In the Media
Links to newspaper and magazine articles featuring d'Overbroeck's.
As featured in the Oxford Times Education Supplement
September 15th 2011
Summer Cooking and Inspired Teaching
Sami Cohen, the Principal of d'Overbroeck's, reflects on the essential ingredients that make for outstanding teaching and learning.
Not an avid TV watcher, I was nonetheless captivated by Jamie Oliver's recent programme on summer cooking. Working outdoors with no kitchen in sight, it was fascinating to watch him crush fresh ripe avocadoes till they oozed through his fingers, squeeze juicy lemons with great gusto, turn a holey old bucket into a serviceable fish smoker and whip up a cake out of hastily cooked pancakes and the enthusiasm of a bunch of three-year olds. With the most makeshift of equipment and the minimum of pretension ‐ but with passion, flair, a deft touch and plenty of joie de vivre, he was able to bring the best out of his ingredients and to turn out exquisitely succulent results.
It struck me that good teaching had much in common with this. Good teaching comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes; there is no single recipe for it.
As featured in B4 Magazine
Issue 18, Winer 2011
D'Overbroeck's College, A Preparation for Life
Forget any preconceptions you have about independent education. With outstanding academic results placing d'Overbroeck's as the number one school in the country in 2010 for 'value added' - combined with the pioneering of the AQA Baccalaureate - the College's Principal, Sami Cohen, has a unique and innovative vision for his school.
d'Overbroeck's College is located in the heart of Oxford, a city with a worldwide reputation for academic excellence. A co-educational independent school, it started life providing for sixth form students only, but in 2005 began taking pupils from the age of eleven. It now has four hundred and forty students aged between eleven and eighteen, and a maximum class size of fifteen, reducing to ten in the sixth form. Based on three sites, the school is firmly united by one overriding ethos that places the needs of individual students before instituition or tradition.
As featured in Cotswold Life Magazine
September 2011
Education Life : Meet the Head
How long have you been at d'Overbroeck's College?
With the exception of a few years in the early 90s when I lived and worked in Paris, I have been at d'Overbroeck's since 1979 - as a teacher, Director of Studies, and for the last 13 years, as Principal.