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The Spring term got off to a busy start with plenty of activities enriching the curriculum and celebrating success. Starting in the first week with the winning House, Youngs, and winning Pride, Mufasa, heading to the cinema to celebrate their success last term, there have also been gifted & talented workshops, guest speakers and a music concert.
Our ‘excellent’ ISI inspection report was published and shared widely. Of our local competitors who were also recently inspected, LPH comes out most favourably!
For our Year 8 scholars, it’s been a term of hard work and examinations. There have been notable scholarship successes with six academic, one art, two sport and two Ken Shearwood all-rounder awards to Lancing College.
It’s been a term filled with teamwork demonstrated by all the children in a plethora of ways. There was a cracking start to our new season of rugby and netball, when conditions on the pitches have allowed, with our co-ed teams showing tenacity and not a jot of bending to old-fashioned gender stereotypes. We added a twist to International Women’s Day by taking part in the ‘Let Girls Play’ initiative, with co-ed coaching sessions led by three football professionals - two from Brighton & Hove Albion currently flying high in the Premier League and with Tara Barratt from Lewes Football Club Women. Lewes FC is commendable in offering equal pay to its male and female professional players.
Sadly defeated by a combination of torrential rain and high winds, our Mowden Cup co-ed netball tournament had to be re-scheduled and will now take place just after the Easter break. There has nevertheless been much to celebrate for our sports teams, with one highlight being our girls and boys doing very well this year at the annual Handcross Park Cross Country meet, against a large number of other highly competitive schools.
School has been a hive of activity with all manner of workshops, trips and activities taking place to support and enrich the curriculum. We celebrated World Book Day with a gentle but important emphasis on sustainability, something the children on the school council remind us regularly matters to them enormously. A large number of children (and staff!) clearly put effort into creating costumes using clothing they already had, and each child went shopping for a pre-loved book to take home to enjoy courtesy of our school book swap. The school community came together to comfortably exceed the sponsorship target of 10,000 pages in a ‘Readathon’ which raised money for Read for Good, a charity that provides reading and literacy resources to children otherwise unable to access these key learning skills.
This was further exemplified by a wide range of events, including a poetry showcase, an informal evening designed to reflect the recent focus on poetry in the English department. In the Prep school, the children enjoyed an Art Day with workshops led by a number of local artists on the theme of surrealism. This was part of the school’s Able, Gifted & Talented programme – a reminder that AGT in school reaches far beyond academia, and is there for every child to access.
Our younger pupils in Pre-Prep prepared together superbly for their Mothers’ Day teas and celebrations, which were a joy to behold.
The highlight of the term has to be our production of Matilda the Musical Jr, which played to full houses in the Lancing College theatre. After a few weeks of rehearsals in school, it was gratifying to witness how teamwork and mutual support of each other flourished. The cast, drawn from Years 6 to 8, delivered the ultimate all-singing, all-dancing revolt as they brought Roald Dahl’s somewhat alternative view of school to the stage #BambinatumEstMaggitum!
Creative and artistic endeavours are very dear to our hearts at LPH. They fuel the imagination, creativity and encourage our pupils to develop the mindset essential for problem-solving and learning beyond that which is taught. Working with others in their interpretation of a creative task, be that art, dance, drama or music, hones the children’s communication and teamworking skills. This has been demonstrated at every turn and we are very proud of everything that the pupils have achieved this term.