House System
The school operates a house system, with girls being placed in one of the five houses at the start of their time at the school along with the rest of their forms. The five houses are named after notable women in history and each have a corresponding colour: Bronte is blue, Curie is green, Nightingale is purple, Pankhurst is yellow and Teresa is red. Five girls in the upper sixth are appointed the head of houses each year. The houses play a part in music and sports in the school, with girls earning points for winning competitions and events, in particular interhouse, a sports half-day competition occurring once a term for years 7-11. At the end of each academic year one house will win the house cup for having the most points.
| House | Colour | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Bronte | Blue | Named after the three authors, the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Anne and Emily |
| Curie | Green | Named after Marie Curie, the physicist and chemist who won two Nobel Prizes |
| Nightingale | Purple | Named after the nurse, Florence Nightingale, who nursed during the Crimean War and left a great legacy to nursing |
| Pankhurst | Yellow | Named after Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, Sylvia Pankhurst and Christabel Pankhurst, who were great figures in the British suffragette movement and the campaign to give women the vote |
| Teresa | Red | Named after Mother Teresa, the Catholic nun and humanitarian who won the Nobel Peace Prize |
Read more about this topic: Dr Challoner's High School
Famous quotes containing the words house and/or system:
“The house of my body has spoken
often as you rebuild me like blocks,
and promise to come visit
when I’m finally adjusted on safe land,
and am livable, joist to joist
with storm windows and screens ...”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. “Strong and Sensitive Cats,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1994)