Written evidence submitted by Christ’s Hospital

Introduction

Christ's Hospital (CH) is the UK’s leading charitable school and the country’s most generous bursary charity. Established in 1552, CH’s foundation marked the beginning of social services in Tudor England. Inspired by a sermon by Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, the young King Edward VI instructed the Lord Mayor, Sir Richard Dobbs, to appoint a committee of leading citizens to consider remedies and relief for the City’s homeless poor. Their work, and subsequently their philanthropy, led to the establishment of the school with the task of educating and nourishing the destitute children of the City of London and took children of all social backgrounds and ages.

In 2025, CH provides free or substantially reduced cost places to over 650 students each year – more than any other organisation in the UK. The results for social mobility are extraordinary; of those students who applied, 96 percent have been accepted on university courses; alumni go on to earn three times their household incomes of their parents and many take roles in society which help to shape tomorrow’s world. Our mission is to challenge inequality by providing a nurturing, transformative education for young people from all backgrounds. Of our main intake (Year 7), 90 percent come from state/maintained schools and our intake is diverse with respect to ethnicity and nationality (see Appendix, pp. 7-8). We are proud to be the 2024 Independent School of the Year, but CH really is ‘a school like no other’.

Submission rationale

At Christ’s Hospital, a fundamental part of our mission is fostering positive, lifelong relationships with health, sport and physical activity. We are keen to explore how schools can do more to achieve this by working with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Education. We believe that by positioning ourselves as a strategic exemplar school, we can help develop a model that improves sports access for all children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

We are enthusiastic about the opportunity to collaborate with the Committee to share our vision for wider community access to sports and to explore practical ways of increasing participation. We would be delighted to engage further and discuss how our facilities and expertise can contribute to this important agenda.

Facilities

At Christ’s Hospital, we are fortunate to have first-rate facilities available to our students and the local community. CH has 21 grass pitches, two floodlit all weather pitches, seven netball courts, 15 tennis courts, ten cricket squares, a swimming pool, a double sports hall, gymnasium, squash courts, Fives courts and a fitness studio – all of these facilities are key building blocks of our sports provision. The breadth of provision is important to us. Exposing our students to a wide range of different opportunities is central to our mission. Our physical education provision rotates sports every three weeks and our Activity for Life programme consists of just shy of 100 activities each term from Fives to football, cricket to Couch-to-5k and badminton to basketball. Our annual Year 13 survey told us that 97 percent of our leavers said CH allowed them to develop new skills and interests. Not only are these facilities readily accessible to students, staff and their families, but our local community (local schools, clubs and residents) are able to benefit too. It would be fair to say that the facilities at CH far exceed the standard of those available at grassroots level.

In 2025, we will finish work on a state-of-the-art athletics track (with field events), an activity trail (Sports Expansion Project - Activity Trail on Vimeo) and we will be the first independent school to host padel courts (Sports Expansion Project - Whole Video on Vimeo). We have established a relationship with the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), who are keen that our padel courts at CH can help shape the future of padel in the UK. Their opening will introduce this fast-growing sport to a completely new demographic. Our new athletics track will be a beacon for athletic excellence in the area. Many of our students are already keen athletes, but our intention is to host local and national events across schools, communities and sports organisations. A new ‘activity trail’ alongside the main track will cater for a wide range of people, but its primary focus is participation. It will provide a space for young and old to exercise without the pressure of competition, and is designed to foster engagement, enjoyment and a lifelong love of activity. With one eye on the potential bid for London to host the 2040 Olympics, we want our facilities to both widen access and provide a route for aspiring Olympians to hone their skills.

Whilst this call for evidence is focussed chiefly on sport, CH is proud of its integrated culture and was recently named Performing Arts School of the Year. Our theatre is used by all of our students – from reluctant 11-year-olds cutting their teeth on the stage to 18-year-olds who have sung and acted in professional theatres. Our box office is busy providing access to the local community and we host professional plays, music and comedy on a regular basis. Music is at the heart of CH, and students hear live music performed by their peers every day of the week with marching, Tuesday and Thursday lunchtime concerts and Sunday Chapel. This means we have in excess of 200 performances each year. Many students arrive without any formal music education, but that changes once they start at CH. There are 652 individual music lessons per week with over half of our students receiving music tuition. 57 percent of Year 7 students take up music lessons for the first time at CH. In addition to the individual lessons, there are 35 ‘official’ music ensembles and 229 music exams each year. Of these, 75 percent   return merits or distinctions in ABRSM examinations; there were 25 Grade 8 results last year and, by the time students leave, some 69 percent have a grade in at least one instrument, with 45 percent of all students leaving with at least a Grade 5.

The enormous range of opportunities our students enjoy sets them up for stellar success beyond CH - all whilst having a tremendous amount of fun. Our Chapel and wider music facilities are regularly used by local choral groups and schools, and we are delighted to host our local community whenever the opportunity arises.

As illustrated in the opening paragraph, CH is the leading bursary provider in the UK which means that we endeavour to invest our income back into our students. As a result, we do need to charge for private hire of our facilities at least to cover costs, but we do adjust this if there is philanthropic reason to do so. If there was funding available for the hire of facilities to the school, it would greatly improve our ability to offer a reduced rate to a wider range of people. We are keen to widen access and reviewing the opening hours of our facilities would be central to this, but there are barriers. The issues of staffing and maintenance costs need to be considered, alongside the priority to safeguard our students, if we are to sustain our mission and our educational provision.

Engagement and accessibility for under-represented groups

The mission of CH is simple, to identify children from disadvantaged or disrupted backgrounds with academic potential who can benefit from a boarding education. As a result, many of our pupils come from low income and/or ethnic minority backgrounds (see Appendix). This very much underpins our commitment to sport, music, theatre and our boarding offer. Specifically in relation to sport, many of our students have not experienced the sports we offer before joining CH, and we hope the outcome of their experience here will be improved emotional and social wellbeing, social capital and the development of talents and interests that they didn’t previously know existed. Our student demographic also means that we understand the barriers to participation and we work with our staff and students to address them. Boys and girls in Year 7 are taught about the impact of menstruation on participation and the adjustments that can be made. Recommending swimming hats suitable for all hair types is just one example of how we aim to ensure everyone feels included.

We are fortunate to have a 25-metre swimming pool onsite and our swimming programme starts at complete beginners and competes at local level too. We recognise that swimming is a life skill which some of our children have not acquired when they arrive at CH. Given that the majority of our students come from state/maintained schools and because we are cognisant of the fact that provision at Early Years and Key Stages 1 and 2 is not consistent, swimming is an early priority for us. Swimming pools are at a premium and we ensure all our students are taught swimming from Year 7, but, more than this, our pool is also used by the community for local children and adults to improve their swimming or develop their fitness. Moving forward, we would like to become the hub for local primary school pupils to learn to swim.

Local residents of the Bluecoat Pond retirement estate enjoy a close relationship with all elements of CH, and the wider community enjoy our sports facilities too. There is increasing work on partnerships with local organisations and the exercise referral team at our sports centre continues to make progress with GP referrals coming in more regularly to use our facilities.

Christ’s Hospital is situated neatly between Brighton and Greater London with excellent transport links. Despite this, the vast majority of people who use our facilities are our students, staff or the local community. If we were able to cast our net wider and be a hub for participation, given our facilities, that would be a huge appeal. Once our athletics track is built, we would be keen to give access to those who would not ordinarily get to compete on a such a facility, and we hope to partner with UK Athletics to make this happen. We will need to be mindful of the impact of any increases in traffic on our local community and employ traffic management initiatives for large events ahead of our planned new link road from the nearby A24 which will provide significantly improved access.

Christ’s Hospital sport

CH competed in 524 fixtures across 12 sports last academic year. This number is set to grow significantly this year with 262 fixtures played across nine sports in the first term. CH competes against a wide range of different local schools and hosts a number of events for Sussex schools. There is a good blend of performance and participation with every student in Years 7 to 9 able to represent CH in a seasonal sport, before a more specialised model begins at Key Stage 4.

We want our students to have a positive experience, build positive relationships, be proud to come together and represent something bigger than themselves and experience success along the way. If our alumni continue their sporting journey beyond CH, then we have succeeded.

All students are required, as part of the curriculum, to take part in organised sport three times a week. Participation is excellent and the range of activities means that students can find something to suit them and are encouraged to do so by their teachers. Older students join classes or drop into the gym, and we provide a diverse range of teachers and coaches who are able to engage our students.

We put a significant amount of resource into teaching our students to swim, but this remains a challenge because of its negative perception for many of our students who come from a wide range of backgrounds (see Appendix). To combat this, our early swimming programme focuses on water confidence and enjoyment, before moving on to technique. We want our students to enjoy being in the water and to develop a lifelong, positive affinity with it. In Years 7 and 8, students swim every three weeks throughout the year in their PE lessons.

Collaboration between schools and sports organisations

More recently, and as mentioned previously, we have begun collaborating with the LTA ahead of our padel court development, and we have started liaising with UK Athletics too.

We would welcome a more joined up approach with other sporting governing bodies and schools to maximise the experience of our students and the use of our facilities. We currently have close relationships with Horsham Hockey Club, Horsham Cricket Club, Sussex County Cricket Club and Horsham Football Club. All but the latter, use our facilities for their training or matches. A number of our talented students and some staff go on to play for these clubs. We also have a close link with Horsham Hawks Basketball Club.

As a boarding school, we would welcome the opportunity to enhance cooperation for better sporting opportunities for our students in the local community. This would be beneficial to both, but there would be important safeguarding constraints for us to overcome. We would be delighted to have connections with as many local organisations as possible.

Conclusion

CH is uniquely positioned to contribute significantly to the health of sport in local communities and schools. Our extensive and high-quality facilities, combined with our commitment to inclusivity and social mobility, provide a strong foundation for fostering lifelong relationships with sport and physical activity among our students and the wider community.

Our facilities, which include state-of-the-art pitches, courts, and soon-to-be-completed athletics track and padel courts exceed the standard of those available at grassroots level. These facilities are not only accessible to our students but also to local schools, clubs, and residents, promoting a broad engagement with sport. The upcoming additions, such as the track and the new activity trail, are designed to cater to a wide range of participants, from competitive athletes to those seeking recreational exercise, thereby fostering a lifelong love of physical activity.

Funding remains a critical area where improvements can be made. While CH invests heavily in maintaining and upgrading our facilities, additional funding would enable us to offer reduced rates for facility hire, making them more accessible to a broader demographic. With greater use of our facilities, there would be an increase in maintenance which we would also need to cater for. Streamlining funding application processes and ensuring more effective distribution of funds would further enhance the support for grassroots sport.

Our commitment to inclusivity is evident in our efforts to engage under-represented groups. Many of our students come from disadvantaged backgrounds and we strive to provide them with opportunities to discover and develop new talents and interests. Our swimming programme, for example, addresses a critical life skill that some of our students have not yet acquired.

Collaboration with sports organisations and local clubs is essential for maximising the use of our facilities and enhancing the sporting experience for our students. We have established strong partnerships with several local clubs and are keen to expand these relationships to benefit both our students and the wider community.

In conclusion, Christ’s Hospital is dedicated to promoting the health of sport in local communities and schools. By leveraging our facilities, fostering inclusivity, supporting volunteers and enhancing collaboration, we aim to create a positive and lasting impact on the sporting landscape. We look forward to continuing our work with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to further these goals, and hope to develop a new kind of wide-reaching partnership.

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