We will be the best community
As the line from our Herne Hill School song suggests, we are committed to help create the best community – within our school, locally and within the wider world.An important aspect of our ethos is to make the children aware of their environment and place in the world. This includes raising their ecological awareness, appreciating nature and supporting those who are less fortunate.
We aim to ensure that our children and parents are involved in building a vibrant school community which contributes to our local community and to the wider global community, for example by highlighting the importance of caring for the environment and through our charitable link with Khanya Primary School in South Africa.
The Friends of Herne Hill School
Our parents’ association ‘Friends of Herne Hill School’ (FHHS), to which every parent belongs, actively contributes to these endeavours and helps bond the parent community through social and fundraising activities. All parents can get involved, from helping to organise an FHHS event or a second-hand uniform sale, to taking on a role as class rep or sitting on the Committee, supervising a stall at the Summer Fair or simply baking a cake for a coffee morning stall.
With their fundraising, FHHS have made substantial contributions to a wide range of charities such as Kingfishers, Children in Need, MacMillan, Comic Relief and Khanya Primary School in South Africa.
Herne Hill Music Festival
In line with the major role music plays at Herne Hill School, we are proud to have supported Herne Hill Music Festival since its beginnings in 2010 and to have been the main sponsor for several years. It’s a wonderful festival organised by local artists and enthusiasts covering a wide range of musical genres. The 2021 Festival was their best yet, with nearly 1,400 people attending 20 events.
We have also regularly supported another superb group of local musicians, the Callia Quartet, a group of chamber musicians. By exposing our children to such talented musicians, we aim to inspire a love of music in all them.
Khanya Primary School
At the end of 2005, Herne Hill School formed an allegiance with Khanya Primary School, a state school in a township in Cape Town.
Our aim has been to form long-lasting links which not only support this desperately poor school but also provide benefits to our children, such as making them more appreciative of the material comfort they enjoy and more aware of the world they live in.
Ever since, Khanya has been one of the charities generously supported by our parent association, the Friends of Herne Hill School.
Ecology
We are well aware that preventing climate change and protecting the environment is an enormous challenge our children will be facing throughout their lives. We are keen to raise their awareness and get them to appreciate the beauty and benefits of nature and of ecosystems.
We also like to do all we can to reduce the school’s carbon footprint and involve the children in these endeavours as much as possible. For example, while refurbishing the new Kindergarten building, we introduced efficient underfloor heating throughout, upgraded all the windows to ensure maximum insulation, installed a large underground tank in the garden to collect rainwater from the roofs of the mansion and the Bach (see photo), and more.
In our endeavours, our Year 2 eco warriors help keep a watchful eye on maintaining our environment, such as our recycling efforts in all the classrooms, and make suggestions for further improvements. Of course, we are also helped massively by our garden at 99 Herne Hill and the vast woodland area at 127 Herne Hill, which enable us to teach the children about the entire food chain cycle from growing, harvesting, cooking, consuming, recycling and repurposing food. Besides garden composting at 99 Herne Hill, we have a large food waste hot composter at 127 Herne Hill to turn our food waste, which our caterers work hard to minimise in the first place, into good quality compost for use in our community’s gardens.
