Innovation in Education

The world is changing rapidly, and our children will go on to encounter magnificent opportunities created by new discoveries, knowledge and technologies. Many will embark on career paths that have yet to be invented.

To prepare your child for the world that will be their tomorrow, we create a learning environment where children connect, grow and innovate not only with our curriculum but with each other and the world around them.

As a modern independent school, we use innovative resources and technologies to enhance learning while at the same time placing importance on traditions, values and behaviours. We continuously analyse the way we teach and use our resources, learning spaces, and technology, to equip our children with the skills to achieve the best possible learning outcomes. The teaching methods we use are firmly rooted in the best and latest evidence-based research and cognitive psychology.

Our teachers & how we teach

We recruit the best talent in the teaching profession and everyone at Embley shares our vision and purpose. Our continuing professional development programme sees leading educational experts cover the biggest topics and issues in education at staff training workshops and as part of our national Teaching & Learning Conference. Weekly twilight training sessions keep teachers up to date with the latest developments in teaching, our programme of Learning Walks sees members of our Senior Leadership Team and Heads of Department observe lessons and provide professional feedback, and we operate a whole school approach to the sharing of best practice. Consequently, every lesson has optimal results, in both teacher delivery and student attainment.

Our teacher-led inquiry approach to learning across Embley, known as the Embley Thinking Curriculum, enhances our children’s skills and knowledge by teaching them how to think rather than what to think. Our children become accustomed to using critical thinking and logical reasoning skills in their approach to curriculum-based questions. They are open-minded, reflective, and use higher-order thinking skills when confronted with a challenge, conflicting facts or differing opinions with the goal of increasing their self-awareness, thus minimising the influence of logical fallacies and unconscious biases on their thinking.

An Apple Distinguished School

Our children are creators not consumers, and our rich and broad curriculum reflects this. The use of technology is integrated across our curriculum to deliver engaging, accessible and innovative learning experiences.

Embley is recognised as an Apple Distinguished School (2024-2027) for inspiring, imagining and impacting teaching and learning across the school through continuous innovation.  

Every child from Reception to Year 13 has a school iPad and the technology is used as an enabler for learning across all ages and subjects. For example, completing research by accessing a range of sources and forms; teachers streaming tasks and resources to children’s iPads; the use of augmented reality to bring subject matter to life; recording and analysing athletic performance; and developing storytelling with the use of multimedia sources.

Our Digital Learning Spaces provide an ever evolving and expanding resource of teacher curated content be it during lessons or at home and we use an online tool to set and keep track of work, enabling children to receive feedback in a variety of forms including voice commentary.