Harris Academy Merton raises £690 with charity dodgeball tournament

Harris Academy Merton’s annual Inter-Faculty Charity Dodgeball Tournament raised £690 for charity, after students across the building took part in PE lessons and earned faculty points from match results. The format gave the competition a clear edge while keeping the emphasis on participation, with every dodge, catch and throw feeding both the scoreboard and the fundraising total.

The school built the event around accessibility as much as rivalry. Students were encouraged to ask family and friends for donations in support of their faculties, which meant the tournament’s energy on court carried directly into money raised away from it. That structure turned a familiar PE lesson format into a schoolwide fundraiser, giving students a simple way to compete, contribute and feel part of the same effort.

Harris Academy Merton said the tournament promoted teamwork and camaraderie while also teaching community responsibility and the importance of giving back. The school thanked everyone who took part, donated money or supported the effort, and framed the project as part of its wider mission to help students thrive. For a secondary-school event, the result mattered less for the final figure than for the way it pulled together students from different faculties under one shared challenge.

The fundraiser also sat neatly inside the school’s end-of-term sporting calendar. Harris Academy Merton, which describes itself as a vibrant secondary school in South London, listed Sports Day for July 3, 2026, just after the dodgeball tournament, underlining how closely the school’s summer programme is tied to sport, house spirit and student involvement. Principal Ms A Samad leads the academy, which is on Wide Way in Mitcham, Surrey, CR4 1BP.

The school’s charity focus also fits the wider Harris Federation identity. The federation says it is a not-for-profit education charity and opened its first school in 1991, giving the Merton fundraiser a broader institutional backdrop. That same spirit was visible in 2018, when London’s Air Ambulance said Harris Academy Merton raised £4,246.85 through its annual Clash of Faculties event, a five-day programme of daily dodgeball, netball and basketball that drew donations from friends, families and teachers. Each faculty raised over £900 then, and the Red Faculty won the Interfaculty Championship trophy, showing that the dodgeball fundraiser now sits inside a longer-running tradition of competitive giving.