Principal's Update

Active Hope at Friends’

“Live up to the light thou hast.”

As we reflect on 2025, I am grateful for the spirit of our School—students, staff, families, alumni, and our broader community—who have brought our focus on Active Hope to life. This year, we have embraced Active Hope, a practice championed by Joanna Macy, which invites us to act from hope, connection, and care, even in the face of uncertainty. It asks us not to wait passively for change, but to engage with the world courageously and intentionally. This is a deeply Quaker way of being, valuing integrity, community, simplicity, and care for the Earth and for each other.

Active Hope is not just a concept; it is a lived practice that informs how we learn, relate, and serve. It underpins our Strategic Plan 2025–2029, launched this year, which charts our course for the next five years. Our plan, founded on five pillars—Wellbeing, Learning, Culture, Community, and Stewardship—has provided a rich framework for guiding our work. Each pillar supports us in nurturing students who are not only knowledgeable, but also compassionate, creative, resilient, and ethically grounded.

Education for Human Flourishing: A Global Perspective

Last month, the OECD released its 2025 report Education for Human Flourishing, offering a global vision for what education can and should achieve. The OECD calls for a shift away from a narrow focus on academic achievement or workforce preparation, towards nurturing whole human beings—individuals capable of meaning, purpose, ethical agency, social connection, creativity, and care for the world.

The report identifies five core competencies essential to human flourishing:

• Adaptive problem-solving: responding to novel, complex challenges with creativity and resilience.
• Ethical competence: acting with integrity, justice, and care for others and the planet.
• Understanding the world: gaining knowledge about cultural, social, and environmental systems to navigate complexity.
• Appreciating the world: cultivating empathy, wonder, gratitude, and a sense of belonging.
• Acting in the world: applying knowledge, skills, and values to make meaningful contributions individually and collectively.

These competencies resonate strongly with our Strategic Plan. They affirm that fostering wellbeing, nurturing curiosity and creativity, embedding values, building community, and stewarding our resources are all essential to preparing young people for a rapidly changing world.

The OECD also notes the challenges posed by technological transformation, particularly AI. As machines take over routine tasks, uniquely human capacities—ethical judgment, creativity, empathy, and purposeful agency—become ever more critical. Education, the OECD argues, must help young people flourish as humans first, capable of making a positive difference in their communities and the world.

Looking Toward 2026

As we move into 2026, this convergence of Active Hope, our Strategic Plan, and global thinking about human flourishing frames our work at Friends’. Our ambition is clear: to equip students not only with knowledge and skills, but also with the moral and emotional capacities to live meaningful, resilient, and ethical lives.

We do this by:

• Supporting wellbeing, belonging, and resilience in every student.
• Providing learning experiences that are challenging, creative, and connected to purpose.
• Embedding Quaker values in daily life, cultivating integrity, equality, care, and peace.
• Encouraging agency, service, and stewardship for self, community, and planet.
• Preparing students to navigate the ethical, social, and technological challenges of the AI age with confidence, care, and hope.

Gratitude and Hopeful Action

I thank every member of our community for living these values and contributing to a culture of care, curiosity, and courage. Together, we continue in the tradition of our founders and the long, rich history of Friends’ to build a School that is not just a place of learning, but a place where human flourishing is nurtured, hope is active, and purpose is real.

As we look to 2026, let us carry forward the light of Active Hope—guided by our values, supported by our Strategic Plan, and inspired by global visions for education that place meaning, ethics, and human flourishing at the centre. In this way, we ensure that The Friends’ School remains a place where young people grow to “live up to the light thou hast.”

In Friendship

Esther Hill - Principal