Target setting: working with clay

When you have firearms at your school you have to be acutely aware of the risks. Nick Oldham, the Head of Bredon School, shows why managing the risks is worth the reward

Not a lot of schools have a fully stocked gun room, nor do they have a peripatetic shooting offer that allows pupils from throughout the school to take part in competitive Clay Pigeon Shooting within the school day. Here at Bredon we manage the risk such as of having firearms at school with the enormous positivity found in many examples throughout our pupil body as they master the discipline of clay shooting and in turn grow in self-confidence and self-esteem.

The main clay shooting discipline shot by UK schools is English Sporting, simulating the flight of game birds, wildfowl and pest species. Bredon is also able to offer other disciplines, particularly Skeet, and this has benefited former head boy Mitchell Brooker-Smith who left Bredon in the summer of 2022. Mitchell is the current Junior British Champion in the demanding Olympic Skeet discipline. He began his shooting career here at Bredon and he has achieved excellence at National and International level both at school and since he left. He is currently tipped as one to watch in the next Olympics.

Such is the success of Clay Pigeon Shooting at Bredon that in 2019 the school embarked on an ambitious project to redevelop and re-design its offer to become more inclusive and, as such, appointed John Timmis (3 Lakes Shooting) as lead shoot instructor. John is a former Police World Champion and West London Shooting School instructor and was ably supported by Carl Bloxham, a former world champion and internationally renowned shooting instructor. In addition, World Champion Phil Smith, who has represented England for at least 20 years and been England Captain twice, joined the coaching team.

Junior British, European and World Sporting Champion Will Fenner also came from Sussex to travel up and to help coach the students last year, which was greatly appreciated by all and gave a real insight into the sport, both at school and beyond, for those who wish to progress.

Through John, Bredon was also very fortunate to secure sponsorship from an Austrianbased shotgun company and we are proud to say we are the only school in the world with their ‘Recoil Buster’ shockabsorbing gun stock which is greatly appreciated by those students particularly sensitive to recoil.

New team shooting vests were sourced from Marsh Farm Country Supplies at Tanworth in Arden, Warwickshire who continue to support us with generous discounts to our staff and students alike.

Today, since the retirement of John Timmis, our CPS offer has been taken over by Tim Shayle of Countryman Sports Gloucester and Tim is busy building on the legacy set by John and his team, with his equally well-recognised and experienced international team of instructors.

Pupils learn to shoot with a number of different calibres of gun from 410 — 20g and our sporting layout is changed every week to keep the students interested, with new target angles and different speeds to test and improve and challenge their skills. For the instructors this is the hardest part of the day, dragging heavy traps and leisure batteries into position, adjusting spring tension and target angles, attaching radio release equipment and then filling the carousels with sufficient clays. As the field is part of the school farm, often used for grazing, the layout is dismantled at the end of the day and traps returned to storage for the next week.

Prior to the pandemic, throughout 2019 and 2020, the Bredon School team had been unbeaten in any inter school friendly events. Unfortunately, the pandemic then curtailed any large events and it was not until the summer of 2021 that a school’s event could be staged. Here at the prestigious Holland and Holland Shooting School near London, our four-strong Bredon School junior team beat the nearest-performing school by a massive 35 targets, effectively 9 targets per competitor over a testing 80 target course to take the title of Prep School Champions.

The school’s proudest achievement however is not just the students’ success at competition shooting such as this, but rather watching how building their skills and confidence at shooting then leads on to improve other aspects of their school and personal life such as discipline, communication skills and building friendships.

Since running a successful ‘Have a Go’ experience for over 100 members of the (CCF) combined cadet force in December, we now have around 40 regular shooters.

Bredon’s speciality is in supporting students with dyslexia. Many dyslexic children seem to have a natural shooting ability and take to the sport quickly and successfully.

The one thing that all of the instructors agree on, is that the Bredon School students are some of the politest, kind and caring children they have ever taught. They support each other and have a real team spirit.

It would be far too easy to say that setting up and maintaining this riskassociated sport is too much in today’s health & safety conscious world but as Headmaster, I firmly believe that the reward far outweighs the risk and educationally, there is so much to be gained from a sport that sits outside of the normal traditional independent school offer. To complement the CPS, Bredon also offers a wide range of adventurous outdoor activity options such as winter mountaineering in the Cairngorms, kayaking, climbing, mountain biking, bushcraft, adventure camps in the Forest of Dean and much more. A nationallyrecognised CCF underpins the element of adventure and, by taking pupils out of their comfort zone, builds resilience, confidence, teamwork and discipline. n

Nick Oldham is the Head of Bredon School, a co-educational boarding and day school situated in glorious Gloucestershire countryside and with a particular specialism for supporting dyslexic students.