Aims
What kind of school is the English School?
What are our aims?
What is our ethos?
These are, of course, very difficult questions to answer and one wonders whether any school manages to communicate such elusive notions on its website. All one can do is to try to give a flavour…
.png)
The architect of St. Paul’s cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren, has no statue or monument to his achievement inside the great church. Instead, on his tomb, you will find this Latin epigraph:
“Si monumentum requiris, circumspice”
which may be translated as:
“If you seek a monument, look around you”
In other words, the only way to understand and appreciate the place is to stand in it and experience it.
The same is true of schools. The only way to understand a school is to come and spend time in it. Thus, we invite you to come and experience our school for a while in order to understand what we are about.
However, until you do that, the following may be interesting and helpful for you;
In order to help universities understand what kind of school we are, we normally write something like this as an introduction to the references we produce:
“The English School is a co-educational fee-paying day school, attended mainly by Cypriot children. Our curriculum is IGCSE and A Level and our medium of instruction is English. Entry to the school at age 12 is highly competitive and most of our leavers proceed to Russell Group universities, with between five to ten going on to Oxbridge or medical school each year. The school’s head is a member of the UK Headmasters’ Conference. The culture of the school can, thus, be seen as 'traditional' and 'academic'. “
Yet even this, of course, does not tell the whole story. For although most of our children are Cypriot, many are not. Thus, we welcome those who are temporarily resident on the island, as well as those who can trace their family lineage here back over centuries.
Furthermore, to say that our pupils are mainly Cypriot belies the rich cultural mix that is to be found here on the island: Greek Cypriots predominate in the school but, before 1974 and since 2003, Turkish Cypriots have also formed a healthy portion of the school’s population. Then there are the Armenian and Maronite communities, not to mention those whose parentage is a mix of two nationalities. And so on. In other words, we truly are a multi-cultural school!
Furthermore, although our medium of instruction is English (except in Greek, Turkish and other Modern Language lessons) and we look mainly to the United Kingdom for our curricular models and higher education places, a small but important minority of our students go to universities in the USA and other European countries.
We are an academically selective school and our programmes are probably not for everyone. Yet we do our best to support all kinds of learners as well as we can.
We are proud of our connections with leading Russell Group universities, establishments to which many of our pupils proceed each year. Yet the range of universities chosen by our students continues to grow and we pride ourselves equally on being able to advise students on higher education destinations, wherever they may choose to go.
Since the school’s Head is, traditionally, a member of the UK Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference group of leading British and British style independent schools, we partake, to some extent, of a British “independent school” style ethos and tradition. Yet, for all the reasons above, we are also very much a Cypriot school and continue to find ways to combine these two models in clever, creative ways.
All this means that our extra-curricular activities are very important to us. Although it may sometimes look as though we are obsessed with examination results and nothing else, we also take our sports very seriously. We also have first class music, including an inspirational choir, enthusiastic drama, a spectacular annual Model United Nations programme, debating, energetic charity events and so on, and so on.
So, do you think you understand us now? Or would you just like to pay us a visit?
“Si monumentum requiris, circumspice”
What are our aims?
What is our ethos?
These are, of course, very difficult questions to answer and one wonders whether any school manages to communicate such elusive notions on its website. All one can do is to try to give a flavour…
The architect of St. Paul’s cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren, has no statue or monument to his achievement inside the great church. Instead, on his tomb, you will find this Latin epigraph:
“Si monumentum requiris, circumspice”
which may be translated as:
“If you seek a monument, look around you”
In other words, the only way to understand and appreciate the place is to stand in it and experience it.
The same is true of schools. The only way to understand a school is to come and spend time in it. Thus, we invite you to come and experience our school for a while in order to understand what we are about.
However, until you do that, the following may be interesting and helpful for you;
In order to help universities understand what kind of school we are, we normally write something like this as an introduction to the references we produce:
“The English School is a co-educational fee-paying day school, attended mainly by Cypriot children. Our curriculum is IGCSE and A Level and our medium of instruction is English. Entry to the school at age 12 is highly competitive and most of our leavers proceed to Russell Group universities, with between five to ten going on to Oxbridge or medical school each year. The school’s head is a member of the UK Headmasters’ Conference. The culture of the school can, thus, be seen as 'traditional' and 'academic'. “
Yet even this, of course, does not tell the whole story. For although most of our children are Cypriot, many are not. Thus, we welcome those who are temporarily resident on the island, as well as those who can trace their family lineage here back over centuries.
Furthermore, to say that our pupils are mainly Cypriot belies the rich cultural mix that is to be found here on the island: Greek Cypriots predominate in the school but, before 1974 and since 2003, Turkish Cypriots have also formed a healthy portion of the school’s population. Then there are the Armenian and Maronite communities, not to mention those whose parentage is a mix of two nationalities. And so on. In other words, we truly are a multi-cultural school!
Furthermore, although our medium of instruction is English (except in Greek, Turkish and other Modern Language lessons) and we look mainly to the United Kingdom for our curricular models and higher education places, a small but important minority of our students go to universities in the USA and other European countries.
We are an academically selective school and our programmes are probably not for everyone. Yet we do our best to support all kinds of learners as well as we can.
We are proud of our connections with leading Russell Group universities, establishments to which many of our pupils proceed each year. Yet the range of universities chosen by our students continues to grow and we pride ourselves equally on being able to advise students on higher education destinations, wherever they may choose to go.
Since the school’s Head is, traditionally, a member of the UK Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference group of leading British and British style independent schools, we partake, to some extent, of a British “independent school” style ethos and tradition. Yet, for all the reasons above, we are also very much a Cypriot school and continue to find ways to combine these two models in clever, creative ways.
All this means that our extra-curricular activities are very important to us. Although it may sometimes look as though we are obsessed with examination results and nothing else, we also take our sports very seriously. We also have first class music, including an inspirational choir, enthusiastic drama, a spectacular annual Model United Nations programme, debating, energetic charity events and so on, and so on.
So, do you think you understand us now? Or would you just like to pay us a visit?
“Si monumentum requiris, circumspice”
