The Student’s Profile

Knowledgeable

We make our students face difficult academicchallenges to prepare them for the best schools and for their future life. We support their participation in competitions, ScienceOlympiadsanddebates. We will not bore you by listing all the international victories they have brought back home over those years. The key point is that thanks to this motivation, they broaden their horizons and deepen their knowledge, leave the school with excellent resultsand continue their education, whether at the universityof their dreams such as Yale, Oxford or Cambridge, or elsewhere and depending on what they opt for.

Caring

Social responsibility has been part of our school since the time it was founded. Thanks to volunteering and helping others students remember every day that we are not onlyresponsible for ourselves but also for the world around us. Examples include our students’ initiative seeking the nomination of Sir Nicholas Winton for the Nobel Peace Prize, or the regular help to elderly citizens in a neighbouring village.

Responsible

In our school, students pick the way in which they achieve their goals. Right at the very beginning, they accept part of the responsibilityfor their own education. We give them full support in this respect. We refer to this as Student Organised Learning (SOL). This makes them experience the fact that all decisions have consequences. They are reminded of, in various forms, the importance of being responsible throughout their enrolment here.

Honest

We guide students towards honest and straightforwardbehaviour both atschool and in everyday life. These communicativetools should never beseparated.

Courteous and Cultured

We regard common decency and courtesy between people as the basis for mutual understanding. Culturual awareness and courtesy are a matter of course for our students. They open doors for them, not only to prestigious institutions but alsoto people’s hearts.

Resilient

Open Gate is a secure environment for students, in which they have the right to make a mistake, because everybody learns most from their mistakes. But you also need resilience to be able to face your own mistakes. Thanks to resilience, people can cope with failures and learn to recast negative emotions into edifying experience. We cultivate resilience in everyday teaching, in outdoor activities, and also through involvement in the globally recognised international programme of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.

Organized

Attending Open Gate entails more than conventional classes from eight to three. Students themselves manage their time to a large extent. Planning is not easy. We transform this into a lesson that is all the more valuable for life, because our students will find time management very useful one day, whether they are finally physicians, senior managers, politicians, food bloggers or responsible parents.

Independent

One important thing that we can do for our students is help them learn how to learn. We are preparing them for a future that we do not exactly know ourselves. Classicalknowledge and skills sometimes become obsoletefaster than pupils can master them. But independence will be useful for them at any time, with theability to tell whether or not they are learning effectively, and what works for them and what does not. We also foster students’ independence through sojourns in the countryside, because even university graduates sometimes need to make a fire.