Powerful Pitching

Since lockdown, pupils have tackled a number of ambitious challenges, including pitching ideas to the Senior Leadership Team.

South Hampstead’s booklet of 50 things to do in lockdown, issued to all pupils in January, included a number of special advanced challenges offering extra House points. On their return to school this month, a number of girls embraced the top-scoring bonus challenge: To persuade the Senior Leadership Team to let you pitch for an idea for the school (10 points) – if they adopt the idea, claim an additional five points. 

This week, a group of Year 9 pupils approached Dr Osborne, our Director of Partnerships & Employability, with their proposal to launch a new feminist online magazine, The Femguin, inspired by our penguin school mascot.  Their impressive pitch eloquently summed up their rationale: “We want to open up conversations, challenge the status quo and help to change the world.” We look forward to reading the first issue, girls.

Another bold pitch was presented by four Year 9 pupils, keen to reinstate cheese in the school canteen. An unwitting victim of Covid-protocols, lunchtime grated cheese had disappeared following lockdown – a travesty they were keen to put right. The girls booked an appointment to lobby Mrs Bingham and Mr Jones, our Director of Finance & Operations, with a compelling introduction: “Pasta really isn’t the same without cheese.”

Their impassioned plea outlined cheese’s nutritional content and health benefits. They also offered solutions to the Covid risk, including biodegradable, individual pots, as well as a simple suggestion: “Could the canteen staff put cheese on the pasta please?”

The reintroduction of cheese, they claimed, would benefit the whole school community, as well the cheese industry, “grately.”  The girls presented a petition complete with 207 signatories, including staff, before finishing with the hard-hitting words of a Year 7 pupil: “Why don’t they have cheese?” 

Well done to all the girls for speaking up and speaking out. At today’s final assembly, Mr Jones announced that cheese will return in the summer term: “We have crumbled to the pressure.  It seems that this is a real crowd cheeser.”