On sports day, the College held a charity raffle to win a signed football kindly donated by the current Chelsea FC playing squad. Thanks to the enthusiasm of pupils and staff, this raised over £150. Half the funds will go towards our ongoing support of sports injury charity The Matt Hampson Foundation, while the remaining money has been used for an entirely different project.
Heads of Department were asked to gather together spare learning resources to donate to less fortunate schools in challenging environments. This resulted in hundreds of Mathematics and Science textbooks (equating to 15 boxes) being packed up and sent to educational charity Books2Africa.
Director of Studies Mr Ian Munro explained: “At Shiplake, our curriculum is regularly updated to keep up with trends of the national curriculum and ensure pupils are being taught the most relevant and suitable content in each subject. This can sometimes lead us to choosing a different course specification at GCSE and A Level, or perhaps moving to a new exam board if they appear to provide a superior syllabus.
As a result of this, some course textbooks can unfortunately become redundant and no longer fit for purpose. Whilst most have had many years of use, it would still be a great shame to see them go to waste. Fortunately, charities such as Books2Africa help to distribute books to schools in need across Africa.”
A Books2Africa courier arrived this week to collect our donation and the books will be distributed to schools across Africa where they can be put to greatest use. We are also planning to continue our support of Kikundu School in Kenya, via various fundraising efforts over the coming academic year.
