Easter activity camp supports international boarders in Monmouth

Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools, with the help of Connexcel, have been running activity camps during holiday periods to support international boarders unable to return home due to the pandemic

Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools is continuing to provide pastoral support and care for its international boarders during the holiday periods and has kicked off its Easter activity camp this week.

The family of schools have partnered with guardianship and student placement agency Connexcel to provide the holiday provision, with Julie Ann Morse leading the camps.

Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools welcomed the return of boarders on 14 August last year and their boarding provision has remained open ever since.

Morse and her team also ran activity camps for the schools’ international boarders in October/November 2020 half-term, during the Christmas and New Year period, and in February half-term.

Teachers from Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools also assist with the camps so that the children have familiar faces around, and the schools’ nurses are available throughout.

“It has been such a turbulent time in the UK and we recognised the need to provide excellent pastoral support and care for our international boarders, and to do everything we could to ease their anxieties,” said principal of Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools, James Murphy-O’Connor.

It has been such a turbulent time in the UK and we recognised the need to provide excellent pastoral support and care for our international boarders, and to do everything we could to ease their anxieties – James Murphy-O’Connor, Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools

“With this in mind – and to support our international students further – we approached the Connexcel to run activity camps during the holiday periods for our international boarders who would be unable to return home due to the pandemic.”

“We are proud to have formed such a positive and flourishing relationship with this outstanding agency and are delighted that, as a family of schools, we have provided uninterrupted and unbroken provision for our boarders at school for seven months.”

“The boarders have responded extremely positively to the holiday provision and have formed a special community within a community.”

Activities such as volleyball, dance, pebble painting, printing, scrunchie making, sushi sessions, scratch art and an Easter egg hunt will be keeping the international boarders busy over the Easter period.

The independent school in Wales educates girls and boys aged 3–18 through a combination of single-sex and co-education delivered “at the optimum stages of a child’s academic and personal development”.


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