Donors and Supporters

Estates

In order to support the School’s objectives and to enable the continued pursuit of excellence, including the recruitment and retention of quality staff and pupils, the Governors agreed to the next steps in the School’s strategic estates and capital projects programme. Total expenditure on capital projects during the year was £3m (2019-20: £1.3m).

The Pavilion

Thanks to the generosity of our donors, we were able to transform this iconic building into a space that matches its wonderful location. Originally given to the school in 1933 by OM parent Mrs Allen, it had become rather tired, but is now a place where our pupils, visiting teams and our wider community can enjoy and celebrate sport at Monkton. From a full paint job inside and out to a reconfigured club room and kitchen and improved changing facilities.

The Prep School

Over the summer of 2021, we were able to complete several projects including a much larger dining space across the ground floor of Hatton so our pupils can eat together, refurbishing the changing rooms, and major ground works to enable smoother drop-off in the car park as well as the new Yellow Brick Road. The way that pupils move around the School is hugely improved. With thanks to the Clarke family for their generous donation, matching all gifts from our parent community.

Farm House and Inner Quad

Thanks to a donation in a bequest, we have transformed our inner quad to make it a much more usable space for our pupils and bring it in keeping with the beautiful buildings of School and Farm boarding houses. This space is now a central hub for our pupils to meet, study together and enjoy our incredible valley surroundings. Farm House has seen a significant transformation with phase two taking place in summer 2022.

Partnerships at Monkton

Thinking differently and creatively about partnership during lockdown has led us into some new adventures here at Monkton.

At first, our efforts were around supporting local partners as best we could within the restrictions. These included Mr Judd, among many others, producing and distributing vast amounts of PPE; Mr Clark transporting elderly members of the community to medical appointments; Mr Brown and Mr Barstow leading a six week outdoor rowing experience for groups of Year 5 and Year 6 children from our nearest primary school; Sister Clark training first aiders from a variety of local schools, and developing our partnership with A Rocha a conservation organisation working with us to develop the site more internationally to meet key conservation goals.’

As the months went by, we began seeking new ways to engage with our local community, building relationships and links and specifically looking at how to tackle isolation. Over Christmas, every pupil at Monkton was given the opportunity to write at least one, but in many cases more, handwritten letters to members of the Monkton community who were over the age of 80, reaching out and sharing something of their life and experience. Clarendon House followed this up with another letter writing effort to the residents of a local care home as part of their Giving Fortnight. In the new year, Mrs Robinson developed a series of child-led cooking video tutorials, together with recipe cards and packs of ingredients to be distributed weekly to families struggling to make ends meet. The idea of this was to develop a network of local mums from different backgrounds, all looking to provide something creative and confidence-building for their children, and all on a level playing field. Our team of Graduate Teaching Assistants raised all the funds needed to support this initiative by running a mile an hour for 24 hours through the snow one weekend, donating all their sponsorship money to this effort. Alongside this Mrs Thring and Mrs Sidders developed a series of beautiful art tutorial videos, along with packs of supplies and instructions, to share with the Bath Youth Offending Service as a way of supporting their valuable work with young people at this challenging time.

A real highlight of this year was hosting the inaugural meeting of the Bath Student Parliament, welcoming ten local senior schools for a morning of planning and innovating. Amisadai, who was one of the Monkton pupils to be chosen as a delegate, wrote this about the experience, “We, as a newly-founded but very excited community of schools, realised the importance of connection and collaboration in making positive change and working towards a shared goal. It was amazing to get to know people with different stories but the same hope for our future and for the changes we can, and will, make.”

“We realised the importance of connection and collaboration in making positive change and working towards a shared goal.” Environmental

During the year, the School continued to implement changes and improvements in energy efficiency and environmental actions across the School, using the Energy Saving Opportunities (ESOS Phase 2) energy survey as its basis.

This included replacing lighting within the boarding houses with energy-efficient LED lighting. This replacement programme has also been extended to academic buildings and will progress during the next academic year. In addition, we have reassessessed the replacement and maintenance programme for existing heating installations, providing improved local control and an increased level of energy monitoring across the estate.