Dr Anjali Rao
Built our enquiry-led laboratories, where pupils plan and run their own experiments before they meet the textbook.
PhD Chemistry · IISc BangaloreAt Solenne since 2009
Our faculty
Educators who know each child.
A school is its teachers. Ours are subject specialists who chose, deliberately, to teach in small rooms where every name is known and every question has time to land.
Teaching philosophy
Small classes are not a perk. They are the method.
We keep an eight-to-one ratio because it is the only honest way to teach the way we believe in: to notice the child who has half understood, to ask the second question, to mark work with a pen rather than a tick.
Our teachers are recruited for two things in equal measure: depth in their subject and a genuine appetite for the company of the young. Most stay for a decade or more, which is why a pupil at Solenne is taught, year on year, by adults who remember who they were last September.
Read our ethos →0:1Student to teacher
0%Hold a master's or doctorate
0 yrsAverage teaching experience
0Nationalities among staff
Figures across the whole school, reviewed at the start of each academic year. Continuing professional development is funded for every teacher, every year.
Inclusive learning support
Every child taught as the child they are.
Inclusion at Solenne is not a separate department a child is sent to. It is the assumption that learners differ, and that good teaching plans for it from the start.
01
A learning support team in every phase
Three full-time specialists work alongside class teachers, never apart from them, so support happens in the room rather than down a corridor.
02
English as an additional language
With pupils from thirty-two nationalities, our EAL specialists bring new arrivals into the language of the classroom quickly and without losing the mother tongue at home.
03
Individualised learning plans
Where a child needs a different path, we write it down, share it with parents and review it each term. The plan follows the child, not the timetable.
The people
A few of the educators who lead our work.
James Okonkwo
Guides the upper school through the IB programme, the extended essay and the long conversation about what a life of learning is for.
MEd Curriculum · CambridgeAt Solenne since 2013
Meera Sundaram
Keeps wonder at the centre of the first years: guided play, the garden, and the unhurried beginnings of reading.
MA Early Childhood · TISS MumbaiAt Solenne since 2011
Lucas Bertrand
Leads two choirs and the chamber ensemble, and believes every child should leave able to read a score and hold a part.
MMus Performance · Trinity Laban, LondonAt Solenne since 2016
Fatima Sheikh
Holds the rhythm of house life and wellbeing, so that a child who is struggling on Tuesday is known and held by Wednesday.
MSc Educational Psychology · Delhi UniversityAt Solenne since 2008
Daniel Mwangi
Runs the games programme across the fields, courts and pool, with a place in a team for every child, not only the quick ones.
BEd Physical Education · UK Sport Level 3At Solenne since 2015
The full common room runs to more than ninety teachers, supported by librarians, technicians, coaches and house staff. You will meet many of them on a visit.
Partnership with families
We teach your child with you, not at a distance.
The clearest sign a school knows a child is the quality of what it can tell the people at home. We work hard to make our reporting plain, frequent and honest.
Termly
A written report that reads like a person wrote it
Comments on effort, progress and next steps in each subject, free of jargon and gradebook noise.
Twice yearly
Parent and teacher consultations
Booked face to face conversations with every teacher, plus the tutor who holds the whole picture.
Always
A tutor you can email directly
One named adult who knows your child well and replies within two working days. No switchboard, no ticket.
Meet them yourself
The best reference for a teacher is an hour in their classroom.
Book a morning visit and sit in on a lesson, or speak with our Admissions team about how your child would be taught and supported here.