In a rare achievement, SCHS has been nominated for two separate TES Independent Schools Awards this year: Student Initiative of the Year & Independent-State School Partnership.
From a Sixth-Former conceiving and executing a domestic and international entrepreneurial initiative that engages other girls in the study of mathematics to how the school’s Partnership Programme innovated and adapted to teach specialist subject not available to most state school pupils, SCHS’ life-changing approach to inspiring and including young people caught the TES judges’ eyes.
During the first Covid-19 lockdown, Joely To (pictured above), L6 and Carter House Prefect (pictured above), set up a non-profit organisation, Pionner, dedicated to creating role models and positive experiences for girls to study maths. Using her tenacity and passion, Joely independently brokered partnerships with major corporations and held more than 10 webinars and data challenges for over 600 students across the UK and Nigeria in Pioneer’s first four months.
Describing the impact of Pioneer, Joely noted to The Guardian: “One 16-year-old got an early job offer from Experian after completing our challenge,”
Earlier this year, Joely was named The UK’s Most Innovative Young Person by the Nottingham Building Society.
You can find out more about Joely’s work here (link to previous article)
SCHS’ Partnership programme which is lead by Mr Andrew Christie, Assistant Head, Partnerships & Co-Curricular, (pictured above teaching twilight GCSE Classical Civilisation to a range of London pupils) has also been singled out as one of the nation’s best independent-state partnerships. Earlier this year, Mr Christie won the Classics Association’s Award for ‘Making Classics More Inclusive’ and last year our programme was selected for the i25 Innovation Award short-list.
As Mr Christie (pictured above) explains: ‘Our partnership programme remained undeterred by the pandemic. The privileges of a first-class Guided Home Learning provision, afforded to our own pupils thanks to our digital forward planning, were immediately extended to the pupils in our partnership programme.’
To learn more about our partnership work, click here.
The TES Awards ceremony will be taking place virtually this year on Friday 30 April. We wish all nominees the best of luck.