There is no doubt that the past two years have changed the world drastically. The global pandemic has forced us to take the road less traveled on many occasions and pursue alternate choices unforeseen before the world shut down. Parents are concerned that their children have fallen behind in their schooling, due a year and a half of academic frenzy, with every day beginning and ending with whether their child’s school will close or not.
That’s where independent school education comes in.
The HNMCS Advantage
Here at HNMCS, we know that our secret weapon for academic success has always been our small classes. With our 9:1 Student-Faculty Ratio, we believe that post-secondary preparation starts with creating a culture of achievement that develops the individual capacity of every girl. With our small class sizes, our HNMCS students have a curriculum that is tailored to them and are given every opportunity to develop and excel in the way that they learn best in order to achieve optimal academic success. When COVID-19 hit, our HNMCS secret weapon of small class sizes helped us seamlessly transition into an online academic curriculum.
As a Google Certified School, our girls brought their work home onto their desktops and created an academic environment most conducive to their learning styles - all within the click of a button. Our teachers, who were trained in online learning in preparation for in-person schooling closure due to the pandemic, were prepared to spearhead our seamless transition online. Our instructors were there for our girls every step of the way to ensure that they were thriving in student achievement, even without an in-person experience. Not only were our academics thriving at home, but our 100+ clubs throughout our senior and middle school grades were as well. Our HNMCS students were still attentively taking on leadership roles and fostering high levels of self esteem through their school and extracurricular all within the comforts of their own home. No matter what the future of education may look like, HNMCS instructors, administration and students are prepared for it.
This is the HNMCS Way and more importantly, the HNMCS Advantage.
During this period of COVID-19, many publications have offered various points of view so parents are more aware of educational options for their children. Navigating schooling has been a difficult feat for families, and it is safe to say that parents were unimpressed with how some schools handled the academic transition from in-person to online learning. A Forbes article quotes Cindy Chanin, an Education Expert of Rainbow EDU Consulting & Tutoring who argues that “families who choose private school tend to get access to more robust learning and engagement opportunities. Not only that, but private schools tend to have more adept integration of technology and learning, more customized, personalized curriculum presentation, and smaller class sizes”.
While programming a curriculum for their daughters that is more than satisfactory to families, even with a global pandemic surrounding us, let us not forget the graduates that have come out of independent schools during this time.
Despite the challenges of a COVID year, our Class of 2021 had not only a 100% University Acceptance rate, but also received $1.2 million in scholarship offers. Zero downtime in programme delivery (both online and in-person), combined with innovative programming and teachers who are dedicated to each girl's success, resulted in a highly successful graduating class with 41% going on to Science, Technology & Engineering programmes, 40% pursuing studies in the Arts & Humanities, and 19% who will be future Business & Commerce leaders of the world.