Overview

THE FORDER PROGRAMME

Finally, a full year of business as usual! What a joy it has been to see our students get a full year of co-curricular activity without disruption. We maintained the expectation of a full week of commitment during the timetabled period and students responded, with the Michaelmas sign-up being particularly ambitious in the lower years as always. Year 7 students, full of enthusiasm were quick to reassure tutors that 10+ clubs in a week was quite achievable and they set about tackling this new programme.

In order to support this increase in demand the staff were able to offer more clubs each day for students across the year groups to enjoy. Sport, Music, Art, Drama, Adventurous Activity and the CCF made the transition seamlessly back to full programmes, with a variety of opportunities on offer for students. Challenges for the teams this year were to make better use of Sixth Form students to support delivery and in sport in particular they responded, with the introduction of the Sports Leaders Award. In Drama, students were able to work alongside staff in directing all aspects of productions, and the spectacular, student-led Machinal performance was a real highlight. We also explored opportunities to offer spaces for what the Art team called ‘studio’ style sessions, bringing students into the spaces and allowing them to access the facilities and resources to develop their own work. All of this alongside the broad, diverse and highquality staff led offering. Other highlights included the CCF contributions to the Lord Mayor’s Show, Remembrance Day on-site and then again at the Lewisham Parade; the Michaelmas Concert at St Martin-in-the-Fields and then of course, the Carol Service. House Competitions were back up and running and House Drama and Music were both thoroughly enjoyable events as always, with a quite remarkable number of students involved. One of the real strengths of the Forder Programme has to be the diversity of opportunities that are available alongside these clubs. From Mosaics to Meditation, Climbing to Coding, Podcasting to Philosophy and Lego Leagues to League of Legends, this year was no different with students having an array of options to select from. As always we were keen to support them all in finding the right balance between pursuit of existing passions and branching out into new

challenges. We do hope they enjoyed the journey. As always, it would be remiss of me not to mention the culmination of the co-curricular year, with all students engaged with Adventurous Activity on Adventure Week, and then into the ever-growing Festival with so much on offer. Each of these events are now well-established in the College calendar and in spite of recent challenges, we look forward to seeing them continue to grow and go from strength to strength. It is exhausting even to write about! Congratulations to staff, students and parents alike for your continued commitment to the co-curriculum. I know as staff, we get so much from being involved in various forms and we do hope that you feel the same. The Forder Programme really does showcase everything that is special about our community, and we can all be proud of what we have been able to achieve in the last year.

Mr D Gower

Assistant Head Co-Curricular