The 2020-2021 year has been drawn to a close with some outstanding student engagement and creativity across all years.
In the Lower School, the Year 7 Society and Change course finished with a ‘Storytelling for Change’ project with students creating picture books, video animations, and cartoons to use metaphor as a tool for social understanding. Year 8 students completed their social entrepreneurship "10 Challenge" with students responding well to the harder challenge set this year of considering the social and environmental contribution made by the product itself, as well as the funds raised. Over £2500 was raised for 12 different causes.
In the Middle School, the Year 9, students’ advocacy work created as part of CCT was drawn together into a gallery, with students choosing campaigns to address issues relating to deforestation, gender and football, gender roles during Covid and fast fashion as holding the potential for impact. The year group also had the opportunity to engage with ‘The High Life’, an immersive climate change simulation offered by Empathy Action.
A group of Year 11 became social entrepreneurs for the last week of their school year, working in teams to respond to challenges set to them by the UOcean Project and makers of an exercise app, Waliba, which is working in partnership with Otto’s on the High Street. The coaches from Entrepreneurs in Action strengthened their understanding across the areas of marketing, finance, project management and innovation through practical research and engagement.
Alongside our Thursday service programme which has continued to see our relationship with local and global partners such as Sevenoaks Welcomes Refugees and strengthen, many students continue lead their own service or social enterprise projects. These range from creating pins in support of EDGE species, to running WomenEmpower speaker sessions with students discussing topics ranging from racism to body positivity, across a number of schools. Many students have also been mentored along the way through our student-led social entrepreneurship competition which gives participants feedback on their ideas ahead of a few groups receiving funding after feedback from external judges.
With respect to our wider partnerships work, the Kent Academies Network summer residential is now moving into an online form. We are still hoping to continue with the annual HAPS summer school, with students from across the Sevenoaks Primary Partnerships coming to Sevenoaks for a range of activities stretching across maths, science, art, music, sport and drama, with our regular Lego Club continuing to be popular with students across Sevenoaks.
