I am writing in response to your wanting feedback regarding Glendale training and my academic path.

To set the scene, I undertook a lot of dancing at Glendale through some of my most formative years (ages 5-16), and subsequently achieved grades A*A*A*A in my A Levels (Maths, Further Maths, Business Studies and Chemistry). I then went on to achieve a first class degree in Economics at the University of Cambridge.

From my experience, I consider there to be an important connection between academic success and engagement with extracurricular activities, such as dancing. I think this benefit is symptomatic of something larger whereby large amounts of exercise with elements of competition are good both mentally and physically. In my opinion, and in my personal experience, a child (or teenager!) who does physical activity for a couple of hours every evening will undoubtably be more focused during the school day, as well as being healthier both mentally and physically. In a similar way, students at the best private schools in the UK do a couple of hours of sports everyday! My experience at Cambridge, and the people I met there, made me appreciate the extent to which an upbringing at a state school differs from an upbringing at a top private school, and one key component of this difference is the amount of exercise and team sports all students are expected to undertake. In my opinion this is a failing of state schools, albeit perhaps an understandable one given the extent of funding it would require. However, it does mean there is a significant benefit to be realised from undertaking dancing and other similar activities outside of school hours.

To elaborate in terms of more specific advantages, for me there are six that come to mind.

• First, being competitive in my dancing, and continually striving for better, taught me to be more competitive in my academic studies, and to set high expectations for myself.
• Second, and related to that discussed above, achieving well academically requires a sense of wellbeing and, for me, dancing contributed to that enormously, both mentally and physically
• Third, performing in competitions, often as part of a team where your class mates are relying on you, puts a certain degree of pressure of you. Learning to manage and deal with that pressure helped me to better manage situations where I needed to perform in the future, particularly in an academic setting where so much of success is measured by results in exams.
• Fourth, having to reliably attend dance class most days of the week required discipline and dedication. This really taught me the value of hard work, and of the rewards to be enjoyed from large inputs of effort. For example, at the age of 12, when your school friends are going down the park after school, and you are going to dancing instead, you can sometimes feel hard done by. But a few years down the line when you’re doing GCSEs, all this experience makes it much easier to revise rather than go out, because you feel the effort required isn’t so great, and the rewards to be enjoyed are very large.
• Fifth, the team aspect of dancing – including friendships made, and camaraderie with other students – creates a hugely encouraging environment. This gave me a lot of confidence, and I think I still carry some of that with me today. It feeds though to success at university, and post-university also, where challenging work environments might require one to make presentations and such like.
• Finally, achieving good grades whilst also spending many hours a week dancing proves you have “spare capacity” in your life: i.e. you can achieve those grades without working all hours under the sun. This is very important to university admissions tutors when they’re trying to decide who will best be able to make the jump academically to university-level study. For me, managing school work whilst dancing taught me to manage my time well, and this has remained valuable through to today.

To conclude, I feel there are lifelong advantages to be found in challenging and physical pursuits in childhood, and dancing has allowed me to realise many of those.

I hope this is helpful, and if you have any questions or thoughts on the above, please just drop me an email.

Kind regards, J.

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