Mark Collard, a Lower Sixth Form pupil and member of the School’s Combined Cadet Force, was awarded a prestigious RAF Gliding Scholarship earlier in the year. In April he took part in an intensive 5-day training course at RAF Abingdon in Oxfordshire. The course aims to get cadets with no flying experience to achieve solo standard. Not only was he awarded his ‘silver blue wings’ on reaching solo status, a great achievement in itself, but he was also selected as one of three cadets to continue onto Advanced Glider Training. In the space of five days Mark was also awarded his ‘gold wings’, an extremely rare achievement.

He gives credit for this achievement to the squadron, whose dedicated instructors give tuition of the highest quality, resulting in the highest pass rates in the UK. Mark described flying solo for the first time as ‘a truly surreal experience and a thrill that cannot be matched’.