By Mrs Graves (Head of English)

On your marks, get set, write!

This year, the school was intrigued to receive a communication from the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket advertising a competition, which we felt sure would get some of our students chomping at the bit - pun intended! Following a launch in September, we received expressions of interest from students ranging from Years 7 to the Sixth Form, all of whom wanted to know more about equine journalism, and how to write about horseracing as a topic.

Luckily, Mrs Hudson-Findley (Director of Digital Learning, Enterprise and Sustainability) was able to help them out as an experienced journalist herself. She ran a workshop for the students, exploring some of the basics of how to approach journalistic tasks starting from identifying topics, finding interesting angles and choosing the right style of writing to best explore the issue. Then it was up to the students themselves to do some research over the half term and decide what their unique take on the competition task would be.

The final deadline for competition entries is the end of November, and we’re as excited as the students to see if any of them go on to be successful, especially with potential prizes such as the publication of the piece of writing in The Racing Post. We wish everyone entering the competition the best of luck!