Beyond the classroom

Our structured programme of Outdoor Education is growing all the time. It develops from a week-long Big Six residential in January and a three-day Year 7 expedition every June, through a variety of weekend activity trips, camps and shorter European expeditions to large scale senior world challenge expeditions.

We believe that the outdoor activities offered at WGS are challenging, exciting and have clear benefits for our students when they get back home. The programme of activities we deliver has been formulated carefully with safety as the primary concern.

WGS staff commit themselves way beyond the classroom. They know that the best form of learning is a journey travelled together. So teachers and students soak up the experience of a French exchange together, and continue to talk about it (in French) long after the trip is over.  On the annual Coast-2-Coast run eight Year 10 students run through the night with teachers by their sides in relay from St. Bee’s Head in Cumbria to Robin Hood’s Bay in Yorkshire.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award is also offered to students at all levels with many of our students using demanding trips such as last year’s trip to Poland’s Tatra mountain as the qualifying expeditions for their Awards at bronze, silver and gold levels. In theUK we run a full programme of events including camping trips for whole year groups, outdoor pursuits weekends’ to The Towers Centre at Capel Curig in Snowdonia, climbing and hill walking clubs, water sports weekends - the list goes on.

We also leave our shores for the annual WGS ski trip to Austria, and undertake a challenging summer expedition. In recent years we have tackled remote rainforest mountains in Malaysia, trekked through the green valleys of the Sierra Nevada range in Southern Spain, climbed in the Indian Himalayas, made alpine style ascents of inaccessible peaks in the Picos de Europa Range in Northern Spain, and have reached the summit of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. This year a team of Year 11 and sixth form students took on the relatively undiscovered mountains of Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, after spending two years prepraring for the trip. 

These expeditions are often demanding but not beyond the abilities of our students. We prepare thoroughly for the challenges that they present and the popularity and success of these trips  is testament to the ambition, energy and self belief that is so typical of our students.

When overseas, we also throw our time and energy in to community based projects and our students have made significant contributions to the work, for example, of conservation efforts, such as that for Green Back Turtles at Kerteh in Malaysia, and preschool education for the children of Tibetan refuges at Daramasala in Northern India. We have also developed a close relationship with our partner school in Uganda.

In sports, trips such as 2008’s cricket and netball tour to Barbados also play an important part in school life, providing our sports men and women with a chance to gain experience against opposition from around the world.

All manner of clubs and societies  flourish at all ages in the school and those who aren’t musicians, actors or sportsmen and women find plenty of opportunities to become involved; in the Student Parliament; in debating; charitable fund raising; peer support and the huge range of other activities that grow and change dynamically according to our students’ interests and preferences.