EDUCATION EQUALITY

Our work with partner schools permeates every aspect of school life. Pupils and staff are actively encouraged to volunteer – staff serve as school governors; run Drama, Art, STEM and Creative Writing workshops; facilitate Ascent, our Summer term Saturday programme and GCSE booster courses. Pupils volunteer on weekends and school holidays as leaders and teaching assistants for Emanuel and partner school programmes.

Our flagship Primary Ambitions programme unites Year 6 pupils from 18 local state schools with a high proportion of free school meals with Emanuel Lower Sixth students every Friday to explore a range of enrichment topics in the Arts, Language, Literature, Politics, Science,Technology, Maths and Sport. Each year, over 6,500 children and young adults participate in our community programmes.

Emanuel School does so much great work for our community and schools within my constituency. I would like to thank Emanuel School for the fantastic work they do for our local area and welcome their continued support for our local schools.

Greg Hands, Member of Parliament for Chelsea and Fulham

Primary Ambitions

Primary Ambitions is our flagship Lower Sixth-led primary schoolfocused enrichment programme. Our pupils plan and prepare their sessions including presentations, activities, worksheets and games with the support of their Primary Ambitions supervisors.They then deliver their materials to groups of 15 Year 5 or 6 pupils from 18 of our local state primary partner schools.

We offer 19 different subjects including action-packed swimming lessons in the pool, Design & Technology in the DT suite and Biodiversity in our wonderful Biodiversity Garden. These are in addition to Clay Creatures Art workshops, Comedy & Masks Drama sessions, Filmmaking and Robotics.

Primary Ambitions runs for 20 weeks from September to June each year. Each week 285 primary school pupils, all from schools with a high percentage of children qualifying for free school meals, attend. We provide 1425 pupil enrichment hours per five-week module; and 5700 enrichment hours across the year.

We were thrilled to win the highly competitive Independent School of the Year award for Community Outreach in 2021. The award recognised us for our creative approach to supporting our primary school partners throughout the pandemic with our Primary Ambitions’ Lesson-in-a-box programme. Our Lower Sixth pupils prepared lesson plans, presentations, group and individual activities and how-to videos then boxed them up and delivered them to our partner primary schools.

The programme’s success stems from mutual benefit – our partner school pupils are engaged in their learning, build confidence, resilience and friendships; and Emanuel pupils develop their leadership, facilitation and teamworking skills.