Beyond the classroom
Back in 2010, the Social Mobility Commission produced a report entitled An Unequal Playing Field: ExtraCurricular Activities, Soft Skills and Social Mobility. It stated: “One of the best bits about childhood is doing the things you enjoy outside the classroom – joining a football team, learning to dance or playing the drums. Yet our research shows too many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds never get the chance.”
The report found that “the school you go to, the area where you grow up, and your socioeconomic background largely determine what types of activities are available outside the classroom.”
The report’s qualitative data showed that extracurricular activities give young people the confidence to interact socially with others, extend social networks beyond existing friendship groups and provide students with new skills and abilities.
Some also perceive extra-curricular activities as important for older students’ long-term career aspirations, as well as being useful in building stronger university and job applications.
Above all, young people see extracurricular activities as a chance to have fun, unwind and relieve the stresses of their increasingly pressured school lives.
Significantly, a link has also been shown between extra-curricular activities and educational outcomes because finding an area a child enjoys or excels at can boost self-confidence and selfesteem, all of which is vital when we consider the well-being and mental health of children.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, schools were forced to move learning online apart from on-site provision made for the children of key workers. When the children eventually returned to school, they said with one voice how much they had missed the interactions with their friends and teachers and the dynamism of face-to-face learning in lively classrooms.
It was during Covid that many schools were also forced to suspend on-site extracurricular and enrichment provision. The impact of this alone was quite significant. This is because many of the children who attend extra-curricular activities such as music, performing arts, chess and sports activities thrive on the opportunities that such activities provide beyond the classroom and benefit from the outlet this provides.
At Nancy Reuben Primary School, we are now relaunching a fabulous range of extra-curricular activities for the youngest children in nursery all the way up to year six. As well as the more traditional activities such as varied sports, we are offering dance, drama, chess, coding, public speaking, art, hip hop, Lego and cookery.
Some of our extra-curricular provision is led in-house by NRPS staff and some will be led by new external providers and in that way, we are able to offer the broadest range of activities led by people who are passionate about their areas of interest ensuring the children get an amazing experience.
At Nancy Reuben, we also give the children opportunities to participate in sporting competitions such as the Maccabi Sports Jewish Inter-School Competitions and as an Independent Schools Association school, we also benefit from being able to participate in a broader range of curricular opportunities such as the ISA Poetry Competition which saw one of our pupils finishing in the top three.
Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, says: “It is vital that schools embed the development of these skills in their ethos, curriculum and extra-curricular activities, so that they are as natural a part of school life as English and maths.”
At Nancy Reuben we really do aim to give all our children the opportunities to grow and develop beyond the classroom. We were pleasantly surprised that before Covid, the most popular after school extra-curricular activity for boys and girls was cookery. We hope that with our new large range of opportunities on offer this autumn, all children who wish to gain new skills will find an opening that really engages and inspires them.
An activity a child enjoys or excels at can boost selfesteem’