Celebrating Southborough’s Inclusive Offer with the Opening Ceremony of our Zenith Centre

Last Friday saw the official opening ceremony of the Zenith Centre, our specialist Inclusion department that is the central hub –and heart! – of the school for identifying and providing a wide range of effective academic support, targeted intervention, alternative pathways and bespoke provisions for our students.

With a robust team of specialist in-house professionals and qualified practitioners working collaboratively with key external agencies, Southborough’s newly launched Zenith Centre provides every Southborough student – whatever their needs, difficulties or challenges – with an excellent support network that in turn, provides them with the necessary opportunities that they can achieve their potential at secondary school.

VIP guests included the Right Honourable Mayor of Kingston Upon Thames, Councillor Liz Green and Achieving for Children’s Head of Children’s Services, Charis Penfold. Other guests included senior representatives from a number of local primary schools and other Southborough stakeholders, including parents.

All guests were welcomed to the school by a number of our finest Gold Tie prefects and the event itself began with a warm, introductory speech from Headteacher Mr Smith, followed by the showing of our new Zenith promotional video.

Following light refreshments, guests were put into small groups and given a comprehensive tour around our newly refurbished Zenith Centre, including specialist classrooms and spaces where key external agencies work from. Visitors were encouraged to ask our staff lots of questions and thus gain a greater understanding regarding the support that we are able to offer our boys.

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. After the tour and an inspiring address from the mayor, two groups of students from Zenith’s alternative pathways programme -namely the Be Bold Project and The Young Leaders Award – shared their personal experiences of the programmes.

Four Be Bold students spoke about how the scheme had made them feel more confident both in and out of school. They thoroughly enjoyed initiatives including judo and liaising with both the police and the fire brigade –and most of all, they had fun!

Three students from the Young Leaders Award then spoke about their work at The Royal Star and Garter Residential Home for elderly veterans. It was clear for all to see how much pride and achievement the boys felt regarding their weekly visits helping and socialising with the residents. And by all accounts, the residents loved them, too!

Staff and guests alike were then given time to chat over light refreshments before thanks and goodbyes were said.

We would like to say a big THANK YOU to all our guests for given up their Friday afternoon to come and join us at Zenith’s opening ceremony. We’d also like to thank Mr Edwards for organising the event –and Zenith Centre and Inclusion Manager Mr Nicholas and his wonderful team of staff for making the event such a success.

The Zenith Centre