Hewett Academy plans to break down the barriers in sport

Hewett’s reputation for breaking down the financial barriers in education is well deserved and the City High School is now taking on the next one, which is access to elite sports.  Hewett have done incredible work since 2020 in ensuring that all students have access to, for example, Art boxes at home or free school trips.  Now, the PE department are working with local businesses and charities to ensure that no student is left behind when it comes to sport.

In a new plan, launched by the co-Heads of PE Kim Lawrence and Danny Self, Hewett students will benefit from having club memberships provided, free PE kit, travel vouchers and access to professional equipment - plus, for those who are identified on the talent programme, free regular coaching from sporting professionals. 

Co-head of PE Danny Self explains:

“As a PE Department, with the support of our Principal Antony Little, we try to remove as many barriers as possible to students taking part in sport.  Initially this started with us lending or gifting PE kits to those who couldn’t afford it so they can always take part.  However, we soon realised that this wasn’t the only thing stopping participation.  The biggest barrier was often money to join clubs or pay for equipment.  So we all got together to take the next step for the students.  One example of this is to make sure that our talented runners have spikes for when we compete on proper athletics tracks.  We partnered with Neil from Sportlink and they went above and beyond for us, to maximise our budget and provide what we needed so that everybody would have the chance to compete.”

“Our new sporting bursary,” said Kim Lawrence, “will pay for sports clubs memberships for students so that they can take part in sports outside of school.  It will give them the training, opportunities and confidence to perform at the highest levels locally.  Active Norfolk has provided funding so that our triathlon club has modern bikes to ride on, and now we can provide bus tickets for students to get to those clubs over the summer too.  Their generosity has been key to this.  The response from the students has been amazing and the talent spotting is going really well!”

Principal Antony Little said:

“Hewett has one of our year 9 students take silver at the county athletics recently.  It really made us think about how talented our students are, and what more we can do to really allow them to succeed.  The PE Department at Hewett are incredible in their relentless work to not only help our community keep fit but also to really stretch and challenge our most talented athletes.”