This first half term for our Year 12 students has been the most successful ever for our Enrichment programme, which takes places on Tuesday afternoons. With a range of activities covering skills development, social, physical and practical extra curricular, we have over 700 students participating in 42 activities.

Ranging from British Sign Language and IBM Cyber Security to Music and Film Production and even Dungeons and Dragons, these weekly sessions are an important part of our ASPIRE programme, and develop the community and ambition of our students in their first couple of weeks as part of NSFC.

A major success this year has been our running club, which builds on our sponsorship of the Great North 10k and Great North 5k runs, which happened over the Summer, and saw over 400 participants from across our colleges.

The group meet weekly and have both a competitive 5k run, and a less challenging run for those who simply want to get out and get some exercise. Led by Director of Curriculum Kate Gardner, this is a great example of our students engaging in physical activities and working together as a college community.

Our first student experience survey illustrated the huge success of a range of our wider enrichments with great reviews of ‘A Taste of China’ for Chinese language beginners, ‘Performance Lab’ where students prepare a Christmas showcase and Film Production which is hosted and managed by a professional production company Digital Sidekick and builds real industry leading skills.