1. Family and community involvement is at the heart of our ethos. Parents, grandparents and/or guardians invest their time and expertise in their child’s education, committing time to supporting our community. We run regular ‘Fun Family Learning’ events to encourage bonding as a school community.

2. We offer flexibility and choice to meet the interests, abilities and needs of all our children, including those with ASD, ADHD and PDA.

3. We not use rewards and sanctions to encourage and coerce children into learning. We focus on learning from children’s behaviours and helping them to understand themselves and others’ actions. Without extrinsic rewards, children are intrinsically motivated to learn and achieve.

4. There are no tests at FLS. Children are constantly observed to assess their understanding, and teachers and parents work together to support the child.

5. Inspired by the Finnish education philosophy ‘less is more’, we take more time to teach less material, ensuring that every child has time to absorb and reflect on their learning.

6. We focus on developing life skills and not on remembering facts which can now be found at a touch of a button. A finished product isn’t as important as the learning process to get there.

7. We consider ourselves to be learning investigators, always observing how a child learns best and adapting our approaches accordingly.

8. Our motto is Fail, Learn, Get better. We instil in our children a profound understanding that failure helps us to learn and grow, and is therefore positive.

9. Learning groups are always small and mixed age, with high staff:child ratios and practitioners are all experienced and passionate about their teaching and pastoral roles at FLS. Children learn in mixed age groups, with an abundance of natural learning opportunities as the younger ones learn from older children, and older children develop their leadership skills and empathy.

10. We maintain exceptionally high standards. We met the rigorous Independent School Standards consistently for three years before we changed status to become a Flexi-School. We continue to use these standards as our framework and our safeguarding policies and procedures remain the same.