EF Academy Torbay Houses: The first competition

The EF Academy Torbay House system has already got off to a fantastic start with students getting really excited from day one. Competition has been ratcheting up with students being awarded points on our praise system for handing in great homework, doing really well in lessons or doing something around the school to help students or staff. But today we held the first of many house competitions to come with our school sports day.

The school is divided into four houses. Elberry, Salton, Oyster and Ansty’s which are all coves around Torbay. Last year we interviewed staff for the illustrious positions of Heads of Houses and we now have some great Heads Sean Kirby who teaches Science, Owen Styler who is our Head of Sport, Rachel Galvin who is a Math’s teacher and Esti Ayo who is a business teacher.

Over the course of the year we will hold a number of competitions including a talent show, debate contest and various sport competitions including football, tennis and basketball. As well as this Heads of Houses will also organize social events and meet regularly in house assemblies.

To really kick things off we held a sports day for the entire school at the fantastic Exeter Athletics stadium which is one of the best athletics venues in the Southwest of England. In the previous week leading up to the sports day students had to collect their house T shirts and sign up for a variety of track and field events that took place throughout the day.

Track events included the full range of distances from 100 to 800 meters and relay races with teams from all the houses. The field events included shot put, discus, high jump and long jump. The enthusiasm of the students was totally infectious and the competition between houses was amazing considering it’s at such an early stage in the year.

You may ask what is all the fuss about what’s the prize at the end of it all? Well there will be trophies and there will be free cinema tickets and dinners out but the real prize is pride. Pride in your house and your fellow students efforts and hard work but also pride in the school because while everyone is competing against each other we are all competing for the school. All of that pride was so evident today in each and every student and staff member and it was so amazing to see this enthusiasm and determination to win.

After such an amazing day there had to be one winner and today it was Elberry that took the winner’s trophy and Elberry students who cheered the loudest at the awards ceremony at the end of the day. But, this is the first of many competitions to come this year so we will have to wait and see who takes the final winning trophy.