1. Demonstrate continuing commitment to the widest possible access so that any boy who is awarded a place at the School will be able to take up his place regardless of the social, cultural, ethnic, religious or financial background of his family, thereby providing additional charitable public benefit.
   
   
2. Fortify the academic standing of the School, vigorously reaffirming its scholarly and academic traditions but also looking for appropriate opportunities to develop new strengths.
   
   
3. Promote successful, enthusiastic and inspirational teaching and learning within the context of a balanced curriculum.
   
   
4. Continue to improve existing and when required develop new accommodation, systems and facilities; and thereby provide a safe, well-maintained and effectively used environment for pupils and staff.
   
   
5. Promote the School and its work vigorously to existing parents, prospective parents, feeder schools, alumni and the local community; build upon the links established; encourage co-operation and partnerships with local schools and others in the wider community, seeking further opportunities to provide public benefit; and enhance the reputation of the School within the region, nationally and internationally.
   
   
6. Provide appropriate opportunities both for professional development and supportive performance management.
   
   
7. Provide coherent, clear and supportive management at all levels.
   
   
8. Provide strong pastoral and related support, with clear moral and spiritual foundations, for all ages.
   
   
9. Promote respect and tolerance for the individual and for individuality, develop independent thinking and learning for all pupils, encourage individual passions and enthusiasms both curricular and co-curricular, and endeavour to treat the boys within the School as individuals.
   
   
10. Develop within the School community as a whole qualities of leadership, creativity, appropriate risk-taking, and responsiveness to changes and challenges.
    
    
11. Encourage the widest possible participation in sports and co-curricular activities.
    
    
12. Provide appropriately for those who need additional support to fulfil their potential by virtue of physical or psychological disability or atypical learning style or process.

In thinking about how our ideas and plans might match up to our aims, we should be guided by the challenge:

For any decision either to change or maintain the status quo, we should ask: “In what respects will this improve or enhance the quality of education for the pupils in the School now and for the pupils yet to join us?”

Remembering that we are preparing pupils for life and not just for public examinations, universities and their eventual careers.  Hugh Oldham’s requirement that we promote “godliness and good learning” should also remain very much in our minds.

These twelve aims should be seen in the light of the principal, overarching aim for the School.



The principal, overarching aim for the School: that we stand alongside the very best academically selective day schools in the country.

In terms of our academic standing, the pastoral and welfare support we provide, and our co-curricular programmes within and beyond the School, we aim to be amongst the very best Schools in the UK.

In achieving this the School should remain true to its liberal principles, namely of providing an educational environment in which boys from all backgrounds are challenged to reach their full academic potential without sacrificing their broader development and in which respect and tolerance for individuals and individuality will flourish.  This does involve an element of intelligent risk, bearing in mind that those wishing to direct, control and constrain the education and the care of children in this country are deeply ambivalent about risk, producing both a plethora of mixed messages and a legislative and regulatory quagmire which have unsatisfactory consequences, both intended and unintended, for the educational and wider development of pupils.

Two critical, supporting general aims are that:

Entry to the School should not depend upon the finances of a boy’s family: if a boy secures entry to the School on academic merit, then we should aim to ensure that he may take up his place regardless of the financial circumstances of his family.

The School and parents should seek to work in a genuine partnership: if this partnership is be maximally effective, two-way communications between parents and the School should be no less than excellent.

Our aims arise, in part, from a careful consideration of the key strengths of the School, together with an understanding of the challenges facing independent education in general and MGS in particular and an acceptance of areas of relative weakness within the School which might require attention.

We also recognise the need for the School to comply with its various regulatory obligations as an educational establishment, as a charity, as an employer and in terms of its safeguarding responsibilities.  To this end, the School maintains and works intelligently in accord with a range of policies dealing with its various regulatory and related responsibilities: what we do in practice to ensure the effective operation of the School consonant with an intelligent approach to the policies required of us is critically important.  We do not take our safeguarding responsibilities lightly in any respect, but neither we are foolish enough to believe that any CRB check or any safer recruitment process is anything like a guarantee of safety for the boys in our care.

Nor do we believe as an institution that the performance tables with which the government is obsessed say anything meaningful about the success (or otherwise) of this or, for that matter, any other school.  We do not provide data about our examination results to the press following the release of results by awarding bodies each August, noting the feeding frenzy which the publication of results encourages in the press to the detriment of education in this country.  However, we do provide information for those in our own community: staff, boys, alumni, parents and prospective parents.

We publish each year in November an Annual Report which sets down and celebrates the considerable successes of the School across a wide range of curricular and co-curricular activities.

To download a printable version of our 12 Key Aims please go to our Publications Section