Given the school’s location, at the foot of Windsor Castle, and its long-standing tradition of educating the Choristers of St George’s Chapel, who have been involved in many royal occasions, not least singing in the Coronation Choir during both the 1937 and 1953 Coronations, it would seem a fair assumption that St George’s School Windsor Castle might pull out all the stops for this year’s historic royal event. It certainly didn’t disappoint!
In the build up, the school was a hive of activity, with a hotly contested house biscuit decorating competition and colourful arts and crafts taking place throughout the school ranging from portraits and new stamp designs, to golden carriages, crowns and more. The students used their inquiry skills to research and present facts about the royal occasion and Reception children enjoyed role playing quintessentially British tea parties. Several of the students even had the opportunity to showcase their creations on a global children’s news programme, when the school welcomed an ITN Production crew into classrooms to film the ongoing preparations for a bulletin broadcast on Discovery Education’s Espresso News channel to over 3,000 schools worldwide.
In recognition of King Charles’ love of the environment, the school’s official Coronation celebration on Friday 5 May followed the theme of environmental stewardship, already a focus of the school as one of the five Round Square ‘IDEALS’ embedded into the school’s curriculum framework. Students raised awareness by adding a pop of green to their uniform and took part in a series of activities ranging from outdoor nature mandalas and scavenger hunts, the planting of two Coronation roses and the most challenging, switching off electricity for the day, resulting in a much celebrated BBQ lunch. The day culminated in a fantastic fete on the school’s playing fields in Home Park Private, run exclusively by the students in Years 7 and 8, and a bake sale organised by the school’s Eco Club to raise money for Toilet Twinning.
Over 50 pieces of the children’s artwork were then used to decorate the artists’ area backstage at the official Coronation Concert. And finally, eleven lucky Choristers rounded off the celebrations by singing at the event, broadcast to an audience of millions live from Windsor Castle on Sunday evening. Appearing as part of Take That’s finale set, the children sang the choral introduction to the former number one hit, Never Forget – something they surely never will!
This article was originally written for publication in Absolutely Berkshire magazine’s June edition.
