Community is a central tenet of much that goes on at the UCS Prep-Prep just off the Finchley Road. However, we always insist that community takes practical and tangible forms rather than merely conceptual – because this makes the idea that bit more accessible and understandable to our children.

We are a small pre-preparatory school with a distinct family feel, and yet we also stretch our legs well beyond our happy, homely premises.

Charity fundraising

Every year we work with six national charities and organise fundraising activities which regularly punctuate the school calendar. These organisations are: NSPCC, UNICEF, Comic Relief/Sport Relief, Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity, Jeans for Genes and the Fairtrade Foundation.

If that is the national outreach, we also offer practical help to an ever-shifting cast of local charities such as The Winch, which assists young people in the vicinity of the school campus.

Giving practical support

Boys aged 4–7 need to physically do something in order to grasp a concept, so our pupils have produced a joke book for one charity and donated resources for the children’s playroom at another. Each year, they also choose one good cause to support, with one recent example being the RSPCA.

As one prong of the UCS Foundation’s educational trident, we also carefully nurture our links with the Senior School. Our boys spend a considerable amount of time at the latter’s Frognal site, doing outdoor learning at the allotment – sometimes aided by Senior pupils. Sixth Formers make weekly visits to join our pupils in activities like coding and food tech; Year 7s regularly read to them. We believe the benefits of this two-way exchange are mutual.

Our children clearly gain much from the sense of recognition and the time given to them by the older pupils – that’s once they have stopped being star-struck!