Strategic Framework

We will embed character development and wellbeing across all aspects of school life, through daily experiences that teach the girls resilience, kindness, creativity and responsibility.

We will encourage our girls to try new things, reflect on their endeavours, and support each other, developing their independence, imagination, and confidence.

Our priorities:

• Boarding as Character-Building: Leverage the full-boarding experience as a platform for pastoral care, resilience, empathy, leadership, and service.
• Wellbeing First: Ensure pastoral systems promote whole-pupil wellbeing, emotional literacy, and a strong sense of belonging.
• Mentoring & Reflection: Expand tutor and mentoring programmes to support long-term personal development, self-awareness, and ethical decision-making, fully aligned with the SSG Transformative Education Framework.
• Character Curriculum: Embed our Character Curriculum across academic, co-curricular and pastoral provision, giving pupils tools to build their intellectual and emotional character.
• Separate Yet Together: Leverage opportunities within SSG to broaden pupils’ learning and experiences.
• Leadership in Practice: Introduce leadership opportunities across co-curricular and boarding life, building initiative, accountability, and reflective practice.

We will deliver a personalised, innovative education that equip pupils with the knowledge, practical skills, and mindset to thrive in a complex, rapidly changing world.

Our focus is on providing a solid foundation of rigour and curiosity, ensuring girls are prepared for senior school and beyond.

Our priorities:

• Personal Pathways: Provide individualised academic pathways with tutoring, mentoring, and coaching to enable every pupil to reach her potential.
• Rigour with Breadth: Maintain academic rigour while evolving an interdisciplinary, inclusive, and applied curriculum, with a focus on skills-based learning.
• Analytical Thinking: Build pupils’ analytical skills, logical problem-solving, and capacity for intellectual curiosity, including the use of data as evidence.
• Practical skills:  Give pupils real-world design experiences over a range of subjects to develop technical skills and a maker’s mindset.
• Applied Learning: Facilitate interdisciplinary innovation projects that connect learning to practical applications.

We will embed creativity, entrepreneurship, and future-ready skills across all years, giving pupils the confidence to try, experiment, and learn from both successes and setbacks.

Our priorities:

• Entrepreneurial Projects: Facilitate entrepreneurship through a range of termly innovative projects developed jointly between staff and pupils.
• The Hanford Hundred: Embed our skills-based Enrichment Programme — the Hanford Hundred — to extend pupils’ knowledge and skills beyond the classroom in a supportive environment, encouraging new interests and imagination.
• Learning from Place: Use our grounds and facilities as a natural space to build entrepreneurial and creative instincts, helping girls develop ideas and resilience.
• Innovative Curriculum: Ensure our curriculum is regularly reviewed so we can be confident we are providing an innovative, skills-based curriculum grounded in creativity.

We will ensure community remains at the heart of a Hanford education; cultivating a warm, family-like environment where every girl is known and valued.

Our priorities:

• Strengthen partnerships with parents and alumnae, celebrating Hanford’s traditions while looking forward.
• Maximise opportunities with our partners in Sherborne Schools Group, benefiting from the Separate Yet Together model while retaining Hanford’s distinctiveness.
• Build links with the local community through service, shared projects, and outreach, helping pupils learn the importance of contributing to society.
• Celebrate Hanford’s unique spirit through traditions, events, and shared experiences that build belonging.

We instil care for the environment and awareness of global responsibility from an early age, ensuring cherishing childhood goes hand in hand with protecting the world around us.

Our priorities:

• Embed sustainability into daily school life through activities and outdoor learning that make environmental care part of our pupils’ childhood experience.
• Encourage pupil-led initiatives that build a sense of agency and responsibility.
• Support SSG’s journey towards Net Zero by modelling sustainable practices in school operations and culture.
• Promote global awareness, helping pupils to see themselves as responsible members of both their local and wider communities.