Benbridge Academy

The circumstances of the past few years have caused educators to self-reflect and tune into the reality of what our students have achieved through online collaboration. We have come to the realisation that the online learning medium worked really well for a lot of students and their teachers. What successful teachers did could be crystallised into a set of core principles that appear in current educational philosophies worldwide. When founding Benbridge, we set ourselves the task of asking not only what a high-quality online platform should look like but what we believe in as 21st century educators. We came up with a set of core principles. Learning should be co-owned. It should be socially vital and geared towards promoting emotional intelligence and all-encompassing inclusivity. Learning experiences should facilitate opportunities for the development of independent and interdependent skills. All learning should be purposeful and formative. Successful 21st century learners should be given every opportunity to make connections and to integrate their learning into other areas. They become problem solvers; the skill and knowledge they acquire becomes relevant to real life scenarios. Our homes, our communities and the wider world offers enormous potential and sources for learning. Can all of this be achieved online? Absolutely.