The Director of Futures & Innovation at FHS Sloane Square Caroline Wilkes on its comprehensive approach to preparing students for bright futures beyond school
A bronze replica of Kristen Visbal’s Fearless Girl stands in our entrance hall, encapsulating our belief that our pupils should face down challenge and assert the power of their mind, voice and talent to make a positive contribution to the world.
FHS has a strong academic reputation, and our Futures programme builds on this foundation. We take pride in our track record of helping students gain entry to prestigious universities (93% of UK applicants secured places at Russell Group universities last year) and particularly for medicine and veterinary medicine courses, for which we have had a 100% success rate over the past five years.
“Year 10 students competed in teams to create an artificial reef – currently being built for use off the coast of Thailand”
Our students are empowered to apply for all sorts of courses – from anthropology to agriculture – all over the world. Around a fifth attend international universities in the US and Europe Recent admissions include Georgetown, NYU and USC, with our alumnae regularly attending IE and Bocconi universities. Our Futures team is well versed in the differences between application processes for different countries and we have strong relationships with a wide network of international universities.
However, university admissions are just the tip of the iceberg. Informed by the Gatsby Benchmarks and the World Economic Forum’s identification of key skills for the future, our programme emphasises creative and analytical thinking throughout pupils’ school journey. From Year 7, we introduce entrepreneurial challenges such as the Young Enterprise £10 Challenge, where girls research, design and bring a product to market within four weeks. This develops resilience, creativity and teamwork, with over half of the Year 7 cohort participating last year.
As part of our super-curricular enrichment timetable, students from Year 10 to 13 take part in a range of activities, for example, Mental Health First Aid, Young Enterprise, interdisciplinary challenges and Law for Beginners. Our Year 10 students competed in teams to create an artificial reef this year. This is currently being built for use off the coast of Thailand, showing students that their ideas can have an immediate impact. The school’s Wellbeing Programme covers practical topics – for instance, how to manage a budget, how to study effectively, tips for independent living – as well as running workshops with external organisations such as The Schools Consent Project and Fiscorum (financial literacy) for older students.
We place a strong emphasis on oracy, with debating, podcasting, and public speaking woven into the curriculum, to ensure pupils are able to articulate their ideas confidently and persuasively. We offer Year 12 students the chance to present ‘ideas worth spreading’ to a wider audience, and these are then uploaded to the TEDx channel in perpetuity.
Our Sixth Form retention rate, with 90% of Year 11 pupils electing to stay on each year, indicates the confidence our pupils feel in our Futures Programme. Their confidence is reflected in our October 2024 ISI Inspection Report, which praised pupils’ moral understanding and eagerness to make a difference by giving back. This is key – by nurturing self-awareness, creativity, analytical thinking, and communication skills – and providing real-world opportunities for impact, FHS works to ensure that its pupils are future ready.
FHS Sloane Square fhs-sw1.org.uk
Further reading: Malvern College on thinking beyond Oxbridge
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