Tonbridge wins Talk Education Award for Community Engagement

Tonbridge has been named as a winner in the inaugural Talk Education Awards for Innovation in Education 2022.

The School’s award is for Community Engagement and Charity Fundraising.

Tonbridge was one of just nine schools across the country to collect one of these highly prestigious awards, launched this year following the huge success and rapid growth of the Talk Education global schools guide.

Tonbridge also features among Talk Education’s ‘Top 250 schools’, based on factors including academic results, facilities, leavers’ destinations and the views of current parents and pupils.

Talk Education’s CEO, Joanna Parry-George, said: “We wanted to give recognition to schools who are forging ahead with innovative ideas and initiatives.

“All our judges were hugely impressed by Tonbridge’s year-round, dedicated work, from its Community Action programme to the annual Giving Day, not forgetting the huge impetus behind Foundation Awards and the countless fundraising initiatives the School devotes time and energy to.

“While it was no easy task whittling down our shortlist and choosing winners, we are thrilled to present Tonbridge with our very first Community Engagement award. This is a much-deserved success earned by a great many boys and staff across the School.”

Giving Day, held at the end of June, raised the extraordinary sum of £509,000. Many hundreds of people across the School community worked together at this time to help support Tonbridge’s mission of doubling its number of Foundation Award recipients by 2028, enabling a greater number of bright, able boys to attend Tonbridge and benefit from its world-class educational experience.

Around 600 children from local primary schools took part in a range of sporting, artistic and academic activities at Tonbridge during Giving Day, and there were also a dozen off-site projects, from digging ponds to running sports festivals, as boys and staff ‘gave back’ to the local community.

The Tonbridge Community Action programme sees more than 120 boys volunteering each week: the School has strong partnerships with ten primary schools, and boys help in various ways, including in the classroom and with after-school clubs. First Year boys, for example, run a ‘book buddies’ scheme, working with pupils to develop a love of reading.

The Learning Strategies Department trains mentors who support children with SEND issues on a one-to-one basis, while the popular Science for Schools programme puts on inspirational, hands-on experiments for primary school children in the Barton Science Centre.

The School works with a range of charity partners throughout the year, including Child Action Lanka, its international partner charity, RefugEase and Porchlight, a Kent-based homelessness charity.

* Tonbridge is a Finalist in the Independent Schools of the Year Awards 2022. The School’s recognition is for the breadth and variety of its work in carrying out ‘Community Outreach’, and it is one of just six UK schools to have been named as a Finalist in this category.