EXTRACURRICULAR
CLASS DISMISSED Independent school life isn’t defined by stellar exam results alone. The extracurricular and cocurricular activities on offer get pupils thinking outside the box, enabling them to truly flourish, writes Charlotte Phillips
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or parents considering an independent school for their child, one of the major attractions is the sheer variety and richness of opportunities in and out of the classroom. Different schools have slightly different ways of describing what’s on offer but the main terms you’ll come across are curriculum, co- or extracurricular activities and – perhaps – even the super-curriculum. Curricular activities encompass the timetabled subjects that every ‘educated citizen’ as the government nicely puts it, needs to know. Extracurricular activities, such as music, enrich the school experience
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Co-curricular and extracurricular activities cover just about everything else – a cornucopia of clubs, societies and activities, so varied, numerous and extensive that they generally spill over into break or lunch times as well as taking place before or after school. As Adam Greenwood, Headmaster at South London prep, The Pointer School – which runs more than 50 different clubs and societies each week – explains: “Our expectation is that this is something [all the] children [will] experience and it’s very much seen as part of the school life.”
A deeper dive
Last, but definitively not least, comes the super curriculum. How it works – and, indeed, what it’s called, varies from school to school, but it’s often used to define any activity that drills down into an area of learning in depth. It enables pupils with an interest in a particular subject or area to take their passion well beyond the curriculum, developing skills that will enable them to flourish not just at school, but at university and the workplace. It might involve independent research, hearing from outside speakers or gaining vital
