Canford Blog

Congratulations to seven of our pupils, and to Wimborne House, who are the overall winners of the inaugural House Poetry competition. You can read each of the winning poems here.

This fantastic publication is edited by Imi Parker, Saskia Green and Cata Taylor, and all the articles are written by our talented pupils.

Lower Sixth Former Harry Young entered the John Locke Institute Essay Prize for History https://www.johnlockeinstitute.com/2020-essay-competition with a paper entitled “Is a strong state a prerequisite or an obstacle to economic growth?”

He is one of just 35 pupils selected for Very Highly Commended awards from school entries spanning the globe including America, Hong Kong, Thailand and Singapore as well as the UK.  Named in honour of the eminent seventeenth century Oxford philosopher, John Locke, and run in conjunction with Princeton University USA and Oxford University, the competition invites students to explore a wide range of challenging and interesting questions beyond the confines of the school curriculum.  All entries are judged by senior academics from Oxford, who choose from essays submitted across seven subjects: Philosophy, Politics, Economics, History, Psychology, Theology and Law.  The John Locke Institute is an independent educational organisation that works to embolden the best and brightest students to become more academically ambitious and more intellectually adventurous through various programmes - residential courses, revision seminars, essay competitions, and special events.  This is a particularly fine achievement in the U18 category with Harry in the Fifth Form when the entry was submitted.  Read Harry’s submission here.

Inspired by her experience of online learning in lockdown, Lower Sixth pupil Rosie wrote this poem titled "It's At Canford You Really Want To Be."

These speeches were made to Upper Sixth pupils at the sports dinner at the end of the Christmas Term 2020, but the sentiments have relevance for us all in terms of the positivity of sport during these difficult times.

As part of Black History Month, the History department ran a Black History of Dorset workshop where pupils investigated the Black History of Dorset through the use of courses and archives. One Lower Sixth pupil Alex produced a write-up of  his findings and here is the result.

Article by pupil Felix Wingley discussing mental health during times of uncertainty. 

National Poetry Day is a UK-wide celebration of poetry taking place every October. Each year there is a different theme and in 2020 the theme was Vision. Thank you to Lower Sixth pupil, Rosie for sharing this poem she wrote for National Poetry Day.

Fifth Form pupil, Alex Daniel, investigates the importance of the properties of water in this fantastic piece of work. 

School sport and physical activity have always played a central part of my life. But activity has also caused four episodes of concussion: two sustained from school sport matches and training; two non-sporting episodes - one playfighting with siblings and the other from falling down a cliff whilst on holiday. So, with such high risks present, how should the huge enjoyment from school sports be balanced against these great risks?