
Our size is a key strength; we are large enough to facilitate different sports fixtures and school trips but small enough that each child is really known and can be properly understood by their teachers.
Fundamental to all of this work is the regular conversation we have with you as parents. We believe that secondary school education is a series of conversations - that contrary to the North London myth, information sharing is powerful.
The more informed we are, the more we can support your child. And so we create regular opportunities for you to connect with your child’s teachers through three parents’ evenings a year, parent workshops, and social events.