Within the context of the School’s ethos, the Co-curricular Program is uniquely placed to offer a wide range of activities catering for a vast array of student interests, talents and needs. The Program aims to make a significant contribution to the full development of each student. The central aim of the Program is to broaden the development and interests of each student through the provision of a wide range of purposeful activities in; Sport, Leadership and Service, Music, Creative, Spoken and Performing Arts, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and Outdoor Education.

• To foster and develop student leadership
• To develop a sense of belonging and school spirit
• To encourage and develop co-operation, responsibility and ‘teamwork
• To establish links with the wider community and develop relations with various groups
• To provide opportunities for parents, ex-parents and ex-students to contribute to the School To provide opportunities for students to achieve success in a wide range of areas
• To inspire students to strive for excellence in all areas of endeavour Pride and a sense of belonging to their school community

The Co-curricular Program continues to strengthen on the back of our weekly scheduled connect time. That is, every Thursday there is an in-school Co-curricular period. This continues to prove very popular with our students.

In light of the ‘learning from home’ situation during the year, Hills Grammar’s Distance Learning Co-curricular webpage was expanded to include an even greater variety of activities. Many of our suppliers and accessible resources allowed the School to implement a Co-curricular Program that could be delivered to students at home.

In an effort to share some of our school experiences with parents, open classrooms were introduced to allow students to share their learning during the Co-curricular Connect period.  Parents and carers enjoyed the opportunity to visit their children and other students participating in the Co-curricular activities.

2021 also saw the further development of our School Holiday Co-curricular Program. In 2021 holiday programs featured the following activities:

• Engineering and Robotics
• Art Makers Studio
• Kids Love to Cook
• Code Camp
• Basketball
• Motiv8 Sports
• Tennis

Leadership And Service Learning
The 2021 Student Leadership team have been enthusiastic in their efforts, planning several significant established and new events throughout the year.

Outdoor Education
The School’s Outdoor Education Program is set in a variety of environments including alpine, coastal, inland river, bushland and urban.

Outdoor Education encourages students to work together to develop leadership, problem-solving, resilience and inclusiveness; to learn the value of working towards a common goal and the concept of team. During camp week our students forged the bonds of friendship that often last a lifetime.

Through the Outdoor Education Program, students learn about their strengths and weaknesses and how persistence in extending oneself can bring success in challenging situations. Our students embrace and develop their potential to create change in their own communities.

We managed to run the following Outdoor Education program for Years 6 to 12 in 2021.

• Year 6 – YMCA Yarramundi
• Year 7 – Outward Bound Canberra
• Year 8 - Bungarra Alpine Centre, Jindabyne
• Year 9 - Somerset Outdoor Learning Centre
• Year 10 – The Urban Challenge
• Year 11 – CC Blue Mountains
• Year 12 – The Urban Challenge

Years 2 through to 5 did not get to travel to camp in 2021 but instead were treated with an in-school program run by Somerset Outdoor Education where students spent time in our beautiful natural environment and participating in team building and bushcraft activities.

Music
The Music Department has continued to provide a range of performance opportunities for students in both junior and Senior Schools during 2021.  The vast majority of concerts moved online via Zoom in Term 3 in both the Senior School and our Junior Instrumental Program concerts.  Our musicians in Years 7 and 9 featured in a range of solo and small ensemble items.  The music staff have assisted in keeping this aspect of our school life going through difficult circumstances and we will be looking into ways of combining our modes of delivery for the future which is very exciting.

We look forward to another productive year in Music for 2022 with increased numbers of students joining the music program.

Sport
The 2021 sporting calendar was interrupted by Covid 19. However, we had some excellent results in a wide variety of sports both in individual and team sports. Despite the interruptions, we still managed to complete three carnivals. Junior and senior swimming and the K-12 cross country.

This allowed a number of students to also represent in school swimming and cross country teams at the Hills Zone representative carnivals and with some going onto further representation at AICES and CIS. It also allowed for us to present age champions for these carnivals, and have students qualify for sportsperson of the year.

Another highlight of the carnivals was the support from the school community in raising over $10 000 from the Fun Run with all proceeds then being matched by the Ronald MacDonald House corporate partners to result in $20 000 being presented to Ronald McDonald House.

Some added highlights across the year included the establishment of a competitive tennis team with solid results at both the HZSA (Hills Zone Sporting Association) and AICES (Association of Independent Co-Educational Schools) championships. A number of these students are only in Year 8 so we look forward to their development in the coming years.

Our girls touch football team have probably been the most improved team over a number of years and in term 1 competed in the Friday night Barker Invitational competition, where they reached the grand final for the second year in a row.

We were able to enter a girls Futsal team back into the HZSA secondary competition and the girls produced a late season finish that included them making the finals to then go on and beat the top team and go through to the grand final which they won as well.

Our re-entry to HZSA competitions is a goal of the sports department in coming years and its hoped that we can foster continued success and school spirit from these opportunities.

Our clubs had a positive start to the season and all teams were competitive and beginning to form some strong combinations before their seasons were cut short. The primary HZSA teams were very fortunate in that they got to complete an entire season which saw both netball and football teams competing in the Wednesday and Friday afternoon inter school competitions. There were some exceptional performances and congratulations to our Year 3 and 4 netball team who won the Division B grand final.

The volleyball academy had started its sessions twice a week and there were a number of students across all year groups who were attending and we look forward to a return to the schedule of competitions in 2022.

One of our new sports squash was introduced into the Thursday cocurricular program, where our primary students were exposed to some expert coaching under the guidance of East Coast Squash academy. This then extended into a Saturday morning squash team that entered the Independent schools squash competition. Our students played against other schools such as Knox and St Andrews, unfortunately the season was cut short but we look forward to the development of these teams.    

Whilst the sporting calendar was cut short, there was certainly momentum building towards the end of the year and it is this momentum and enthusiasm that we look forward to seeing in 2022 when it is hoped that we have a full year of sport.

We look forward to seeing all students, staff and parents at our events in 2022.

STEM
Our after-school STEM program continued to grow as students from K-6 enjoyed Young Engineers and our Co-curricular Connect program saw several STEM-based groups run at maximum numbers across Years 1-12. STEM activities were also prominent in our Hills Grammar Holiday Program.

Creative, Spoken and Performing Arts
Debating students were involved in a National Debating Competition via Zoom - challenging teams from all over Australia.

Drama performances were filmed, live-streamed and zoomed to the school community.