October began for our students with our first inspiring enrichment day for all year groups.

At the top end of the school, year 13s spent the day finalising their next stage applications and their personal statements with the support of our specialist staff. Year 12, though, enjoyed cultural trips to London and the business studies and economics students visited Thorpe Park to enjoy a presentation about the running of the park and, of course, the rides. The rain did stop, the sun did come up, so a great day was had by all.

The day for year 11s was in two halves. It began with a careers and next steps presentation, followed by all students preparing their CVs and personal statements. The second half was spent in English looking at Victorian England and how it compared to today, all essential enhancement for the study of ‘A Christmas Carol’. Year 10s enjoyed Options Immersions where they worked for the day in the subject area of their choice. I particularly enjoyed watching students in childcare learning how to change nappies and bath babies, culminating in the production of a video aimed at helping new parents. Other highlights was the making of a volcano in geography and making it erupt and the modern foreign languages faculty serving a croissant and juice breakfast and running a treasure hunt.

For key stage 3 students there was a great variety of activities and challenges for students. Year 9 enjoyed a day of performing arts. I loved watching, or rather listening to, the students’ soundtrack compositions to Spiderman clips. I was particularly impressed by how the music matched precisely the visuals. Art was also fun, where students found natural alphabets arounds the school site and then recreated these using textures and printing. Year 8 accepted the challenge of ‘Mission to Mars’, a joint project between Maths and D&T. In Maths, students calculated spaceship areas and space years leading to building their own space buggy in D&T. The buggies were raced and winners celebrated. Finally, year 7s either went to Kidzania or spent the day in science learning a whole range of things through practical experience, such as how heat behaves and the art of balance.

Our first enrichment day of the new academic year has certainly set the bar high – our second is only a month away but I’m sure that it will be equally as engaging as our first.