This has been another exciting year for our Outreach programme, which is now a borough-wide initiative collaborating with the other grammar schools in the London Borough of Sutton under the banner of Grammar Schools Outreach.

After school on Tuesdays, twenty-three wonderful Year 12 mentors have been working one-to-one with selected Year 5 pupils from the local primary schools, who have enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to develop their Maths and English skills. It is a common sight to see them running up the pathway towards Reception in their eagerness to arrive! This is testament to the great friendships that are built up with the sixth form mentors who very much enjoy teaching the younger pupils.

The programme consists of six English sessions and six Maths sessions over the academic year. These session cover core comprehension and writing skills for English, while the Maths sessions develop number skills and the processing of mathematical information from worded problems. In addition, the pupils have put in an amazing effort with the homework packs of further resources. Our data shows that these sessions make a difference to how the pupils perform in the selective eligibility tests.

Running side by side with the mentoring scheme, we have a further twenty Year 12 pupils visiting nine local primary schools on Wednesday afternoons and KS2 STEM club is supported by another six volunteers.

Another opportunity for the pupils to test their skill in English grammar will be provided in our Primary English Challenge, which will be running again this term. This has proved to be very popular over the last few years and we look forward to awarding more prizes for the highest scorers.