We take great pride in the extensive facilities and equipment we offer our pupils. Everything provided is to ensure children are learning with the very best tools whilst also finding great enjoyment in their school life.
Sport
Our sport facilities have been revamped with three new all-weather multisport courts that can be used to train in netball, tennis and hockey. This compliments our all-weather astroturf garden ensuring all year access for playtime and sports. It also has lights, and it is the perfect size for 5-a-side football and it provides the setting for our Nursery and Pre-Nursery Sports Day in the summer.
In addition, we have an agreement in place with the York Club in the Great Park and we can use the facilities for all our games afternoons and practices and the boys and girls love to go there. In addition to inter-house competitions, we play fixtures against other schools in rugby, cricket, football, hockey and cross country. We stream our sports day events from York club to parents not able to join and close family and friends.
Our school hall, the Wallace Hall, is a great space for indoor PE lessons. The hall includes numerous pieces of gym equipment, an assault frame, rowing machines. We do also offer fencing and judo clubs with specialist teachers.
Dance is also very important at Upton. We are delighted to have Megan Rhodes as our Head of Dance. Megan is a qualified teacher with the Royal Academy of Dance and acrobatic Arts where she regularly enters students for their examinations with successful 100% pass rate. Megan runs her own competition team which had recently qualified to be part of team England at the dance world cup for 2020 & 2021. The competition team regularly competes at regional and National level with great successes. She is teaching ballet, contemporary, lyrical and acro dance to our boys and girls at our great studio which has two dance barres set within an abundance of space.
Our pupils have weekly swimming lessons from Form 1 and we also have a Swim Squad (from From 4 to Form 6) that trains one afternoon per week. We use the swimming pools at Eton College, Bishopsgate School and the new St George’s Ascot swimming pool.
Technology: Arts & Music
Technology is integrated into all areas of the curriculum and pupils have access to iPads to use within the classroom. The children have the opportunity to develop their coding skills and also enjoy making use of the green screen for digital projects. Our new state of the art recording studio used regularly during the Music Tech lessons, for pupils projects and the for the production of Digital portfolio’s. We aim to create as many cross-curricular links as possible to give children ample time to consolidate their subject knowledge so they can truly achieve their full potential. Design Technology is also offered at Upton and the children get the chance to plan, design, develop and create a variety of functioning objects built for a particular purpose.
Every classroom is fitted with an Interactive Screen that provides a modern basis for interactive learning. The boards can link to our iPads, thus providing further engagement. Children are encouraged to take part using the extensive and powerful tools offered by these devices. In addition, our Nursery block has a Smart Table providing an interactive learning base for our youngest children. The table encourages interaction, problem solving and teamwork.
We have installed a fully equipped, professional Apple Mac sound studio. We wanted to increase our Music tech capability making it easier for children to learn and compose. Pupils and staff have recorded music in the studio and delivered live broadcasts during assemblies. The sound studio is linked to the Music Room. Our Music Room provides a range of instruments from pianos to ukuleles and recorders to drums. We have 2 ‘pods’ where children are taught music individually. These lessons include violin, piano, singing, guitar, cello and flute.
The chroma (green) screen delivers the backdrop to many media and drama lessons as pupils perform with the chroma screen, before editing their own backgrounds and special effects afterwards with iPads.
Media Room
Our onsite Live Streamed events are delivered from our dedicated media room enabling us to provide highly produced events using green screen technology across multiple Halls and Studios. In addition to delivering digitised events, we also stream Music Soirees across multiple studios providing a highly immersive experience to viewers. Each child is introduced by our Headmistress with tailored stories as part of the child’s introduction. These events are captivating to all family and friends and inspiring to children when they watch it from home, using multiple studios supports an exciting and fast moving “Live” events.
Our team also go on location to stream our external events. We deliver three beautiful church services a year to family and friends from the Garrison, Parish and All Saints church in Windsor, many of these events are watched from 25 countries. Our performers are as young as five years old for these services. Our sports days are also Live Streamed on location sending the excitement of day to our audience using multi camera views and live commentary from the sports field. Using leading video switching and streaming technology with 6 cameras, we are able to create a highly immersive experience.