On Monday The Abbey School and Reading School made a joint visit to the House of Lords to celebrate our joint partnership.
On this occasion we were championing our joint Social Enterprise Hub Programme, working with Henley Centre for Entrepreneurship and the University of Reading. Year 12 students collaborate in joint teams to create and pitch entrepreneurial projects bringing benefit to their communities.
It is such a wonderful programme. Boys and girls work alongside each other on real-world skills. They learn team roles and how to use business ideas to make a positive impact on the world. And they make a difference: one of our first graduates of the programme, Savia, is taking forward her award-winning project, Bright Pink Bins, to help tackle loneliness in the homeless community. The project is a shining example of the power of partnership work and has been celebrated as an example of best practice across the independent sector.
Work like this matters both for the individuals concerned and for schools more widely. Everyone in The Abbey community knows what a force for good our amazing students and their engagement with the world represent. Sharing this with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Independent Schools, the Department for Education and other leaders and opinion-formers is more important now than ever.
We’re aiming to expand the Social Enterprise Hub to include a wider range of schools as part of ARCH, our project to bring opportunity to young people in Reading. And also as part of ARCH we’re planning to increase the range and scope of our Reading School partnership. We believe passionately in single-sex education, and we believe it works best when complemented by meaningful links between girls and boys, working alongside each other on an equal footing and one that builds mutual respect. Co-education brings so many challenges. Collaborative education like the Social Enterprise Hub should give girls and boys the chance to experience the best of both worlds. That will always be the goal of the connections we have now with Reading School and those that are to come.