At The Priory School we believe that encouraging students to engage in charity and community work is an invaluable part of the wider curriculum. Charity work is a way for students to demonstrate our school values of respect and responsibility.
Charity Fundraising
In the academic year 2024-2025 we had our best fundraising year yet, raising a total of £4067. We have enjoyed our fundraising for charities such as Save the Children, Children in Need, MacMillan, Hitchin Food Pantry, The Garden House Hospice and Feed Up Warm Up. We love being able to support local charities and see the donations we give make a difference in the heart of our community.
We have also been doing various awareness campaigns throughout the year coordinated by the SEN and Wellbeing department. We have been developing our understanding around Dyslexia Awareness Week, ADHD Awareness Month, Mental Health weeks (children, male and general mental health), Down Syndrome Awareness Day and Autism Awareness Day.
Further to this, we have been increasing the support for our LGBTQ+ students and raising the profile of the diverse community around school. This has included raising money for Stonewall and increasing the students’ knowledge of the important work they do. This is all coordinated and arranged during our Everyone’s Allies club.
This year (2025-2026), we will continue our focus with local charities, beginning with Letchworth Food Bank (they serve Letchworth, Hitchin and Stevenage). We aim to support them in the Autumn term, near to Christmas, so that we can ensure that families close to us are supported at this financially difficult time. We also look to support the maternity unit at Lister Hospital. We hope that you will support us in our efforts to fundraise as much as possible.
Community Work
At The Priory School we pride ourselves on being a community school. We encourage students to be active citizens through volunteering, charity work and working with the local community. This has been shown in many forms, from litter picking locally to singing in a local care home. With the current cost of living crisis, we focused on Hitchin Pantry as a key focus of our work this year, ensuring that our Christmas offerings were the best they could be. We were able to take a minibus full of goodies down to Hitchin Pantry for our local families to enjoy. We also had students rolling up their sleeves and getting stuck in to some gardening at the Hitchin Triangle Community Garden. Our Student Leadership Committee, headed by Mr Omar, supported and created something wonderful.