Mission | Halcyon London International School - Outstanding, Ofsted 2020

Mission: Who we are

Our Mission

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.

Our Story

Our founders – parents themselves – recognise the need to use innovative teaching methods to empower our students in navigating a complex and changing world. Together, we craft opportunities for our students to be leaders, communicators and risk-takers. We equip them to build a uniquely impactful path in the future.

Ready to reach success in the university- and career-readying IB Diploma Programme, our students enjoy a learning environment that demands inquiry, reflection, and collaboration. We prepare the next generation for the increasingly global future that awaits them.

We are committed to pioneering education.

This shared mission led our founders to seek an international school that was engaging and academically interdisciplinary: an environment that nurtures the voices of thriving global citizens. This, in turn, led to the founding of Halcyon. As the only not-for-profit IB school in London, Halcyon’s unique community tirelessly reflects on how to provide a life-changing education, going above and beyond in inspiring our students to discover their own unique potential.

Our Values

Innovation
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The Halcyon community emboldens and supports every learner to be an explorer, a risk-taker and a creative problem-solver. We embrace challenging questions and seek out purposeful, research-led answers.

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.





Collaboration
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Collaboration is at the core of our community of life-long learners. Learning together we build different perspectives as we understand ourselves in relation to others. This experience allows each of us to navigate the world successfully and shape who we want to be.

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.

Community
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Halcyon understands that successful communities learn and create together, supported by a culture of shared values.

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.



Director’s Message

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

Engaged by Halcyon

Read more about student life at Halcyon.

Pioneered by Halcyon

Learn more about academics at Halcyon.

Empowered by Halcyon

Take a look at some amazing stories from our graduates!

Inspired by Halcyon

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


The IB Mission Statement

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.