Welcome to the Sixth Form section of our website. In our Sixth Form we offer a unique combination of excellent academic provision and superb pastoral enrichment and care. It is our shared vision to enable all our students to not just excel in their qualifications but to become compassionate intellectuals.

This concept is not necessarily new. Perhaps it has lacked a label, or a pithy two word sound bite? What does it mean? What does it look like at Rosebery?

Our Sixth Form puts compassion first. This is kindness to all those around us, as well as coaching, coaxing, training our students, to be kind to themselves. I am often asked “What makes us special?” and I am always drawn to what I see from my office day to day. The unmeasurable number of student-teacher or peer-peer conversations. The support, quiet discussions or slightly louder laughter about the students' work or life. These conversations create an environment of warmth and endeavor, a “can do” attitude.

After this, comes all the activities we do to keep our students’ minds open. To question the work they meet and the choices they make. Whether through the EPQ or discussions in tutor time, we build in the opportunity to interrogate the world around them. We are currently exploring how we remain progressive in our thinking. This has led us down a path explicitly discussing race and white privilege. Or gender equality across the whole spectrum. We may not be getting all of these programmes correct, yet, but our staff and students are up for that challenge.

You do not have to be aiming for the highest dreaming spires to do this. At Rosebery being intellectual is not about being simply ‘clever’. We encourage and scaffold our students to find their passion. This is done through signposting supra-curricular tasks and, coming online in the summer of 2022, is our Subject Immersion Site. We don’t push students to ‘go with the flow’ or to accept ideas at face value and when any of them think their thinking is over we gently push them back into their learning pit.

The outcome of all this, or our ‘product’ if you will, are students ready for this ever changing world. Students who are committed to making their ‘best self’ and bringing that to whatever community they find themselves in.

Stephen Phillips
Head of Sixth Form