Learning without limits

Senior Co-Curricular Offer

Sport, music, drama, leadership and enterprise: a programme that gives every pupil the chance to find what they love.

At Kneller Hall School, pupil voice is at the heart of everything we do. With over 100 clubs, societies and enrichment activities available to students from Year 7 through to Year 13, there is something to inspire every young person, whatever their interests or aspirations.
We actively encourage all pupils to get involved, try new experiences, have fun, and build lasting friendships. Our extensive programme of clubs and activities helps students develop confidence, creativity and independence, while also nurturing essential life skills such as leadership, teamwork, resilience and communication. From sport and the performing arts to jewellery making, Minecraft, coding and robotics, there is always something for everyone.

What makes Kneller Hall School unique is our commitment to listening to our students. If there is a club, society or activity that pupils would like to see and it is not already available, we work with them to explore opportunities to introduce it. This ensures that our enrichment programme continues to evolve, reflecting the interests and passions of our young people.

We firmly believe that students achieve outstanding academic success because of these wider experiences, not despite them. By providing a rich and varied programme of opportunities beyond the classroom, we help every pupil discover their strengths, pursue their interests, and flourish throughout their journey at Kneller Hall School.

Something for Every Pupil’s Passion

Explore Our Programme

Sport plays a central role in the life of every pupil at Kneller Hall School, offering opportunities for physical expression while fostering teamwork, leadership and a strong sense of camaraderie. Our girls specialise in netball, football, cricket and athletics, while our boys focus on rugby, football, cricket and athletics while pupils can choose to row from Year 8 alongside these main sports. There is a broad and diverse sporting programme available to all. Other activities such as basketball, tennis, strength and conditioning, dance and fencing are offered both within the curriculum and through an extensive co-curricular programme.

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Opportunity and competition

We aim to ensure that every pupil at Kneller Hall School has the opportunity to represent the school in competitive sport, from national level performers to those who prefer a more recreational approach. All pupils are supported through a comprehensive in-house strength and conditioning programme, and our fixture programme ensures that matches remain both challenging and developmentally appropriate.

Our popular Super Saturday fixtures bring the wider Kneller Hall School community together to support our teams, while our Friday Night Lights events provide a vibrant social experience for pupils, staff and families alike. Sports tours, such as our recent netball tour to Paris and football and rugby tours to Barcelona, are highly popular, giving pupils access to high-quality coaching alongside further opportunities for competitive play.

Partnerships

Kneller Hall School benefits from strong partnerships with a range of external organisations that enhance our sporting provision, including Harlequins RFC, Twickenham Rowing Club and St Mary’s University. Our move to the Kneller Hall School estate will allow this programme of flagship partnerships to expand further, incorporating Brentford FC. We are also fortunate to have a highly experienced coaching team, including several international athletes and Olympians.

Successes

Kneller Hall School pupils enjoy success across a wide range of sports, and we take great pride in supporting their progress through clear performance and logistical pathways, ensuring they have both the time and understanding needed to progress to the next stage of their sporting careers. Recent successes include academy footballers and rugby players representing Chelsea, Southampton and England age group teams in football, and Harlequins, Ealing and London Scottish in rugby. Pupils have also achieved representation at Middlesex, London North and regional level in both netball and hockey, while several county athletics competitors have gone on to represent Middlesex at the English Schools Championships.

Facilities

Our growing facilities at Kneller Hall, thoughtfully designed to support sport at every level, together with our playing fields at the adjacent Whitton Park Sports Association, provide outstanding space and opportunity for further development. Facilities include a 4G astro. A forthcoming sports centre adds further excitement as we look confidently to the future of sport at Kneller Hall.

Alongside this, we continue to make full use of high quality facilities in the local area to ensure pupils benefit from the very best sporting provision, including St Mary’s University, Teddington Cricket Club and Twickenham Rowing Club, as well as local venues such as Isleworth Leisure Centre and swimming pool.

At Kneller Hall School, Physical Education and Health play a vital role in developing confident, healthy and resilient young people. We believe that physical activity is about far more than exercise; it helps pupils build self-confidence, resilience, independence, and a lifelong appreciation for health and wellbeing. Through our Sport and Exercise for Life programme, pupils develop an understanding of healthy lifestyles, physical fitness, mental wellbeing, and the importance of regular activity. Our aim is for every pupil to leave Kneller Hall with the knowledge, skills and motivation to lead an active and healthy life.

Our PE and Health programme is designed to maximise participation and provide engaging opportunities for every pupil. Throughout the year, pupils develop physical literacy, fitness, strength, coordination, and overall wellbeing through a broad range of activities and experiences. Practical opportunities include strength and conditioning sessions, fitness training, personalised goal setting, outdoor physical challenges, and the use of both indoor and outdoor fitness facilities. Pupils are encouraged to develop healthy habits through initiatives such as Kneller Park Runs, community fitness events and active recreation opportunities that promote enjoyment, participation and lifelong engagement in physical activity. Supported by excellent facilities and experienced staff, pupils learn how exercise supports both physical and mental health while developing the confidence and knowledge to make positive lifestyle choices. Our focus is on participation, personal development, and lifelong wellbeing, helping every pupil to flourish both physically and mentally.

The Performing Arts Faculty brings together our Music and Drama departments. The two are distinct subjects and they share one conviction: that practical work is best taught on clear theory, and that every pupil can achieve given the right structure and the right support as they develop.
Both are taught to every pupil as part of the curriculum to the end of Year 9, and both continue as options at GCSE and A Level. Both also carry on well beyond the timetable.

Music

Every pupil is taught music for an hour a week to the end of Year 9. Outside lessons there is a junior choir, a senior choir, a senior a cappella group, the school orchestra, rock bands, guitar and ukulele ensembles, a percussion group and LAMDA musical theatre.
Each term ends with a full concert where individuals and ensembles perform. Alongside it runs an informal showcase: a smaller room and a lower stake, where a pupil can play the piece they have been working on in their lessons without it having to be an occasion. There is also an annual senior musical, performed at an external theatre, with recent productions including Little Shop of Horrors, Legally Blonde and Made in Dagenham.

Pupils can take individual instrumental and singing lessons with working professional musicians, charged separately from fees. They can learn for the pleasure of it, or work through the graded examinations at their own pace. We also enter pupils each year in the Independent Schools Association national competitions, in musical theatre, composition and a cappella, and we have a good record in them.

Drama

Every pupil is taught drama from Year 7 to Year 9. What they study is deliberately wide. Ancient Greek theatre and Sophocles at one end, Caryl Churchill and the physical theatre techniques of Frantic Assembly at the other, with naturalism and Stanislavski, surrealism and the absurd in between. Pupils learn to compare one form against another and to say why a thing works in one and not the other.
Drama also gives the rest of the curriculum somewhere to go. Staging a Shakespeare text is a different kind of reading. Playing an evacuee is a different kind of history.

Some of our pupils will act. All of them will at some point have to stand up in front of people who are not obliged to listen. Drama builds the confidence and performance skills that make that survivable, alongside the team working and evaluation skills that almost every career asks for.
The two departments work together on productions, theatre trips and tours, including an annual trip to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Leadership opportunities

Every pupil has the chance to hold a leadership role during their time at Kneller Hall. We believe strongly in giving pupils real agency: the sense that a young person can influence and effect positive change, and contribute meaningfully to a wider school project. Pupils lead through four committees, each guided by Sixth Form student leaders working alongside senior staff. School Council Prefects represent their peers in school governance. House Prefects lead within our house system. Sustainability Prefects drive our environmental and eco-school initiatives. Community Prefects champion engagement and service within the wider community.

Duke of Edinburgh’s Award

Around 40% of our pupils take part in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, more than 180 of them at any one time. Each award is built around four sections: volunteering, skill development, physical activity and expedition, with an additional residential element at Gold. Pupils can complete their sections through our co-curricular programme, external organisations, or independently, tracking progress through an online logbook.

Bronze, Year 9
The starting point. Volunteering, a skill and a physical activity alongside a practice and assessed expedition, camping in the Surrey Hills.
Silver, Year 10
Longer commitments in each section and a more demanding expedition in the New Forest and South Downs.
Gold, Lower Sixth
The full award, with a residential element and expeditions in the Lake District and Brecon Beacons, supported by our partnership with Activ Adventures, an approved DofE Award Centre.

Peter Jones Enterprise Academy

Kneller Hall School pupils take part in the Peter Jones Enterprise Academy, a flagship programme of the Peter Jones Foundation, developing the entrepreneurial skills needed for successful employment or self-employment through genuine, real world business experience. Our enterprise pathway runs from age 11 through to post-18, building eight core competencies along the way: communication, creativity and innovation, digital skills, financial skills, leadership, problem solving, self management and resilience, and teamwork. Its flagship event, the Tycoon Enterprise Competition, sees pupil teams write real business plans, receive start-up capital as a goodwill loan from the Peter Jones Foundation, launch and run an actual business, and trade nationally through a crowdfunding style platform, repaying their loan only once their company breaks even.

Eco-Schools

Our Eco-Club is part of Eco-Schools, an international environmental initiative running in over seventy countries since 1994, built around a seven step framework that puts young people in control of environmental action. Led on a rotating basis by our pupils, who take turns managing meetings and setting the agenda, the Eco-Club has been recognised with a Distinction in the Green Flag Award, with particular praise for how it engages families and the wider community through newsletters, assemblies, social media and transport initiatives. Its work spans ten focus areas, from biodiversity and energy efficiency to litter reduction, water conservation and sustainable transport, all in service of a simple aim: helping pupils become self-aware, compassionate eco-citizens.

However a pupil chooses to get involved, on the sports field, on stage, leading a committee, trekking through the Brecon Beacons, or running their own business through Tycoon, their achievement is recognised through the Kneller Laureate.

From Year 7 through to Year 13, pupils earn enrichment credit for their involvement and achievement across every part of school life. Pupils can capture meaningful moments of achievement, reflect thoughtfully on their experience, and receive personalised feedback from their form tutor, building a rich, evidenced portfolio to draw on for university and beyond.

Once a pupil has accumulated sufficient credit, they complete the Kneller Laureate itself: our qualification recognising personal achievement across Sport, Performing Arts, and Character and Leadership alike.

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What’s on Offer

How the programme runs

Our co-curricular programme changes and develops every term, so what follows is a snapshot rather than a fixed offer. A full list goes to parents and pupils at the end of each holiday, in time for choices to be made before the new term starts.

Download the current programme below.

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EXPLORE OUR SCHOOL