Student Leadership

Excellence is not just an act but a habit. Our school motto, Excellentia, is lived out by every Modernite on their journey - at Modern, we believe leadership and learning are inseparable.

A Student-Driven Model

Student Leadership at Modern is built, led, and driven by students themselves. Every Modernite has the opportunity to ideate, implement, collaborate, and run projects that create real impact - for their school and for the wider community. Leadership here isn't a title held by a few; it's a habit practised by many.

The Holacracy Approach

Modern's Student Leadership model for Grades 5, 8, 11, and 12 has moved away from a traditional, hierarchical structure to a Holacracy approach - one that gives every student equal opportunity, resources, and support to develop key leadership skills by driving ideas that impact their communities positively.

Holacracy does away with top-down management. In its place, students take on flexible, self-directed roles through a system of Pledge Officers on Duty (POD) - small, purpose-driven teams that can drive activities as ideas develop. Rather than being locked into one fixed responsibility, students can take on one or more roles at any given time, when their skills or insights would benefit another team or the wider student community.

Our Structure: Houses, Strand Councils, and PODs

This approach is brought to life through a three-tier structure:

• Four Houses - Aquila, Cygnus, Orion, and Pegasus - provide the broader community and sense of belonging within which student leadership takes shape.
• Six Strand Councils, nested within the houses, organise leadership around distinct areas of school and community life, giving students a clear entry point that matches their interests and strengths.
• PODs sit within each strand council as the accountable, working guide of the model - the teams where students actually ideate, plan, and deliver their projects.

This structure gives students a home base while still preserving the flexibility at the heart of Holacracy: a student can support their POD in ideation/implementation, contribute across strand councils, and represent their house and school - often all at once.

Shared and Collaborative Leadership

Shared and collaborative leadership have long been recognised as hallmarks of high-performing teams, and this is central to how leadership works at Modern. Within each strand, appointed student leaders carries the purpose of the group forward - not by directing from the top, but by enabling every member to chart their own course, take ownership of their role, and contribute meaningfully to the team's goals.

This is what makes the model genuinely student-driven: ideas originate with students, are shaped collaboratively within the strand, and are carried out by the students themselves - with the freedom to adapt, move, and grow into new roles as their leadership journey develops.

Shared and collaborative leadership have long been recognized as important features of high performing teams. In the Holacracy leadership model, the group leader pushes forward the purpose of the group by enabling each student (designated Pledge officer on Duty-POD) to chart a personal course.