Civic Award

When children reach Year 6, they are given the opportunity to take part in the Devon and Torbay Civic Award. To achieve the award, pupils have to prove their participation in five main areas. These are:

• Active Citizenship in their school community- This could be Peer Mediation, Mentoring, Reading Buddies, Heads of school, Sports Captains or other positions of trust and responsibility in school.
• Active Citizenship in their home communities- In the past, pupils have taken part in environmental and beach cleans, bulb planting, helping at Brownies /Cubs/sports clubs and looking after people in the community. Pupils may also work with others to organise events in school to support local charities.
• An active hobby and a non-active hobby - Children should spend about 30 minutes on average  a week on their hobbies and one of them needs to be new to the child from September.
• Residential experience or adventure training - This entails sleeping away from home and taking part in outdoor challenges.
• Children also need to adopt a cause or charity which they feel strongly about. They need to research it and find ways of supporting it. Over the years, children have adopted a range of charities including Medi-cinema, Cats Protection, The Primrose Foundation, Marine Conservation Society and Devon Wildlife Trust. Many were inspired to support these because of events in their own lives and have various sales and sponsored events to raise money for their chosen charities.

The children must also pass a rigorous assessment when they have to present all this evidence to an external assessor.

As a school, we have been taking part in the Civic Award since 2019, and the children who have undertaken the award have fully embraced the values it encompasses and passed with flying colours! Please take a look at the highlights from 2020-2021 by clicking on the document below, or follow the link where you will find information from 2019 onwards. 

https://www.torbayanddevoncivicaward.co.uk/category/schools/newton-ferrers/ 

Quote from Lily- “I enjoyed the challenge of the Civic Award, although it was a lot of hard work and responsibility. It has boosted my self-esteem as I didn’t think that many people/businesses would contribute to our prizes but almost all that I wrote to did, and I was really surprised at their generosity. I think that it is a really good set up for the Duke of Edinburgh Award. I am really glad that I took part.”