Meet the Staff: Glenn Kirkham - Director of Sport

Glenn is a former professional athlete with over 18 years experience teaching and coaching P.E at well-respected schools. He was brought up in a sporty household and enjoyed a huge variety of sport from a young age including football and cricket. He excelled at hockey and holds a laudable career including representing Great Britain at both Beijing 2008 and London 2012 Olympics and becoming a European Champion in 2009. He has worked at The Perse School and New Hall school previously as Head of Hockey and Director of Sport.

Glenn explains his new start at Chigwell School is the “perfect challenge” and although Chigwell has always been known for a strong sports programme, he feels that there is great potential to push sport at the school to an even higher level in both participation and performance.

With the arrival of the newly opened Sport and Wellness Centre, Glenn is delighted to get stuck in and enforce a diverse and comprehensive programme of clubs, fixtures and sessions for our students. He emphasises that whilst performance and winning is an important aspect of sport at school, his goal is for students to think of sport as “something they want to do” rather than being imposed.

He aspires for the students to be taught useful skills from sport and recognise the importance of staying active and maintaining fitness. He explains lots of crucial life-skills come from learning sport at school including time-management, discipline, team-work and maintaining nutrition. Particularly during the Christmas holiday, people become really inactive; sport can be a brilliant way to stay away from screens, gain some respite from academic and social pressures and support mental wellbeing during this time.

Students can look forward to a change of team sport in the New Year entering the start of Boy’s Hockey and Girl’s Netball seasons and the beginning of lots of preseason activity. All P.E. classes with start new activities, and new clubs like badminton, futsal, dance and climbing mean there are lots of opportunities for pupils to engage in physical activity.

Whilst the Sport and Wellness Centre will be used primarily for the school’s access during the day, the centre opens to the public next January and Glenn points out that “particularly parents are able to access active spaces during dropping off and picking up students” and the staff body has already expressed huge interest in using the facilities.

He foresees “a really vibrant place that runs seven days a week” that doesn’t simply get used for timetabled activity but rather builds the reputation of sport and fitness in the local community. He explains that “the school is in a brilliant position to develop the community’s health and well-being” and the new classes are designed to suit all styles of fitness and activity levels.

The new Sport and Wellness Centre opens to the public on 2nd January 2024. Memberships, fitness classes and swimming lessons are all available via the new webpage

Our state-of-the-art facilities include a 25m swimming pool, climbing walls, a 40 station gym, fitness studio and all-purpose sports hall.