Worksop College Preparatory School, Ranby House, is a Growth Mindset School, believing the concept to be a vital component in children’s learning. Headmaster Christian Pritchard explains.

I want all children to lead highly successful lives in their future and to be the best they can be in all that they do. At our school, we believe that children today should be taught a highly refined set of skills, alongside their academic learning, to be truly successful. A vital component of this is our growth mindset approach to learning.

This is critical to a child’s future success as there are two ways of looking at the world:

With a fixed mindset, a child believes that intelligence and talent are fixed at birth, often because they are told this by adults. Fixed mindset learners feel the need to look clever at all costs, as learning should come naturally. They constantly compare themselves to others and aim to hide mistakes, as these are seen as signs of weakness.

With a growth mindset, a child believes that intelligence and talent can go up or down. A growth mindset thinker therefore learns at all costs, compares their progress to themselves and understands it will be hard work. Growth mindset learners see mistakes as learning opportunities.
Our feedback to children is critical in the process. Every word and action from an adult to a child sends a message. Are we saying “you have permanent traits and I am judging them” or “you are a developing person and I am interested in you?”

Simply praising children’s intelligence or perceived talent (e.g. well done that is an excellent piece of writing) sends out a fixed mindset message, ‘I am judging the finished product’. What if the child thought they could do better, or worse, stops writing altogether because they cannot better ‘excellent’?

By contrast, growth mindset feedback focuses on the process, the strategy, the amount of effort and choices instead (i.e. this piece of writing is much stronger than your last piece as I can see you have worked hard to improve your use of verbs and adjectives from the last piece).
With a growth mindset approach to learning, children start taking greater risks. This is encouraged and, in turn, leads them to ‘fail successfully’ more often. Our children therefore develop a bounce back ability when they fail and are internally driven to better themselves.

They understand that true success comes from relentless hard work and effort. This level of growth mindset thinking sets our children up for life.
Ranby House Prep School is non-selective, classes are small and opportunities abundant.  We provide our children with a world class, vibrant, connected learning experience from three to eleven years of age that seamlessly continues to eighteen, at our College in Worksop.
Our children learn with growing resilience, adaptability and independence, in a caring, challenging and stimulating environment. Our children’s high academic, spiritual, social and emotional achievements are due to the personalised care and attention each and every child receives. Our team tailors the learning to meet the individual needs of our pupils and provides a broad, challenging curriculum embracing 21st Century learning, creativity, science, technology, the arts and sport.
To see how we would inspire your child, please do come and visit and meet the Headmaster, staff and pupils. You are always assured of a warm welcome!