High Performance Learning: Balancing Wellbeing and Academic Excellence in World-Class Schools
This article was featured in the BSME Newsletter 2024-25 | Edition 3
GEMS Metropole School, a private international school in Dubai for children and young adults aged 3 to 18 years, has a clear ambition: to be a world class school. This vision is not just about academic success, but also about nurturing students who can think for themselves, be capable leaders and have an intellectual curiosity which sparks great knowledge.
For Metropole School, adopting the High Performance Learning framework felt like the right fit due to its proven success across other schools in the GEMS network.
Kelly Lohe, Deputy Headteacher of Secondary, said, "With its track record within GEMS schools, HPL seemed like the right fit for the way Metropole was heading. It was something that came with a track record of impact that we required in our journey".
Metropole's Senior Leadership Team sought an approach that would unite the whole school community and create lasting, progressive change, building on previous efforts to move the school forward. The HPL framework perfectly aligned with their vision, providing a structured pathway for achieving their goals.
High Performance Learning uses the latest research on cognition to provide your school with an overarching teaching and learning framework that brings your staff together around a common purpose. HPL is not a programme but rather a way of approaching teaching and learning which provides a long-term strategy for teaching and learning that really delivers results.
The framework helps to systematically build high-performing students who are confident, engaged, optimistic and resilient. If you want academic success without stress the key is to show students on a daily basis how they can learn better, and what makes the difference when it comes to cognitive success. HPL creates a consistent culture of high expectations, makes expectations and success competencies overt and public, and provides staff and students with the tools to improve performance.
HPL is built on research demonstrating that success in any domain is primarily the result of deliberate practice rather than inherited talent. The brain is exquisitely plastic and so – if we are deliberate and purposeful - we can build expertise and create experts. In HPL schools staff believe that everyone is a potential high-performer, and they behave accordingly. Teaching is adjusted to bring the cognitive ‘success competencies’ more to the fore so that students encounter them more frequently and are better able to master them over time.
Accredited HPL schools have happy students, happy staff and satisfied parents. Data after two years show 91% of students enjoy attending school, 98% of students engaged and confident in their learning, and 79% of students having few worries about their academic performance.
86% of staff in HPL school schools think their career in education is fulfilling and enjoy going to work and HPL schools see a 25% increase in staff retention after adoption of HPL. Parents talk about how they have seen a difference in their child’s confidence and willingness to push themselves to complete tasks where they would have previously given up.
To learn more and read the full case study, visit the HPL website