Recognising success at SPH
St Philip Howard Catholic School encourages young people to flourish and grow into well rounded, academically successful and spiritually aware individuals.
We pride ourselves on providing students with opportunities to enrich their lives empowering them with the ability to express themselves and experience success through the huge range of enrichment clubs on offer.
SPH students engage in enrichment activities such as the creative arts, through sporting competition between our different houses and through sporting fixtures with other local schools, in driving community cohesion through collective fundraising.
The vast enrichment opportunities on offer help our students to become happy young people ready to play their part in an ever-changing world.
We are keen to make sure that all students get involved in the enrichment clubs on offer as we firmly believe young people benefit from the success and teamwork these activities provide.
Dance House 2022
Our year 8, 9 and 10 students have recently taken part in this year’s ‘Dance House’ which is a local arts driven initiative dedicated to supporting and encouraging the development of innovative and exciting dance.
All students were so happy to be back on stage performing in front of a packed house at The Alexandra Theatre in Bognor Regis receiving huge praise for their performance along with many other local schools and dance clubs – a truly great experience for all, developing resilience and building confidence in every single artist along the way.
Community work
At SPH we hold community spirit and a culture of ‘looking out for and after one another’ as a key factor in student success.
We are a school with very close links to the local village of Barnham.
We were recently presented with a large cheque from funds generated by local customers of the Barnham Co-op.
The students and school are incredibly grateful for the money raised and we look forward to putting the donation to good use in school – we have plans to plant trees for each year group so that as our students grow so do their ‘communi-trees’!
Arun Youth Community Awards
The upcoming Arun Youth Community Awards is another great way that we can celebrate the achievements of our SPH community.
After a two-year hiatus, we are very happy to nominate our students for this prestigious award and we look forward to being present at the award ceremony on the March 23.
We have some great nominations this year including a year 11 student who during lockdown supported his local community in Chichester by leading socially distanced fitness classes from his front lawn as well as setting up an Instagram page to engage people in exercise.
He encouraged the community to get involved, improve their physical and mental wellbeing as well as providing much needed social interactions in his local community.
Again, during lockdown one of our year 10 students organised food bundle donations to her local food bank to support families and individuals less fortunate.
These provided a huge relief to families during the pandemic and enabled people to feel supported and loved by others.
Whilst it feels a little while ago now, just before Christmas, the SPH community celebrated their first Performing Arts extravaganza back inside in two years.
Parents and staff were treated to some incredible individual and group music, dance and drama performances.
This came just before the whole school came off timetable for an entire day to celebrate our second and much-coveted ‘Outstanding’ Ofsted rating.
Students undertook a range of enrichment activities from bushcraft to mountain-biking, baking to American football.
It was a fabulous way to come together as a school community, build relationships and celebrate everything that makes SPH so unique.
Sport
At SPH we are very proud of our sporting achievements and have many sports in which to celebrate, however, due to the time of year, it would only be fitting to comment on the success of our current rugby teams.
Our year 11 rugby team represented the school in the very best way recently by making it through to the county final.
It was a truly celebratory day with county finals for all year groups with representatives from the RFU in attendance.
All teams playing that day were from private schools or rugby academies, SPH was the only state school in attendance.
SPH lost out to Hurstpierpoint College in what was described as a ‘thrilling game’ , ending 12-7.
Despite having started school in September, our year 7 netball team really hit the ground running by finishing runners-up in the West Sussex West area tournament.
They played seven schools and only lost one game.