Our (new) Year 8 pupils were amazing during Enrichment Week 2024 and rose to the challenges of the week's activities. The weather wasn’t always the July sunshine desired, but pupils displayed excellent resilience to have a fantastic week.

Pupils demonstrated our school values of trust, determination and kindness over the whole week. Miss Charlesworth, Deputy Head, commented "It has been a fantastic week and a real pleasure to work with the year group. The weather hasn't always been the kindest to us but pupils have taken part in all the activities with positive attitudes. It has been lovely to see their smiling faces when they've achieved something they didn't think they could do and hear them supporting and encouraging each other.”

On Monday the whole year group went to St Fagans National Museum of History near Cardiff. The pupils followed different routes around the site in their tutor groups, giving them the chance to explore tens of thousands of years of human history. There are over fifty (mostly original) buildings from different periods of history, from Iron Age onwards, including a church, the original castle, houses, farms and a school. A terrace of six mineworkers' cottages was particularly interesting, the same shell displaying interiors from 1805, 1855, 1895, 1925, 1955 and 1985. It was great to see pupils get stuck into the challenges with such gusto and prizes were awarded to a member of each tutor group. The day at St Fagans complemented pupils’ historical studies perfectly and builds their understanding of the shared history of the British isles.

From Tuesday to Friday, each tutor group completed a rotation of four different activities, accompanied by a tutor and other Deer Park staff.

As in previous years, the Survival Skills on the Bathurst Estate proved to be very popular, you could certainly smell the pupils on their return! Pupils were shown how to create and light a fire safely and cooked their sausages on sticks they had whittled themselves, before enjoying a dessert cooked on their fire. A variety of challenges, including den building and a treasure hunt, demonstrated pupils’ creativity and teamwork.

The day at Lake 32 involved pupils choosing three different activities to do over the course of the day, from a list including stand-up paddleboarding, low ropes, kayaking, raft building, archery and bushcraft. In many cases, they had to use their communication skills and teamwork to complete tasks successfully. For a lot of pupils, this was their favourite day despite less-than-ideal weather conditions.

The pupils also spent a day at Cotswold Country Park and Beach, where half the day was on AquaVenture (a wipe-out style assault course) and mini-golf, and the other half was enjoying the sunshine (when it came out) at the beach and swimming in the lake. Staff were thrilled to see pupils get stuck into AquaVenture and competitive spirits were certainly on show during the mini-golf!

The final activity was run by STEMworks. Pupils were challenged to create an invention or product to help their local community become more sustainable in the future. Working in teams, they came up with ideas, created prototypes and presented these to the other teams in a Dragons' Den style. Each team member had specific responsibility for Production, ICT, Marketing or Buying, led by a Managing Director. The pupils were incredibly creative, there are definitely a significant number of budding entrepreneurs in the year group!

Mr Ferne, Head of Humanities, reflected that “pupils have had a fantastic week and have gone from strength to strength. They have thrown themselves into every activity and have been a pleasure to work with. We look forward to working with our new cohort in 2025."