Castle Hill Blog, 13.05.2022

Residentials

Year 10 students spent three days at Lakeside Activity Centre this week. As I'm sure you'll appreciate, the amount of hard work and effort that goes into planning a school residential is immense. The staff team taking part then have to leave their own families for the duration of the trip, often having to rearrange their childcare commitments. They receive no extra pay for doing any of this. Meanwhile back in school their colleagues will be busy covering their lessons and duties. You might therefore wonder what on earth would possess anyone to run, or take part in, a school residential, indeed most teaching unions strongly advise their members not to do so!

The photos below, taken at Lakeside this week, provide the perfect answer to that question. What students gain from residentials, in terms of building confidence and self-esteem and developing social and life skills is immeasurable. Equally importantly, they also have a thoroughly enjoyable time and make many happy memories. Indeed, when our Year 11 students reflect on their time at Castle Hill in their leavers' assembly in a few weeks' time, I guarantee that the memories that will be mentioned most will be of the residentials they took part in during their 5 years with us. These are the reasons why we value residentials so much at Castle Hill and why our staff are always so keen to organise them. 

A question I posed on our Twitter account this week was: how many schools do you know of that, within just a few months of Covid restrictions ending, have offered a residential to every student in Years 7 to 11? Castle Hill has done exactly that and this makes me incredibly proud of our staff team. 

I urge all parents and carers to encourage their children to take part in residentials, they really can be life changing. And if your child has taken part in a residential, or has one coming up, please remind them to thank the staff involved... a quick thank you can make all the difference!

Have a great weekend!