Highgate staff and resources

Staff and resources

Over the last few years, as Highgate has become fully co-educational, the governors have made it a priority to increase the number of teaching staff to generous levels. Consequently, the staff to pupil ratio in the Senior School, for example, is 1:9. We have a healthy mix of age groups: we are lucky to have many teachers with years of experience, and we are equally fortunate to be able to attract many young teachers who often add new ideas to the highly successful practices we have established in the classroom. Several colleagues every year find that the experience gleaned at Highgate allows them readily to secure promoted posts elsewhere.

Our teachers are very well qualified in their specific subject and are also enthusiastic about it. Academic societies flourish: pupils regularly hear their teachers talk about their own areas of interest and are thus inspired to research and deliver similar talks themselves. Highgate teachers are encouraged to explore modern methodology and to adopt it when appropriate; the school considers in-service training for staff to be vital and devotes a considerable annual budget to this part of our work.

We set great store too by modern teaching environments. The facilities for Art and Design Technology in the Mills Centre are unrivalled. New science laboratories were created to provide excellent work rooms for science teaching in Years 7 and 8 and the departments of Classics, RE and Philosophy, Modern Languages and History have benefited from the complete renovation of Central Hall in Senior School. In 2010–2011 the major renovation of the auditorium beneath the Dyne House building will also be completed. This will provide a state of the art performance area for music, with seating for up to 300 pupils, in addition to purpose built spaces for teaching and rehearsals.

We were among the first schools to provide interactive white boards in every classroom, and such facilities are constantly being upgraded. This technology allows teachers to enhance lessons by using high-quality visual material to stimulate learning and discussion. We are equally committed to our Library, which for some time now has been an information centre, as much as a traditional repository for books and periodicals. Pupils, especially Sixth Formers, use the library in free periods for private study; there are also specially-designated study rooms for Sixth Formers near their common rooms.