Chestnut Park pupils find their voice at Fairfield Hall concert

​Pupils from Chestnut Park Primary School in Croydon ensured the school’s first academic year ended on a high note the other week as they performed in a concert at Fairfield Hall.

The concert was organised by the GLF Schools group, a Surrey-based multi-academy trust which runs more than a dozen schools across the south east, including Chestnut Park, which opened last September.

The young singers of Chestnut Park joined the massed GLF Schools choir to perform songs including Shine by Take That and Let’s Go Fly a Kite from Mary Poppins, before singing a song of their own, Big Red Bus.

“This concert was an amazing experience for all the children,” said Chestnut Park’s deputy head Denise Coady. “Being a new school, everything we’ve done this year has been a bit of a step into the unknown, but being part of a performance like this was definitely one of the most exciting and most rewarding experiences of the lot.

“That song is particularly significant to the children as when the school first opened, a singing group called Spud and Yam came to visit and taught the children the song and the actions, so it was the obvious choice for us to sing to represent Chestnut Park.”

With the student body growing year by year, new buildings are already being constructed for the new intake in the autumn term, and Ms Coady said the Fairfield Hall performance had given everyone associated with Chestnut Park plenty more reasons to feel good about the future.

“The children were an absolute credit to the school with the way they behaved and performed,” she said. “I know they made us all very proud, and the great thing is that having seen the performance, more people now want to get involved with the choir so they can perform next year as well.”