Encouraging girls to take part and have fun

A great strength of the School is its horizontal boarding, with facilities and pastoral care tailored to each year group and vertical ‘team’ Houses ensuring integration across the years. There are 12 QM Community Weekends scheduled in the calendar each year, each one led by vertical Houses or other bodies of students such as the International Council. This bottom-up methodology encourages our girls to take full responsibility and consult with all year groups to devise themes and content based upon what the girls want, helping them to hone the art of compromise and negotiation.

Community Weekends encourage the older girls to take charge and lead on design, planning and delivery, with support from the QM Pastoral Team. Once ideas have been formulated, the girls discuss plans with the Pastoral Team to enable ideas to be fine-tuned, determine what is feasible and provide help with risk assessments and bookings. Team work is vital, encouraging the girls to contribute, putting forward their ideas and enthusiasm during the planning process. This helps the girls to learn about event planning, whilst further developing communication and leadership skills. During the weekend the challenge is to organise the girls to be where they are supposed to be at the right times and ensure everything runs to plan. The girls are encouraged to make a video to share and celebrate their weekend which in turn sees them take on the various roles of filmmaker, producer and director!

QM Community Weekends encourage the girls to engender mutual respect through careful consideration of the theme of the weekend and activities which are suitable for all year groups. By giving responsibility to the girls, this popular initiative works to inspire confidence.