Raising resilient young people across borders, cultures and change: Our Visit to ACS Hillingdon

ACS Hillingdon Presents: Roots, Wings and Courage.

Raising resilient young people across borders, cultures and change

It was our pleasure to visit our friends at ACS this week at their Hillingdon School, to learn more about how they're supporting international families in a fast-changing world, especially those with additional needs and a variety of emotional challenges.

ACS's Hillingdon school has a pupil body of some 60+ Nationalities from around the world. Set in beautiful secluded parkland and in an old family home, they provide a sense of home, anchoring and psychological safety, whilst still allowing for, and encouraging self expression and risk-taking. Their culture ois very much “mistakes are part of growth”, which is reinforced by an experienced pastoral lead and early intervention.  The school fosters clarity of expectations. Adults focus on what’s in their control, and children are encouraged into leadership and situations where they can test themselves to build resilience. One example was their fantastic outdoor playground, integrated within the Forest School, which their Primary-level children helped to design and build.

Lots of schools aimed at the highly-mobile international family and pupil will of course stress all of these factors, but what makes ACS so successful in their real-life implementation? From our experience of working with them and knowing them over a number of years, what comes across is the clarity of foundational principles coupled with practical application:

Guiding themes:

• Focus on family unit and looking after the working parent and accompanying parent

• Focus on pastoral and sense of community

• Third culture kids: children are from everywhere and all places in between, and there's always something they have in common

• A home from home

Practical application:

• Counsellor embedded and easy access so it’s normalised for the children to take into later life.

• Group and individual counselling

• Buddy system

• Whole pastoral team

• Weekly wellbeing questionnaire to alert staff of the “mood”

• Multiple curriculum pathways so it fits into pupil needs

• Run lunch groups to give new pupils have small group social experiences to ease them into the community is a small environment, which eases the anxiety around school transitions

• Matching pupils to teachers

• IB, career pathway

These are all things that our international clients value, and while we can't recommend any one school or education set-up without getting to know your child, if you're considering an international-style education in an environment that is used to developing well-rounded "Third Culture Kids", then the ACS Group is worth considering.