Big Six is still quite new. You’ll have many questions that you will want to ask before you decide whether it would be suitable for your child. The questions and answers here may help.

• Has this approach been well researched?
• Who’s going to teach my child?
• What will the lessons be like?
• Will my child do SATs?

Has this approach been well researched?

Big Six draws on the work of three globally acclaimed experts on learning and intelligence:

• Guy Claxton, who specialises in Building Learning Power
• Howard Gardner, who carries out pioneering research into Multiple Intelligences
• Daniel Goleman, who leads the way in our understanding of Emotional Intelligence

WGS is also developing a network of schools and practitioners with whom it will share practice and experiences as Big Six develops.

Who’s going to teach my child?

10 year-olds need the sense of safety and protection that come from having their own base and the same class teacher for much of the week. There’s a balance to be struck: as a Big Six student your child will also have access to highly qualified specialists in every mainstream subject. Big Six students will also join Year 7 for sport and will have the opportunity to take part in superb music and drama alongside 11-18 year-olds.

What will the lessons be like?

Big Six lessons will explore all the various modes of investigation and learning available. Children will routinely use the four orders of questioning:

• fact (what?)
• inference (so does that mean….?)
• surprise (how about…?)
• conditional hypothesis (what if…?)

The curriculum has been developed around the 5 thinking skills of enquiry, reasoning, processing information, reflection and evaluation. These skills will be at the forefront of all that we do. Students will become used to thinking about their learning, reflecting upon it and evaluating the progress they have made. As such they will really engage with the learning process and establish the skills necessary for effective learning in the years ahead.

They will be in the habit of asking what, why, how, when, who, where and what if? And, when they’re learning something, they’ll also understand how they’re going about learning it and why they might be having difficulty (meta-cognition).

Will my child do SATs?

As an independent school, WGS is not required to do government tests (SATs). We have chosen not to do them at Key Stage 3 (age 14) and Big Six students will not sit Key Stage 2 tests either (unless parents specifically request that their child should do so). Instead we shall rely as always on our own assessment schemes, reporting regularly to parents both formally and informally about their children’s individual progress.

Big Six isn’t designed to be a preparation year for children sitting exams for other selective schools either: on the contrary, it is aiming to get all that out of the way so that children can really prepare for secondary school learning at Wolverhampton Grammar School.