ACCOUNTANTS don’t like wasting money.
Sharon Cliff says it simply goes against the grain.
So when her school was given £20,000 by the Forgotten Forty team, the former accountant was determined to ensure every penny was well spent.
And judging by the school’s achievements, it has been.
As headteacher, Sharon decided to invest £17,200 of it in activities designed to challenge, nurture, enrich and excite her pupils at West End Primary School in Morecambe, Lancashire.
And judging by the feedback, it did.
"I want to be a scientist,” one child said after returning from a day trip to Imagine That! science and discovery centre in Liverpool.
And he wasn’t alone.
“All of them were so excited when they got back to school,” said Sharon. “Many of them told us they were going to be the scientist of the future.”
She and her staff had organised a packed programme of activities for all ages.
The school’s year 5/6 football team witnessed the importance of teamwork when the eight players watched Morecambe Football Club in action at their purpose-built Mazuma Stadium.
They not only acquired new skills, but it showed them that if you work hard enough at something that you love then you can achieve your dreams.
Sixty children from years 3 and 4 took part in a team building day in the Lake District where they went boating on Lake Windermere.
“For some children just getting in a boat on the water was their biggest challenge,” she said.
And as part of the school’s ‘reach for the stars’ theme, 50 infants were taken to a climbing wall in the hope of showing them the importance of positive thinking.
“We wanted to show them that they can achieve anything if they put their mind to it,” said Sharon.
The pep talk worked with one particular child, who fears trying anything new, feeling on top of the world after scaling a climbing wall.
“I was really scared,” he told teachers afterwards. “But I did it.”
Sharon said all the activities had been a success and had gone as expected.
“The only thing I didn’t expect was the staff reaction to the children’s experiences,” she said. “The children were so overwhelmed that the staff often became emotional.
Although we realised the limited lives that some of our children lead, we didn’t always know to what extent.