Year 7 and 8 pupils competed in a battle of the sexes hockey game.

In just one week, pupils and staff of Royal Grammar School Newcastle have managed to raise over £9,000 for local charities, it has been announced.

Children aged between 11 and 18 all came together for ‘Charities Week’ that involved popular events including the annual RGS Fashion Show, where clothes from local designer boutiques are paraded down the runway. The fashion show itself grossed £3,000, while a sponsored year 7 and 8 Readathon is still generating donations.

The event is designed to raise money for local charities and to increase awareness of their issues. This year those selected by the student body were Streetwise; Fact – Cancer Support; Grace House and the Great North Children’s Hospital.

Talking about the week, Bernard Trafford, head teacher at the school said, “[The kids] really throw themselves into it with enthusiasm; there’s quite a party atmosphere, lots of fun and laughter. They don’t forget to put their own hands in their pockets for buskers, staff-student netball games or the staff versus student University Challenge Quiz.”

As for the charities themselves, Trafford said, “they are all local with pretty much no government funding. The guest speakers in assembly were very powerful.”

Other events involved the year 7 cake sale, which Trafford described as “always very popular” and ‘The Bake Off’ where pupils created their own version of the popular BBC1 show, The Great British Bake Off. Buskers performed around the school during lunch breaks, and pupils were regularly wandering the corridors asking pupils and staff to guess how many sweets were in a jar.

The school has been partaking in the event for over a decade, but for the last few years it has been raising sums of between £6,000 and £8,000. Trafford described this year as “particularly pleasing” for the school and said that they now aspire to “break the £10,000 mark” next year.