A leading local public school has been recognised by the Talk Education Awards for its invaluable year-round collaborative and fundraising work.
Tonbridge School was named as a winner in the prestigious Talk Education Awards for Innovation in Education 2022.
Its recognition is for ‘Community Engagement and Charity Fundraising’, with Tonbridge being one of just nine schools across the country to collect a top prize awarded by the Talk Education global schools guide.
Talk Education’s CEO, Joanna Parry-George, said: “All our judges were hugely impressed by Tonbridge’s year-round, dedicated work, from its Community Action programme to the annual Giving Day, not forgetting the huge impetus behind Foundation Awards and the countless fundraising initiatives the School devotes time and energy to.
“This is a much-deserved success earned by boys and staff across the School.”
Giving Day, held at the end of June, raised the extraordinary sum of £509,000, which will help the school’s mission of doubling its number of Foundation Award recipients.
As part of Giving Day, around 600 children from local primary schools took part in a range of sporting, artistic and academic activities at Tonbridge, and there were also a dozen off-site projects, from digging ponds to running sports festivals, as the pupils and staff ‘gave back’ to the local community.
The public school’s Tonbridge Community Action programme sees more than 120 boys volunteering each week.
The school has strong partnerships with 10 primary schools, and pupils help in various ways, including in the classroom and with after-school clubs. First Year boys, for example, run a ‘book buddies’ scheme, working with other pupils to develop a love of reading.
The popular Science for Schools programme offers inspirational, hands-on experiments for primary school children in the Barton Science Centre at Tonbridge School.
The annual Pink Day, a whole-school event, raises awareness of all forms of cancer.
The school works with a range of charity partners throughout the year, including Child Action Lanka, and runs an annual ‘Sleepout’ for First Years in support of Porchlight, a Kent charity for homeless and vulnerable people.
