The Senior School

The Senior School is found at the heart of the Harrow Shanghai campus, and, within its confines, is a thriving educational community, with rigorous intellectual activity characterising the daily routine and endeavour. Pupils enter the Senior School at age 13, or Year 9, from the Prep School and other schools in Shanghai or abroad. Year 9 provides a foundation course covering a large number of subjects, enabling the pupils to become familiar with new subjects, while preparing them to make their IGCSE choices at the end of the year.

In Years 10 and 11 the pupils study for IGCSE in a variety of subjects, divided into core and option subjects. This should give the pupils a total of nine or ten subjects to study during the two-year course. The Senior School curriculum is therefore based on these IGCSE courses. While early entry is possible in some subject areas, the majority of external examinations will be sat in the summer term of Year 11.

The IGCSE programme maintains a breadth of subjects that ensures pupils have a broad knowledge base as well as the opportunity to explore a variety of humanities, sciences and creative subjects prior to greater specialisation in the Sixth Form. The learning approach during these years becomes more formal with pupils being required to master the knowledge and skills of each subject in which they will sit public examinations.

Housemasters continue to monitor pupils closely in terms of academic development as well as encouraging greater independence and leadership of all their tutees.

All pupils study the following core curriculum:

Mathematics, English, Science, Global Perspectives

And select four options from the following list:

Chinese (Mandarin), Geography, History, Modern Foreign Languages (Spanish, French, German), Art and Design, Music, Drama, Business Studies & Enterprise, Computer Science