Crofton DandeLIONs

The Festival of Friends

Sixteen percent of our students at Crofton come from military families; it is therefore extremely important to us to continue to improve the support we offer. This year, we decided to partake in a project with the University of Portsmouth, Greenwich Hospital and the Armed Forces Education Trust looking into how schools can improve the support they provide. This project provided a structured, supportive method in which to enhance our policies and procedures regarding our service students.

In addition to working on the support measures we can provide, we began implementing the Thriving Lives Toolkit into our school (more on this to come.) We were also invited to attend 2 Service Student days at the University of Portsmouth with 6 of our students. The first trip in January was a Service Student Voice Event where students were asked to express their views and feelings around being a service student through the medium of poetry. Some beautiful poems were written and will be displayed as a separate post.

At the end of the year, we also got to attend a Service Student Celebration event where the students and schools were celebrated. It was a wonderful event in which our students got to learn about the University of Portsmouth, meet some members of the Royal Navy Bomb Disposal Unit and were taught to Juggle by the Britain’s Got Talent Finalist, Steve Royale. Students also got to complete an activity held by the wonderful team at Seeker’s Create and were introduced, via video, to Harry Lawtey, an actor who was also a Service Child.

Our students were an absolute credit to the school, engaging with other service students from different schools, providing thoughtful feedback, and sharing personal memories that meant a lot to them. The courage, positivity, and kindness they displayed was a joy to behold and I am excited to share the pictures of the day with you in our “Events” Section of this webpage.

Throughout this project, in addition to building on the support methods we can offer as a school, we have begun to build a strong sense of community within our Service Student Group and I look forward to building on this next year with the addition of our new Students who join us in September. We also extend a huge thank you to the University of Portsmouth, Greenwich Hospital, and the Armed Forces Education Trust for supporting our school and our students.