Danetree pupils can be heroes – just for one day

​Real Madrid’s Gareth Bale rubbed shoulders with suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst at Danetree Primary School in West Ewell the other week – but it was not a bizarre experiment in time travel, it was BBC Children in Need day.

​Children at the school raised money for those less fortunate than themselves by coming in to school dressed up as their heroes, with a wide array of candidates for hero status put forward by the pupils and their parents.

“Heroes was the theme of the whole fundraising day nationwide, and our pupils here certainly got into the swing of things,” said teacher Emily Paddock, who was in charge of the day. “Of course dressing up made it more fun for them, but we also made sure that it was a really educational day, and that we used the heroes theme to understand what the whole day was about. We discussed what sort of characteristics made someone truly heroic, and they all had to write a piece about the person they had chosen, and why they admired them."

Danetree School is a member of the GLF Schools group, a Surrey-based multi-academy trust which runs over a dozen schools across the south east, and is based on a model of strong collaborative working.

“We made sure that the children had a bigger picture understanding of what the day was really about beyond the school by looking at some of the projects Children in Need spent money on last year," added Ms Paddock. "It was important to us that whilst they had fun, they knew it was a meaningful day too, about more than just dressing up.”