We’ve been very remiss in not posting any of our news on the website but hopefully you have seen some of the great things we have been doing – or the kids have been doing with our support – on Facebook and Twitter.  But here’s a very quick catch up of six months of news:

Christopher continues to make excellent progress in his piano lessons.  He’s soon going to be taking his Grade 5 exam in March and we are confident of success.

Our two gymnasts, Emma and Layla-Belle are enjoying their lessons at AllStarz in New Addington and their coaches tell us they are making good progress.  But we also have some evidence!!

Dancing sisters Aliyah and Soraya are moving onwards and upwards with Dance with Grace.  They are having classes in a number of different types of dance and have taken part in several performances, showing off what they have learnt.  Keep it up girls!

 

Ciara continues with her Irish dancing at the Conor Academy.  She is improving with every session and recently competed in the Surrey Championships.  Here she is in her costume, which we contributed towards to make sure she looks the part every time she competes.  Glad we don’t have to wash and iron it though!

 

 

The Art Masterclass at Rowdown has continued on a weekly basis during school term time and the art being produced is very impressive indeed.  In November we set up a similar Art Masterclass at Fairchildes school so we now have around 15 pupils getting some expert tuition in all things art.  Here’s a gallery of some of the recent output at the two schools.

We have just had a great afternoon at Rowdown School presenting the annual school awards, the 5th time the Foundation has organised the event, sponsored by Shard Capital LLP.  We were entertained by old boy Christoper Opoku on the piano and the Year 6 steel band and the awards were presented by Sarah Jones MP.

The format was the same as in previous years with two categories: Academic Achievement and Attitude & Effort, with 4 nominations from each year group for each award (including Reception year for the first time although they had their own private awards presentation).  The nominations can be found here.  Each nominee received a certificate and a huge round of applause from the rest of the school when they walked into the main hall to take their place on the stage.

The winners were:

Congratulations to all these winners, and to everyone who was nominated.  It is a real feat to be on the list of nominees: we only wish everyone could win!

The overall winners and Pupils of the Year 2017/18 were Deanne Yung-Hoi for Academic Achievement and Abigail Streeter for Attitude & Effort.  Unfortunately, Abigail was off sick but here is the very pleased Deanne receiving her Year winner trophy from Sarah Jones MP.

It was a great afternoon: the sun was shining on Rowdown on Friday 13th July!

More photos are available on the dedicated page.

Reports on our AGM might not fill our followers with huge enthusiasm, but there is some exciting news!

Before sharing the news, we’d like to say a big thank you to Al Kennedy, Karen Walsh and all the team at Trinity School for allowing us to use their excellent facilities for our AGM today, including organising tea and coffee a Kit-Kats for when we needed to “have  a break”.

So what’s the exciting news?  The Trustees have approved an expansion of our remit from supporting students at Rowdown Primary School to any pupil attending a New Addington primary school.  We have been doing this a little bit already under the Tuition Programme, but this formalises our ability to financially support these pupils and also to approach the other schools to find individual children to enrol for art or sport sponsorship.  We also hope to be able to talk to other schools about masterclasses similar to the extremely successful Art Masterclass at Rowdown (see some pics below).

However, and here, as always is the crux, we need to keep up funding to be able to expand and support more talented New Addington kids.  If you are keen to help out, then support us with a donation by clicking here or get in touch if you can offer your services in any way.

Last chance to enter the World Cup prediction competition. In theory the deadline is 11.59pm this evening but I could probably stretch it until noon tomorrow. Here’s a link to the entry form, so get going and get your friends involved, even if it is at short notice. It only takes a few minutes to fill in the scores and send me the spreadsheet to gary.worldcup18@gmail.com.

 

World Cup Competition 2018

 

 

The Art Masterclass has just finished the week with another class at Rowdown Primary School.  8 children from Years 3 through to 6 have an extra hour or so of expert tuition by Deborah Aves, a very talented young artist that has connections (her mum) with the school.  They have been concentrating on sketching and still life so far this term and just look at the results.  One of the peppers picture is painted by Abigail in Year 3.  Wow, what a gift!

If we can raise more funds, we would like to repeat this in the other primary schools on New Addington, so if you think helping these talented children to learn more and improve further, please support us.

 

 

We’ve just had a great inaugural Rowdown Foundation Fundraising Golf Day at the Addington Golf Club.  20 teams of 4 competed under the Stableford scoring system in a shotgun start on a dreary day with a couple of April showers turning into prolonged rain just as everyone started getting back to the clubhouse.  The weather certainly kept the scores below expectations but congratulations to the winning team “He who laughs last” (Joe Fanning, Matt Wilkinson, Pete McGregor and Ian Throssell) who took home a little trophy and a rather nice bottle of Margaux (supplied from our Chair’s cellar).

Nearest the pins on two of the par 3s were won by Joseph Fanning and James Runciman and the longest driver was Tony Milbery, proving why he was playing off a handicap of 2.

And the great news is that everyone was oh so generous and we raised over £3,800 from the day.  That’s a fantastic amount of money and will cover an art masterclass for 8 pupils at 2 schools or go towards supporting uniform costs for all our 11 pupils now at grammar and independent schools.

Thank you so much to everyone who came along and gave so generously.

We are definitely on for 2019 event, so if you want to join in, contact us.

We were a bit lax with the photos but here are a few to show off the various styles of swing:

 

 

We’re so pleased to report that a couple more of our 2017 Tuition Programme students have been offered places, both at Trinity School.  Congratulations to Asad Dilawar and Sabeeh Choudhary.   Both have been offered significant bursaries through the Whitgift Foundation so we say a big thank you to Trinity and the Whitgift Foundation.

This takes the number that will be starting at independent schools in September 2018 to six: four at Trinity, one at each of Royal Russell and Old Palace.

Our Tuition Programme continues to be a great success, placing 11 children from New Addington into top selective schools over three years.  And with 20 in the current Year 5 group at Trinity and another 18 in the Year 4 masterclasses at Royal Russell, the future of the programme looks rosy.

This afternoon saw the inaugural Art Masterclass at Rowdown.  This weekly class (meeting on a Friday afternoon, that’s how keen the children are) takes a small group (currently 4, but hopefully soon to become 5) of the most talented artists across Rowdown (from Year 3 to Year 6) and gives them an opportunity to express themselves artistically, under the watchful eye of Deborah Aves, a very skillful artist in her own right.

They’ve started off sketching still life but will try many different techniques over the coming weeks and months.  We hope to be able to provide some pictures of their artwork, so come back to the website to have a look from time to time.

If funding allows, we would like to expand the sessions to two a week as Deborah has identified a wealth of artistic potential at Rowdown.  If you would like to donate to help this happen, please click here.

Thought a quick update on the 11+ exam results season might interest a few of you.

There were 15 pupils in the 2017 Year 5-6 group. We need to remember that most of these children only had a few months of tuition thanks to Trinity School. They are all really bright kids, of course, but haven’t had the years of prepping for the 11+ that the majority of children sitting the exams have had.

Two have already been told they have passed the Sutton grammar school exams but need to wait for 1st March to find out if that materialises into an offer of a place: we eagerly wait to hear from WCGS and Wilson’s for the boy and Wallington Girls for the girl.

Following on from Monday’s first Year 4 Masterclass at Royal Russell, this moring saw the start of the Year 5 element of the Foundation’s Tuition Programme as Trinity’s Maths and English Extension Lessons got under way with the first session: one hour of each subject.

Trinity have engaged a new teacher for the lessons and Mrs Stone says “I was impressed with their attitude towards their learning and their work.  I think they have great potential!”

Lessons will happen on each Saturday morning during Trinity’s term time and will challenge the pupils’ learning and understanding of each subject as well as covering some verbal and non-verbal reasoning.  They will be fun (yes, Maths can be fun we’re told).  Hopefully the 20 pupils will enjoy the challenge and not feel too aggrieved at the extra homework they will be expected to complete.

Well done to the children that have been nominated by their schools to take part (shown below) and thank you again to Trinity for showing this great commitment to the local community and social mobility.

Applegarth Primary School: Jeremiah, Leela, Nichola, Praveena, Tafari

Castle Hill Primary School: Daniela, Ellie-Louise, Kelsey, Riley, Sergei

Fairchildes Primary School: Meerab, Megan, Safiyah, Thabo, Vania

Rowdown Primary School: Amarnie, Kelsey, Tamalyn, Tequaniel, Yazmin