After Brockwood
The Life After ‘Sarala’ team provides dedicated one-to-one support and advice to students as they apply to university or for apprenticeships, art college, or prepare to travel, volunteer, or work around the world. ‘Sarala’ students are given real responsibility and agency in their own learning. Together with their teachers, they cultivate critical thinking skills, creativity, and genuine motivation, allowing them to flourish in life, professionally, and personally. ‘Sarala’ students end up in a wide range of interesting roles across the world, having been given the opportunity and encouragement to find out what really moves them. They consistently secure places at a full range of national and international universities, winning scholarships and bursaries for their work. Motivated, empathic, and responsible, our students have the necessary qualities to meet life fully, with care and curiosity.
Preparation for the ‘real’ world
At ‘Sarala’, students are responsible for their own learning. The school provides a wide range of classes, opportunities, and resources; teachers are there to help students through careful support, challenge, and attention. However, students at ‘Sarala’ must learn to take initiative, prioritize their learning objectives, maintain focus, rigor, and attention, and strive for real excellence. The kind of excellence the school advocates is devoid of any sense of competition and self-aggrandizement. This quality of independent learning fostered in our students enables them to thrive academically if they decide to pursue that path. Apart from academic learning, the school is also a vibrant community of international students and staff. This helps students get emotionally well-prepared for their lives after ‘Sarala’, becoming confident and comfortable with their own feelings, thoughts, and explorations. The school’s emphasis on right thinking enables them to question, understand, and put in the right place the various influences and challenges they will face when they leave ‘Sarala’. Our students also become emotionally resilient and naturally affectionate and caring, making it much easier for them to understand and relate to others when they meet, communicate, or work with them.
Lifelong learning
At ‘Sarala’, students cultivate an independence that comes from being given real agency in their own learning. Being treated as equals in the learning process means support for cultivating these skills can be targeted before leaving school. The strength of the community at ‘Sarala’, developed through living and working together in a small school, means that students become effective listeners and cultivate a tolerance and maturity that will serve them throughout life. Our multicultural selection of students and regular inquiry into what separates us and causes division and conflict cultivate a real tolerance of views and opinions other than our own.
Discover your passions
At ‘Sarala’, a number of our students, in their time here, discover that going directly into higher education is not the right step to take immediately after leaving. ‘Sarala’ is a place where this choice can be made as a positive affirmation of our students’ talents that challenges the narrow view of success being confined to academic attainment. Some choose to travel, making the most of the fact that the friends they made at ‘Sarala’ have their homes all over the world; for others, the world of employment and financial independence calls to them. In all cases, their time here allows students to find something that really interests them. All our students are encouraged to discover their passion while at ‘Sarala’.
A Levels and access to higher education
At ‘Sarala’, many of our students are interested in accessing higher education after they leave. In the UK, the standard path to get into universities is the completion of A level qualifications in at least three subjects. For some students, A Levels are a great choice to explore their talents and discover excellence in life and learning. At ‘Sarala’, we offer a wide variety of subjects that can be studied at A Level, covering a substantial range of sciences, arts, and humanities subjects. Furthermore, our curriculum allows for flexibility with some other subjects that are not formally covered but which students might wish to study. Rather than insisting on a single route to higher education, we facilitate both the choice and the responsibility for students to create their own timetables and course selections. With advice and support, ‘Sarala’ students engage in a dynamic and meaningful process of choosing which path to follow. ‘Sarala’ offers a range of programmes alongside A Levels, from unique ‘Sarala’ courses and independent projects — all of which can support an application to higher education in combination with, or instead of, A Levels.
Universities are waking up to the fact that a huge range of applicants will have three good A Levels but that these qualifications alone give very little indication of students’ deeper resilience, motivation or passions. So-called ‘standard’ applications (three A Levels, for example) are now used alongside a more personalized approach, either through progression agreements, presentations of portfolios, or through close working relationships that the Life After ‘Sarala’ team have with institutions and our network of alumni. Our small size and student advising program mean that we know our students holistically and can both advise them and connect them with institutions that will be a great fit. Again and again, we hear how valuable it was for our students to be allowed to find their own way with support and care. This cultivates an appreciation for the importance of, and love for, lifelong learning: an essential quality in the modern world.
In-house support
At ‘Sarala’, we have a dedicated Life After ‘Sarala’ team that can provide advice and practical support to students as they prepare to leave the school. From personal introductions to an exciting range of institutions and experts, to writing transcripts and references, students can arrange one-to-one meetings each week of the school year and discuss their progress or explore their options and motivations. We also arrange and facilitate a wide variety of visits to universities, open days, higher education fairs, and other events as needed. In addition, student advisers have access to a customized program of preparing students for their transition beyond school, and students get plenty of inspiration for their future options from their daily interactions with other students and staff members who come from a wide range of countries and professional backgrounds.
Destinations
There is no typical ‘Sarala’ graduate, but a common story we hear from alumni is that their time at the school stoked the fires of lifelong learning in them. This is often expressed in alumni studying at a number of different institutions over the course of their careers. Over the past five years, an average of 53% of leaving students have gone straight on to university, in the same year they finished ‘Sarala’. Within 12 months, the number of university-enrolled students was, on average, 68%. Many take interesting gap years and spend time traveling, sometimes making good use of the international friendships they forged during their time at ‘Sarala’.
Testimonials
There is no typical ‘Sarala’ graduate, but a common story we hear from alumni is that their time at the school stoked the fires of lifelong learning in them. This is often expressed in alumni studying at a number of different institutions over the course of their careers. Over the past five years, an average of 53% of leaving students have gone straight on to university, in the same year they finished ‘Sarala’. Within 12 months, the number of university-enrolled students was, on average, 68%. Many take interesting gap years and spend time traveling, sometimes making good use of the international friendships they forged during their time at ‘Sarala’.
