Brentwood Preparatory School Incipe 2017-18

Brentwood School Preparatory 79 School Disco Fast forward n-n-n-n-nineteen years and our annual Charity Disco is still as groovy as ever! This year saw Mr Sawyer trying out some new ideas for the Dance curriculum inspired by John Travolta. The children, dressed to impress, took great delight in assessing his performance before joining in the big finale. A discotastic £1282.55 was raised for a range of local and national charities. Until next year, keep dancing! Chess Chess at Brentwood Prep School has really boomed over the last couple of years, peaking this May with victory for the A-Team in the prestigious U11 English Primary Schools Chess Association Championships held at Pontins in Camber Sands. It all started just over 2 years ago when Mr. Whiskerd supported me in running a chess tournament at the Prep School. The event quickly sold out and from there, with the support of the Headmaster, parents, Essex Junior Chess Association, generous sponsors and local organiser Robin Slade we put on a series of 20 events events over 2 years, both at Brentwood School and other venues around Essex. The events, many of which featured guest Grandmaster coaches, were well attended by Brentwood Prep School pupils. This, combined with a course of private tuition for some of the leading players provided by Robin and myself, and the weekly club run by Richard Harding brought out an excellent crop of young chess players at Brentwood Prep School. Last year the team qualified through to the national event at Camber Sands, finishing 5th out of the 40 qualified schools. This year however was the big year, with 2 Brentwood Prep teams for the first time qualifying through to Camber Sands. The A team made up of (in board order) Nina, Max, Dmitry, Jake, Jaideep and Adhvaith performed particularly impressively to ensure Brentwood Prep became the first ever Essex school to win the event over 39 other schools, many with professional Grandmaster coaches. Despite a couple of nervy moments, the children kept their cool and eventually ran out comfortable winners. There was also time for a few trips to the beach and an occasional game of crazy golf! Chess is a great game for helping children to think, making new friends and teaching children how to deal with both winning and losing. It is encouraging to see how chess is becoming a priority at the school with the introduction of chess scholarships to the senior school. Hopefully this will be the start of many successful years in chess for Brentwood. Richard Pert - Director of Chess at Brentwood School.