When we have been doing tours of the school with prospective Year 5 students and families over the past few weeks we always talk about our extra-curricular, enrichment, trips and visits offer – all of which are a significant element of the “Able” part of “Able and Qualified”.

Trips and visits are an important part of the Wallingford School experience. It might be the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme expeditions or World Challenge, visits to Kew Gardens or Silverstone, multiple visits to London or Birmingham and across the UK, travelling abroad skiing in Austria or riding a camel in Morocco or to Berlin or Barcelona or Boulogne and a whole lot more – our students benefit from a broad and varied offer which they love.

Particular visits which always interest parents and carers are our language exchanges to Bad Wurzach in Germany and Grenoble in France. For those of us who were fortunate enough to take part in these visits during our school days they are something we never forget. They are certainly character-building and drop a young person in the deep end but they are the most fantastic experiences with friendships formed, memories forged and your language skills improved very significantly indeed!

It has been a pleasure to again welcome our partner school from Grenoble to our school this week. They have had typically busy time with Thursday in school, and visits to Stratford, Oxford and London (a day which seemed to cover most the city) amongst other things. We run foreign language exchanges because our students and families are keen for them to happen and because our staff believe in them and their benefits; as ever, we are lucky to have a body of staff who want our young people to have these experiences and that is never underestimated.