The Horse Trust Sets a Challenge to Pupils from Local Schools
A Challenge to Pupils
A group of "Gifted and Talented" students from local schools visited The Horse Trust's sanctuary at Speen, Buckinghamshire this week, and were set a challenge to "Make learning about horses fun at The Horse Trust”.
Fourteen Year 8 students from GreatMarlow School, The Amersham School and John Hampden Grammar School were selected to take part in this challenge due to their above-average achievement at school. The students, aged between 12 and 13 years old, were asked to come up with ideas on how the Visitor Centre at The Horse Trust could make learning more fun for people of all ages.
The students visited the sanctuary on Wednesday morning to get a feel for the work the Horse Trust does and then worked on their ideas back at school during the afternoon and the following morning. On Thursday they returned to The Horse Trust to present their ideas to staff at the charity.
"We were really impressed with the number and creativity of their ideas. We will now be looking into how we could implement some of them," said Susan Lewis, The Horse Trust’s Marketing Manager.
The ideas suggested by the students included offering activities for younger children such as "decorate a horse", painting a life-size picture of a horse on the floor with the anatomy annotated and starting a horse adoption scheme to raise money for the charity.
"The students absolutely loved their time at The Horse Trust," said Sally Anthony, a Project Officer at Buckinghamshire Education Business Partnership (BEBP), who set up the visit. "It was a great thing for them to get involved with as they didn't have any boundaries - they were able to be as creative as they wanted." The BEBP works with schools across Buckinghamshire to deliver work-based learning to students.
The Horse Trust is open to the public every day from 2 – 4 pm, enabling visitors to meet the elderly, retired horses in the stables and learn more about the work of the charity. The Visitor Centre has information on the 123-year history of The Trust, the charity's work improving horse welfare and funding equine research, and provides information on responsible horse ownership and health conditions that affect horses.
Over the years, the Visitor Centre has become dated and the students’ brief was to redesign it to better engage with people of all ages. The students were asked to create a proposal, a new plan of the visitor centre and publicity material including a press release of the new attractions.
The overall winners were GreatMarlow School; The Amersham School were highly commended and John Hampden Grammar School were praised for giving the best presentation
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