Clifton in the Community

Clifton College has long been known for encouraging its pupils to work in the community.

The school has been a major part of the Clifton community for almost 150 years and in this time has always strived to encourage its pupils to extend themselves to develop their moral and spiritual values. One way of doing this most successfully is to work with others in the neighbourhood and face challenges, meet new people and learn new skills with confidence and determination.

Clifton in the Community encourages all this by finding opportunities for the Clifton pupils to work in the wider world around them and meet a variety of new and interesting challenges. These opportunities vary from working with the disabled, within schools, on the sports fields, in drama and music performance and in charity shops. We try to ensure that there is a wide range of opportunities on offer that will suit all interests. The involvement with the community encourages our students to take on responsibility for others as well as themselves; to learn to organise themselves and to care for others around them. It is important too to encourage the students to develop a respect for the dignity and self-respect of others.

The work that the students may involve themselves in can be highlighted in their curriculum vitae, used to their credit in their UCAS personal statement and be of benefit to their future careers. It may help them decide on a university course – or even to decide that a particular path is not for them after all. By giving 100% of their commitment and enthusiasm to such a project, they may earn a referee for the future or find themselves with new friends from both in and out of the school environment.

By taking this section of the co-curricular programme seriously, it is an opportunity for each student to gain a maturity and understanding of others around them and for the work that others put into our community.

Boys and girls are given the choice of the Clifton Combined Cadet Force (Army, Navy or Air Force) or Clifton in the Community and once they have chosen they are expected to give their choice 100% commitment. It is very important that Clifton in the Community is not seen as the ‘easy option’, but as the alternative to joining the CCF. Unlike the CCF there are no uniforms, but learning self-discipline and having an earnest desire to put something back into the community is what this co-curricular option is all about.