BACKGROUND & HISTORY

Established in 2021, Scholastica Preparatory is the projet passionné of Mehwish Shigri, a UK-qualified early and primary years specialist and former head at Beaconhouse Schooling System. Her long-held dream has been to create a school where children experience the world and learn to think for themselves, developing the capacity to change their world for the better under the mentorship and guidance of teachers who are truly invested in the progress of their young wards. In contrast to the increasingly corporatized model of school-education prevalent in scaled-up schooling systems across the country, Mehwish seeks to contribute to a change in the narratives in education by establishing a school where the focus can shift from an excessive preoccupation with measurement, management and documentation of learning back to learning itself, thus putting the learner at the heart of it all once again. In this new kind of school offering an intimate learning environment with personalized learning and a low student to teacher ratio, she believes that teaching can once again become a way to fulfill an individual’s potential, not just to meet specific learning targets. Mindful of the evidence in research to suggest that excessive focus on documentation demotivates teachers from attending fully not only to their pedagogical tasks but also to their own development as teachers, Mehwish is committed to creating a space for teachers to refocus on the learners and on their own growth as practitioners.