Co-Curricular Activities

The academy offers a wide and rich co-curricular programme designed to nurture, develop and stretch the talents and interests of all students.

We want all pupils to be exposed to every possible opportunity that they might not have in their everyday life. Through the programme, students can gain the knowledge and cultural capital they need to become responsible, effective and active citizens.

Many of the co-curricular activities are open to students across both the primary and secondary phase. This provides a chance for students to develop social skills by communicating with pupils of all ages. In addition, Sixth Form students are encouraged to form, recruit for and run their own societies, or support staff in running clubs for younger students.

Clubs available for sign-up - secondary phase

Building resilience, respect and rigour

One of the aims of our co-curricular programme, alongside our formal and informal curricular offer, is to develop our values of resilience, respect and rigour in our students to help them meet the challenges that modern day life brings.

When we devise the co-curricular offer we consider the following components that build these values and offer development opportunities for our students outside of our core curriculum offer.

• We encourage students to participate in activities that enable them to step outside of their normal comfort zone, building resilience whilst taking calculated risks and learning informally through mistakes.
• By participating in clubs with students from other year groups, they learn to respect the differences and similarities that we all have and develop a deeper understanding of our community.
• All activities support pupils rigour by extending their learning and character beyond that taught in the curriculum, enabling them to take control of their learning and development.

Measuring the impact

Registers are taken at every co-curricular activity so that we can track exactly who is attending which clubs, how many and how often. This is useful information for the school so that we can ensure that every pupil at HGA is given proper guidance in choosing activities and are positively reinforced; more pupils will then have access to these important activities. This information will also allow us to evaluate the co-curriculum programme regularly.