The happiness of each Kingsmead girl is essential for her to achieve success in all areas of her school life.
Pastoral Care
In the Senior School, our carefully designed Pastoral Care programme supports our girls during their adolescent years as they develop the confidence and independence to solve the challenges of life.
Form Teachers are the backbone of the programme and interact with the girls daily.
Grade Co-ordinators are experienced, senior teachers who are the communication link between home and school. Any queries parents may have concerning their daughter’s school experience are directed to the Grade Co-ordinator.
Senior School Academics
True to the ethos of Kingsmead College, our Academic Programme is tailored to the needs of each girl. The passionate and dedicated staff provide academic leadership and support to girls from diverse academic backgrounds making us all the more proud of the fact that we consistently produce results among the best in the country in the IEB (Independent Examinations Board) NSC (National Senior Certificate) examinations.
The IEB NSC exams are widely recognised internationally and have contributed to many of our girls being accepted directly into such prestigious international Universities as University of Edinburgh and St Andrews University and many of them have subsequently gone on to achieve academic success at Oxford University. Indeed, Kingsmead Old Girls have explored further tertiary educational opportunities in Australia, Scotland, England and the United States of America.
The Growth Curriculum
The uniquely Kingsmead Growth Curriculum is the crystallization of the journey the senior school has been on for more than a decade. This journey has been driven by a few essential questions:
What do we mean by a 21st Century education?
How do we ensure our students are future-ready?
How can we maintain and exceed our high standards, while providing a globally relevant education?
How do we mould life-long learners?
How can we teach our students to be better equipped with life-long skills?
Underpinning this thinking is a combination of studying best practice from around the world, including, but not limited to, the International Baccalaureate, John Hattie’s ideas on Visible Learning, and Carol Dweck’s work on the Growth Mindset, as well as local examples of excellent teaching. All of this has been considered in relation to Kingsmead’s ethos. At the centre is the individual, a belief that their potential is unlimited but also requires bespoke and personalized tending, to see it fully realized.
The Growth Curriculum for Grades 8 and 9 is the culmination of careful design by Kingsmead’s exceptional teaching staff, working backwards from the required skills outcomes of the National Senior certificate, and without compromising the high academic standards to which we all aspire. To achieve this, the modules are designed by subject specialists who present the content and are best equipped to teach and assess the skills students develop. As such, students and parents are best able to make informed decisions regarding their subject choice at the Grade 9 exit level.
The Growth Curriculum aims to break down the silos that have existed between different learning areas, establishing a more relevant, stimulating, and challenging contextualized syllabus for our junior students. The transformation from content-focused to skills-focused is part of an academically sound, international paradigm shift in education, which offers greater opportunity for theme-based collaboration across learning areas but also a streamlining of the learning process and the realization of fewer but richer authentic assessments that truly measure what matters.
At the core is a focus on growth. 21st Century learning calls for more than just the regurgitation of knowledge. It demands proficiency in subject-specific and universally transferable skills as well as an understanding of abstract concepts, which can be applied to new experiences and challenges.
We believe it is through the Growth Curriculum that we can best equip our students.
Technology in the Senior School|
The Senior School has one dedicated ICT Lab, as well as the versatile Learning Centre which allows work to be done anywhere throughout the building via a wireless network. Every Teacher has a PC in their classroom and there are many computers available throughout the campus for the students to use.
In Grade 8 and 9 all students learn to code using Arduinos and Swift. The full use of the Microsoft Office package is utilised throughout the Senior School and more specialised packages are used for subjects like Art, where girls are taught how to use Pro create to manipulate and create graphic art. Our Mathematics Department uses brilliant and visually stimulating programmes to help provide the girls with a better understanding of Mathematics. From Afrikaans to French, Geography to Biology and Science, ICT is integrated into almost every aspect of teaching throughout the School.
Each girl is provided with her own email address and cloud storage facility to increase the efficiency of learning and communication. Internet access is available to all girls anytime the school is open.
Technology is a tool for life and for learning and digital media provides invaluable opportunities for creating rich learning experiences for students.