Extra-curricular Activities
There is an extensive range of trips: to the United States for football, to Barbados for cricket, and Barcelona and the Netherlands for hockey and basketball. The football trips to the USA have taken place every other year since 1989. The 2009 trip saw the Harvey return home undefeated, having comprehensively beaten Susqehanna Valley High School, Conklin, Owego Free Academy, and Seton Catholic School, Binghamton. Cricket tours to Barbados have taken place in 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009, 2011 and another will take place in 2014; together with the USA football tours, have all been organised by Senior Vice-Principal Phil Harding. The Barbados tours replaced the highly popular annual cricket tours to the West Country. In the past twenty years, over 1200 students have taken part in the school's annual ski trip. Curriculum-related trips to France, Germany and Italy form an integral part of the school's Languages programme, whilst History trips to the Somme and Politics visits to Parliament and 10 Downing Street are annual events. There is also a highly popular Activities Week and opportunities for Work Experience. The school has a Duke of Edinburgh's Award programme, highly successful Young Enterprise groups in the sixth form, and an award-winning Debating Group. Music is achieving a much higher profile under the guidance of a new and dynamic Curriculum Leader, Steve Barker, and a jazz band, The Red Herrings, the brainchild of four Harvey students (Chris Pilgrim, Danny Brookwell, Ed Watkinson and Fred Smith) as well as a member of the Folkestone School for Girls (Primrose Briggs) recently staged a charity evening in aid of the Marie Curie Cancer Care Organisation in the school hall, raising £1800 for the charity. They are in popular demand for concerts locally. A Drama Club is also ran every Tuesday evening after school.
An annual "Leavers' Ball" is traditionally held in conjunction with the Folkestone School for Girls each year at a large venue within the Folkestone area. This provides the opportunity for the school leavers' to come together, to celebrate their passing from school to further education or employment.
The government's programme Building Schools for the Future (BSF) would have allowed the Harvey to further improve its facilities. However the Harvey was one of many schools for which the project was scrapped. the new Harvey's Diner (opened in 2005) is a great improvement on the old facility, and offers a wide range of healthy-food options under the leadership of a new Catering Manager.
Read more about this topic: The Harvey Grammar School
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)