ENTREPRENEUR and previous Farnham Sixth Form College student Hannah Fox joined award winners for this year’s Celebration of Achievement evening at the college, encouraging them the pursue their passion and to turn it into a career.

Principal Peter Brammall opened the ceremony, highlighting the achievements of students from the college throughout the last year, including the college’s 99 per cent A-level and 100 per cent BTEC pass rate which makes Farnham one of the highest performing sixth form colleges in the area.

He also shared stories of students who headed off to some of the UK’s top universities, including Natalie Rees who achieved A*A*A*A* in maths, further maths, chemistry and physics, and went on to study natural sciences at the University of Cambridge.

With the support and generosity from trustees of the Farnham Educational Foundation and The Old Farnhamians’ Association, the college was able to celebrate the achievements of 45 students who had won awards, bursaries, student service prizes and scholarships.

During the ceremony, BTEC sport students Ben Hacker and David Stoakes shared details of the local community coaching projects they have taken part in, as a results of winning the annual John Goddard Memorial Award.

Ben and David received funding towards various coaching badges, including level one and two football coaching, level one goalkeeper coaching, level one youth module and coaching disabled footballers.

They also took part in a number of FA football futures workshops about women’s football, disability football and making training match realistic.

They have also set up the ‘Team 19’ football programme at the college, a regular 11-a-side football league at the college, FA football tournaments for those with disabilities and a mini-Olympics event at The Abbey School.

To close the ceremony, Hannah Fox spoke to the audience about how she has taken her experiences of being a student at the college, including winning the John Goddard Award in 2010, to train as a gymnastics coach and set up her own gymnastics club, Stellar Gymnastics.

Since leaving the college, Hannah has used her 14 years’ worth of gymnastics experience to set-up her Farnham-based club with the aim of creating a club that stands as a community hub for the town and its surrounding villages.

Hannah spoke to the students about the importance of making choices after college, her journey to where she is today and also emphasised the importance of finding something you’re passionate about and pursuing it as a career.

There were also musical performances by A-level student Catherine Bookham and previous music technology student, Elizabeth Collins.

Elizabeth’s performed one of her own songs, ‘In my Heart’, and her latest single ‘Stranger Things’ has recently been featured as track of the week on Eagle Radio.

She has also had four of her songs featured on BBC Introducing as track of the day, week and month, and Song of the South and Song of England.

Dr Jason Jones, director of Farnham Sixth Form College, said: “Congratulations to all of our outstanding students who received awards and prizes at the ceremony. I’m always hugely impressed by the talent, hard work and commitment of all of our students at Farnham Sixth Form College, and these awards recognise the achievements of just some of them.

“My colleagues and I feel immensely privileged to be able to work with young people who show such great enthusiasm and talent in their chosen fields, and I’d like to thank the excellent team of teachers and support staff at the college for their unrelenting hard work in supporting our students to achieve their ambitions.”