Thursday, February 7th 2008
It was very fitting that Mary Rose School should attend the Specialist Sports College Conference this year, with the announcement that we had achieved Sports College status. Mary Rose School was 1 of 10 schools achieving status and 1 of 3 special schools that had applied. We have now become part of a big family, in fact a family of 448 schools across the country.
The Sports College Conference followed the theme of ‘different perspectives – different possibilities’ this year, something that is particularly appropriate for our school and young people. It was an opportunity for Alison, Tracey, Annie and Vicky to experience a first class line up of keynote addresses from Rt. Hon Ed Ball MP, Erin Gruwell (The inspiration behind the Freedom Writers), Sir Phillip Craven to Dame Kelly Holmes and the Prime Minister himself, Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP.
It was inspirational to see how other sports colleges were working to increase achievement and attainment as well as address the new national curriculum. As well as how they were using sport to inspire achievement in other curriculum subjects and we came away with many ideas of how we could be doing this in the future.
There were also some really good exhibitions at the conference, including new equipment for use in the playground, courses that could be run with pupils, educational trips to different parts of the country and countries as well as a Climbing wall, skateboards and the very important kit stalls, which were of great interest to Tracey, Vicky and Annie.
On Thursday night along with 1,500 other people, we attended the Sports College Gala Dinner and we honoured to some of our sporting hero’s, who have represented our country at the Olympics and Para Olympics, including Ade Adepitan, who opened our school last year! We also had the opportunity to see which schools won the innovation awards this year. I think the challenge for us now is to see our school name up on the screens next year as winners of one of the innovation awards.
I think this conference has shown us that there are no boundaries to what can be achieved!
T.Clarke