At San Albero Magno, we understand that early secondary education is a crucial time for students both in terms of their academic ability, and their development as rounded global human beings.
The education we deliver to our high school students, aged twelve to fifteen, supports all aspects of their development including psychological, cognitive, motor, relational, academic, and emotional. As with all previous school years, building autonomy, confidence and self-esteem is as important as providing a solid and rounded academic education.
At SAM, we offer a personalised education with close monitoring of academic and social progress, with support available where required from teachers and our specialist guidance service.
Specific Skills We Develop in High School
During early High School, we continue to develop our students’ skills in essential core academic subjects including languages, arithmetic, science, logic, analysis, and the arts. We complement these core studies with more diverse subjects and activities for an extremely rounded education and preparation for the next steps in our students’ academic journey.
Here are some more details on what we cover outside the core curriculum.
Bilingualism is reaffirmed in High School. Continuing from our teaching in Infants and Primary, we continue to teach a broad range of subjects in English. In High School, we introduce more technical subjects, so our students acquire an interdisciplinary and transversal knowledge of the English language. Subjects taught in English are those related to personal development (values), creative subjects such as art, computer science, and sports.
San Alberto Magno is also an examination centre for the official Cambridge exams, so in our language curriculum, we prepare students for B1, B2 and C1.
As well as English, students will have had the option earlier in their studies at SAM to choose between French or German as a third language. We are an official Goethe and French Certifying centre with the DELF and DALF. We also compliment classroom-based studies with visits to French and German establishments and fun, themed breakfasts.
We strongly believe that the fact our students are bilingual with a third language by the time they graduate gives them a significant competitive advantage and a great many options for their next steps.
It is never too early to start thinking about our students’ ultimate ambitions. So, in early High School, we start to hone in on the rounded skills that our students require to succeed at university and beyond.
We increase the number of weekly sessions dedicated to core subjects including Mathematics, History and Geography. We also introduce more project-based learning where students deliver work in small groups. This collaboration helps them develop their emotional intelligence to learn to work well with others.
Comprehension, listening, and self- expression are also encouraged through participation in debate programmes.
We encourage our students to enter writing competitions, and we support them with their preparation. We also, run an extremely popular school reading club and we inspire our students with visits from established authors.
We aim to nurture and develop the whole student and supporting our students to grow outside of the core curriculum is extremely important to us.
We continue the development of skills that we’ve introduced earlier at school with the following studies.
Computer Science
Students develop commercial applications. They also look at how algorithms can be used in problem-solving, undertake data analysis, and explore different programming environments.
Entrepreneurship and Economics
Students propose and develop business plans for different industries. They do this from an economic, financial and operational point of view.
Public Speaking
Public speaking practice prepares students for an increasingly competitive world where communication skills are crucial. Students become comfortable with public speaking and learn skills that improve their delivery and style.
In their fourth year of High School, our students choose whether they want to study science or social sciences. Our guidance officer will help them make this choice based on their talents, passions, and future ambitions.
Science
The core science curriculum covers physics, chemistry, and biology.
Social Science
Students cover a broad range of modules from economics to Latin.
IT literacy is essential for our modern world. All students use a Chromebook and we use tools and applications in our teaching that strengthen the curriculum and introduce a new style of collaboration while familiarising our students with core pieces of technology.
