Welcome
Welcome to Friends’ Sixth. All Sixth forms are very different from your GCSE years. However, not all Sixth forms are the same and ours is more different than most. Partly this is because we celebrate difference in this school, but mostly it is on account of the special relationships which can be forged in an atmosphere where everyone can know everyone else.
Sixth form is not just motivation, application and examination – so it matters more than ever that we offer more than just good teaching. I believe that it is much easier in a small community than in a large one for every individual to find his or her self, to be true to his or her self and to be true to others around them.
Not all people realize that the most important ability in life is to be able to make friends and enjoy a real and abiding friendship, and not merely to be able to ‘get along’ with acquaintances. This is a fundamental ‘life skill’, but one which is foolish to leave till later to learn.
We aim to achieve good academic success and, in the jargon to provide ‘value-added’ for our students by helping them to achieve better grades than they might have achieved elsewhere. Over the years, however, we have been even more proud of the fact that what we have done best by our students is to see them leave after their two years for degree courses, vocational courses or employment as confident, mature people who are aware of their strengths and their weaknesses and have come to accept both.
Arrogance is not a substitute for confidence and shyness not as becoming as modesty. We aim to produce likable, employable people, not manufactured by us but because we seek to find that of God and the Power of God, in everyone. That is our Quaker heritage of which we were founded and which are our continuing principles.
