Sports

Games are not an extra at this School; they are part of the day. Every student, day scholar and boarder, plays within the timetable, and boarders play again every evening. The playing fields and courts lie below the academic block, and the morning begins on them, with yoga and physical training in the open air before the first lesson.

What is played

The School offers athletics, basketball, lawn tennis, cricket, football, and shooting with the air rifle, together with table tennis and chess indoors, and yoga and physical training for all. Coaching is given by staff appointed for sport, who are resident on campus. Students who show promise are trained further for inter-school competition; students who do not think of themselves as sportsmen are expected to play all the same, because the field teaches what the classroom cannot: to compete with integrity, to lead under pressure and to accept an outcome with composure.

Facilities

The ten-year plan for the campus provides for a sports auditorium with indoor basketball and badminton courts, four squash courts and a twenty-five-metre swimming pool.

The house system

Every student belongs to one of four houses, named for birds of prey: Falcons, Ospreys, Hawks and Eagles. Each house is led by a House Captain and a Vice-Captain, a Sports Captain and a Vice-Captain, and its prefects, boys and girls. Competitions in games and in co-curricular activities are held between the houses through the year; points are awarded, a record of every student’s participation is kept, and at the end of the year the house with the most points is declared the winner. The house is where a child first learns to take responsibility for others, and it is through the house that the School’s inter-house athletics, its matches and its display competitions are run.

The Student Council

The Head Boy, the Head Girl and the School Captain, with the House and Sports Captains and Vice-Captains of the four houses, form the Student Council. The Council is elected by the students in school elections held each session and is installed at the Investiture Ceremony. It plans and runs the inter-house programme and other school events, and in doing so its members learn what leadership asks of them.