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To provide an exceptional education that draws out the unique potential of each student.
Halcyon is a leading International Baccalaureate school for students aged 11 to 18 – the only not-for-profit IB school in London.
In 2012, four visionary parents set out to build a pioneering educational community.
Amidst the increasing marketisation of both state and independent schools, they perceived a growing trend: education was being treated as a business rather than a platform to serve the academic and developmental needs of young people. Determined to challenge this trend, they founded Halcyon, a not-for-profit international school, with community and innovation at its heart. In 2013, we opened our doors, and our founders’ vision became a reality.
Halcyon’s story is one of innovation, collaboration, and community.
This pioneering approach attracted like-minded individuals who believed in pursuing what was right, not what was fashionable. With their combined experience in international education, they chose the International Baccalaureate (IB) as the cornerstone of our curriculum, recognising its unique ability to foster both academic and personal development in the quest for a better and more peaceful world.
The founders understood that, like any field or industry, innovation was crucial. Our expert teachers leveraged the IB curriculum as a springboard for this innovation: integrating cutting-edge technology to enhance our students’ ingenuity and capabilities; pursuing a student-centred ‘behaviour’ policy based on values rather than rules. This policy built the capacity of both staff and students to strengthen and grow from mistakes, fostering a community in which everyone felt safe, happy, and valued. In which everyone could prosper.
Our founders’ vision was clear from the start: to create an institution where fees were reinvested into the school community rather than distributed to shareholders; invested in developing and maintaining an exceptional education, dedicated to drawing out the unique potential of each student.
One decade on, Halcyon remains true to its founding principles. The school continues to nurture an environment where everyone feels secure and appreciated, thanks to its value-driven approach and commitment to innovation. As we step into the next decade, Halcyon has formed a dedicated Innovation team focused on exploring the potentials of AI, service, and international mindedness. This team continues to view education as a means to serve the academic and developmental needs of young people, drawing out their unique potential, ready to build a better and more peaceful world.
To build this creative, curious and questioning culture, Halcyon’s IB curriculum is designed to promote self-directed learning and critical thinking.
Our work is enriched by pioneering digital resources, fully integrated into our school practice.
We intentionally create an environment that develops and encourages collaborative learning and teaching through the promotion of trust, mutual respect, shared values and leadership.
Collaboration is present in our leadership approach, our learning spaces, our staff workshops, our coaching dialogue, and through the passion of student initiative and engagement. Collaborative practice is supported by our pioneering wellbeing programme and our emphasis on restorative practice and fostering ownership, agency, voice, and belonging.
We are committed to creating an inclusive community that appreciates and respects each person. All are welcomed to contribute and develop a sense of agency and ownership of the school and its mission. Just as we wish all students to fulfil their unique potential, we actively nurture the same opportunities for growth for everyone in our community.
We also commit to participating in the wider community through service-learning and engaging constructively with wider social challenges.
Halcyon provides an outstanding and exceptional learning experience.
Our core purpose is to realise the full potential of every student in our community, and we achieve this through small class sizes, a rich and diverse curriculum, and an extraordinarily talented and dedicated teaching team. As a not-for-profit school, our focus is always on the quality of learning.
As an International Baccalaureate World School, our students follow a curriculum that is academically challenging and rewarding, flexible and student-centred, and which places an emphasis on intercultural understanding and respect. Our students graduate from Halcyon equipped with a qualification that provides a passport to the best universities around the world, as well as the personal and social skills to be leaders. We learn together, create together and succeed together. And we do this with a sense of joy and wonder.
There is nothing more important than your child’s education, and there is nothing more important for your child than to have the freedom to be who they are – to be able to explore their learning, to ask questions, to be confident enough to embrace new and unfamiliar ideas, and to feel the excitement of discovery.
Uniquely, we provide an innovative programme of exploration learning to ignite each student’s imagination, alongside personal learning time from Grade 6: nurturing, supporting, and celebrating every aspiration. We are proud to be change-makers in how we prepare our students to navigate their future. We are leaders in the educational sector in our application of digital technology in the classroom. We liaise with universities to deliver a truly unique, research-driven, approach to wellbeing – the quality of feeling recognised, valued, secure, and confident.
We are a learning community bound together by a commitment to be inclusive and to support each other. Every child has a personal learning mentor; every parent is involved and is heard; every teacher is not only an outstanding educator but also a champion for your child; and our Board of Trustees provides the vision and energy to keep Halcyon at the forefront of international education.
The academic year 2024-5 will be my last as Director of Halcyon. Our community collaborated exceptionally in the process of finding, interviewing and appointing Jeff Lipman, who will take on the role of Director from the academic year 2025-6. I couldn’t be happier to hand over to Jeff. I know he will continue the school’s pioneering approach to education and match the energy and commitment of our staff. Read More
Barry Mansfield, Director
Read more about student life at Halcyon.
Learn more about academics at Halcyon.
Take a look at some amazing stories from our graduates!
Apply to Halcyon today, or sign up to an Open House.
Halcyon is a lovely small community, with lots of personal attention, wonderful teachers, and an interesting and challenging school programme. Halcyon challenges my children – they are very much involved in their education, much more than before.
Grade 12 Parent
Through its mission, the International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.
To this end the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment. These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.
Through its mission, Halcyon is committed to delivering an exceptional International Baccalaureate education – a curriculum that equips its students with the skills to succeed in a complex, ever-changing world.
