Private Independent Day School for Boys 3 - 13 & Girls 3 - 7, Flexi-Boarding for Boys 8 - 13
Here you will find insightful articles written by CCCS Staff who explain a little more about we do, and why we do it the way that we do.
Pastoral care is central to everything we do as teachers at CCCS. We understand that a child who feels happy, safe, and supported will have the confidence and self-assurance to succeed both inside and outside the classroom. As with safeguarding, we believe that pastoral care is everyone’s responsibility, and we work hard to ensure that, as a small school, every child is known, valued, and heard.
Art is a valued and carefully planned part of our curriculum at Christ Church Cathedral School, designed to help children grow as creative thinkers, confident makers and thoughtful observers of the world around them. While pupils certainly learn practical skills such as drawing, painting and working with a range of materials, art at prep school is about much more than producing a finished piece. It encourages curiosity, imagination, resilience and pride in one’s own ideas. Media we experiment with include drawing, painting, printing, collage, textile design, 3D sculpture e.g., pottery, ICT, and photography.
A new enrichment at CCCS this term is Woodland Art. Mrs Zeb and I take a small group of boys over to the playing fields, on a Friday afternoon to explore and create in the beautiful woodland area.
Woodland Art combines creative art activities with outdoor learning in a woodland setting. It offers our boys a unique opportunity to explore creativity while engaging directly with nature, observing textures, colours, sounds, and seasonal changes to inform their artistic expression.
When prospective parents ask at what age we start learning French at CCCS, they are often surprised to hear that we do so, from the moment a child joins our school. Let’s be honest, Mme Williams and I are not so powerful that we can brainwash everyone into thinking that learning French is essential. Science backs us up.
To wander into the choristers’ Song Room at Christ Church is to encounter a pleasing anachronism: small boys in immaculate new cassocks, hurrying with a seriousness that would shame most cabinet ministers, intent on plainsong more than punctuality. One expects a heady mixture of incense and discipline, Latin and lashings of stoicism. What one discovers instead is something at once more human and more subversive: a republic of treble voices, sustained by mischief, ambition and a surprisingly robust sense of humour.
It was a selfish wish that sparked the idea of ‘Making the Most of Oxford Club’.
Admittedly I was a newcomer to Oxford. My family and I had moved from the windswept fields and wide skies of East Anglia, and before that I had lived further afield, in France and Switzerland. Star struck perhaps with Oxford’s beauty, I also knew very little about the city and its rich and varied history.
PSHE is one of the smallest subjects in terms of the amount of timetabled time but I would argue that it is one of the most important. PSHE is about how we relate to ourselves, to our families and school, and to the wider world. It has a timetabled lesson slot once a week from Form 1 to Form 8 and is always taught by the form teacher, so that he or she understands how the pupils are thinking and feeling and can continue to support them throughout their school life. (There is no need for a specific lesson in Nursery or Reception, as Personal, Social and Emotional Development runs through everything they do.)
Every Friday, under the supervision of our Chef, Mr Kilby, the boys can take part in a very popular cooking club. Being able to cook pizzas or bake cookies at school is one of the most enjoyable and rewarding activities for the boys, but also for us, the teachers. A cooking club isn’t just about eating delicious treats! I am convinced that cooking helps boys become more independent and confident.
Life in the boarding house is, at first glance, a triumph of routine over chaos. On closer inspection, it is chaos that has agreed, temporarily, to wear a timetable. Each day begins not with inspiration but with the blunt insistence of the Form 8’s alarm clock, a device whose sole moral purpose is to remind us that sleep is a privilege, not a right. Beds are made and dorms inspected, thus initiating even the most reluctant boarder into the unromantic but essential business of self-reliance. By breakfast, one has already learned that civilisation is a fragile construct, upheld by punctuality, toast and the ever-sunny disposition of our chef, Sinisa.
The beauty of Music at CCCS is that our environment was specifically designed to cultivate young musicians. Founded to educate choristers, the school now supplies trebles for three demanding choirs: the Cathedral Choir and the chapel choirs at Pembroke and Worcester. In a world where boys' choirs are declining and where classical music is often deemed too challenging for children, we champion what is wonderful about both of these things, in buildings that are full of instruments and alive with sound. Our choral framework is built on the principle that boys can be trusted to perform alongside adults, and this ambitious approach sits at the heart of school musical life.
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Following Macbeth’s success as last year’s summer play, and the more recent Form 8 production of The Three Musketeers in French, it was only a matter of time before someone asked the question, why not give the boys real swords? Apparently, this is considered unwise, but Mrs Fairhurst found the next best thing: the British Fencing Core Coaching Programme.
Christ Church Meadow has always been a special place for me. I grew up and went to school in Oxford, living just off Abingdon Road. As a boy, I loved anything to do with sport, most specifically football – playing whenever I got the chance and following Oxford United home and away with my dad and brothers, something I still do to this day.
