Beyond is a new enrichment programme at Norwich High School for Girls for those students in Year 7-9 (Key Stage 3) which launches at the start of the new 2024/25 academic year in September 2024.

Here, Director of Co-Curricular and Head of Year 10, Mrs Marie Hood, explains more about her role and the Co-Curriculum programme at Norwich High.

As Director of Co-curriculum, I am looking to maximise the co-curricular opportunities for our students at Norwich High to help them pursue their hobbies and interests beyond the classroom. We have an extensive and exciting Clubs programme ready to launch at the start of the new school year, with a breadth of activities on offer before school, at lunchtimes and after school. I am always seeking feedback from everyone involved and looking at ways we can continue to enhance provision.

Our co-curricular provision is a pivotal part of life at Norwich High and part of what makes the school such a special place. It is vital that our students can try new things, pursue their hobbies and interests, interact with peers of all ages, and enjoy all of the opportunities available to them. We aim to help all of our students ‘find their passion’ which they can develop and enjoy now and beyond school life.

Our clubs programme is unique to us, tailored to meet the interests of our student body and continually evolving to meet their needs. Led by our passionate and enthusiastic teaching and support staff, students can hone their skills in a wide variety of activities, from sport, music and drama, to crochet, gaming and coding and much more. We also have a breadth of clubs where students can share ideas and have their voices heard, from Fem Soc to Changemakers, and Debating to Philosophy. Alongside all of this, we run an extensive Academic Clinic programme to support students in their academic journey.

Alongside our extensive clubs programme, I am excited to bring to fruition our new enrichment programme, Beyond. For the Senior School, this will involve weekly compulsory enrichment lessons for our Key Stage 3 students to help them develop their learning and experience beyond the classroom in three strands: academic enrichment, personal development and life skills, and health and well being. Students will take part in timetabled weekly Beyond lessons following a carousel of challenging and meaningful activities.

The Beyond programme has been developed based on extensive feedback from students, parents and colleagues to help us bridge the gap between the traditional academic curriculum and help better prepare our students for life beyond Norwich High. With a need to help young people develop their employability skills, build resilience and leadership skills, experience life skills and support their health and well-being, we are confident our new programme will meet their ever changing needs.

To accommodate this new initiative and to support our statutory teaching of PSHE and RSE, we have amended our timetable one day a week to create an additional period on a Friday, where a number of our teaching staff will deliver the Beyond Programme to Year 7-9. In the Sixth Form, each term is dedicated to a different focus from academic enrichment and pushing boundaries to outreach programmes where Sixth Formers will be leading activities and initiatives in primary schools.

I am really looking forward to seeing many months of planning come to life when Beyond starts this term. I am confident that our students will embrace all aspects of the programme and hope they will enjoy learning some alternative modules, without any exam or assessment pressures. The emphasis will be on the learning journey and experiences, that I hope will serve our students well and that they will remember for years to come. I know the students are excited to have cookery and forest school in the programme, and the older students identified financial awareness as an area they wanted to know more about, so I am sure these sessions will prove invaluable.

This is just the beginning … our Prep School and Sixth Form are developing elements of the Beyond programme bespoke to their students, and we are fortunate to have the freedom to shape the programme to meet the needs of our ever changing world. We will continue to seek feedback from you all to help us develop and adapt the Beyond Programme as we move forwards. Exciting times ahead and we can’t wait to get started!