What Did You Learn at School Today?

Pose that question to a child at The Downs Malvern and you’re likely to receive some very interesting unusual answers from excited young learners... including how they learned to drive a railway engine or design a spare part for it.

As well as a host of sporting and leisure activities and hobbies that keep day-children and boarders alike busy when they’re not studying, the school is extremely proud of its unique learning resource: the world’s oldest privately-owned miniature steam railway.

The “Downs Light Railway” – with its own charitable trust to fund and guide its community teaching work – has just been entered for a national heritage award, and for 92 years it has been imparting a rich range of skills to pupils. The importance for their later careers cannot be underestimated, with the nation facing growing skills shortages in science, technology and engineering.

“Our railway really brings engineering to life,” says Headmaster Alastair Cook, “inspiring generations of pupils. It acts as an outdoor classroom, encouraging young people to develop practical skills that will not only act as a foundation should they go on to careers in technology or the sciences, but also prepare them for the world of work.

“We teach them about design and workshop practice and often find that the children are more interested in this than actually driving the trains! They also develop life skills such as leadership, teamwork, risk awareness, time management and responsibility which will last them a lifetime.”

That’s an awful lot that children can learn from just one activity! n

floor when I took the phone call. I feel I’ve been remembered, affirmed and supported in an ongoing way. I return whenever I can, and I really feel as if Ledbury has become my unofficial poetry home.’

Jacqueline Saphra, 2007 Winner 1st Prize

‘Entering the competition is a way to take part in the wonderful Ledbury Poetry Festival whether or not you can get along to any of the events. Poetry is a great way to communicate with people you’ve never met’ Fiona Sampson, 2017 Judge

‘The Ledbury Poetry Festival Poetry Competition is vitally important to the health of new writing in many ways: it forces people to write new poems, and to send them out into the world. It reminds us, in these tumultuous times, of the importance of heightened language in helping us to think, and it places brandnew writing at the heart of a literary festival.’ Ian McMillan, 2015 Judge

‘It was a huge confidence boost for me when I found out I’d won the Ledbury Poetry Festival Competition. It was wonderful to get such wide readership for my winning poem “On Fishing,” and as an American, it’s doubly thrilling to win a contest in the UK, to think that my words are able to travel across an ocean and still hold meaning.’ Miller Oberman, 2016 Winner 1st Prize

‘Having a poem acknowledged as part of the Ledbury Competition was a wonderful experience. The competition has opened up a number of opportunities, as the festival has generously involved me in its projects and commissions since then, and that first phone call with the news will always be one of my joyous and holy poetry moments’.

Jonathan Edwards, 2014 Winner 1st Prize

‘Poetry needs good teachers. It needs young writers who will grow up at ease with contemporary poetry. Poetry needs readers and audiences of integrity. It needs the funding that can be raised by poetry competitions. Poetry needs festivals, where all these things and more can come together and be celebrated. Ledbury Poetry Festival has rapidly become one of the most exciting and important literary festivals in England’

Carol Ann Duffy, patron of LPF, and 2000 Judge in preface to “A Book of Ours” Festival Anthology.

Entry fees are £5.75 for the first poem and £3.50 for each subsequent poem. Children and Young People enter their first poem free. n Entry forms and full details of the Adult, Young People and Children’s Competition are on the website www.poetryfestival.co.uk