This term has been busy in the Art and Design department. Firstly, congratulations to all our Year 11s and 13s who worked hard to complete their studies and submit exciting and personal portfolios of work for final assessment – good luck to you all in August! Elsewhere our other year groups have also worked hard, with Years 12 and 10 building a strong basis for coursework portfolios for submission next year, and our KS3 classes completing project work and presenting it in their digital portfolios. We celebrated our Option classes’ achievements in our annual summer exhibition on 3 July. We cannot share images of examined groups yet, but below are some examples of work by our Years 10 and 12.

We have had a number of Art and Design trips this term. Year 9 future creatives went on the Warner Brothers Studio Tour, to take part in set design and graphic design workshops, and find out about the many creative careers in the film industry. Year 10 students visited the Victoria and Albert Museum to take part in the ‘Design for Change’ workshop, which used the museum collections to explore how creativity can be a driver for change. They were also able to visit the outstanding displays and gain inspiration for their project work. Finally Year 12 artists and photographers visited the Royal Academy Summer Show. This diverse and lively collection of artworks in various media and formats is always a favourite, and provides something inspiring for everyone.

Arts Award

Whilst not specifically for the visual arts alone, the Bronze Arts Award was run this year through the Art and Design department. Fourteen entrants completed the nationally recognised qualification, drawing on their experiences in art, dance, drama and music to stretch themselves and gain further expertise and insight into their chosen art forms and linked careers. Well done to them.

Mrs Wallace, Head of Art & Design

In Business Studies we are celebrating another successful Enterprise Day, in which we saw a variety of stalls offering everything from face-painting and bracelets to a range of tasty food options. It was amazing to see so many stalls sell out this year. Well done to all the forms for showcasing our school values and raising a good amount of money for charity and for school projects (£2800!). We really enjoyed all the videos you created, and have agreed Mr Pateman can only be in five next year.

Mrs Symeou, Head of Computing & Business 

This term has been a very busy one in Careers. Years 9 and 10 have been on visits to Willmott Dixon and Computacenter, as part of the Insight into Careers programme running across Hertfordshire this year. Students had tours of the sites and heard about the various roles and career pathways.

Sixth Form students took part in an employability skills workshop as well as working on using the STAR approach in interviews, and had a chance to put this into action on the mock- interview day that took place recently.

We also took a group of Year 10 students to Hertfordshire University's Festival of Ideas where they got to find out about university life and meet people from a wide range of departments. They also got involved with Poets' Corner there, and read out their own poems or ones they had selected. Year 10 students also attended the Generation Stevenage event where they met and quizzed lots of employers from across the region.

Year 8s and 9s had a very informative assembly delivered by Olivia from Johnson Matthey, explaining her career path and the apprenticeship she is currently completing. Year 8 students also took part in the highly successful Take Your Child to Work Day.

Year 12 are embarking on work experience for the final week of term and we look forward to hearing about what they have learnt in September.

We look forward to delivering our Careers activities next academic year and thank everyone who kindly volunteered their time to help us provide our broad and rich programme.

Ms Stojko, Head of Careers Guidance & Education

In KS3 Latin, our Year 7 students have continued to enjoy their carousel course, learning all about Caecilius and his family in the Roman city of Pompeii. Year 8 students have found out about Roman superstitions, writing their own Latin ghost stories and learning about gladiators. Year 9 students have been looking at the fascinating and diverse society of ancient Alexandria and the relationships between different peoples in the ancient world: Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and more.

Year 7 Ancient Civilisations have enjoyed the War with Troy story. They have made some lovely character diary entries, illustrations of new shields for Achilles and cartoon strips of the action. Year 8 Ancient Civilisations have progressed to the Return from Troy story, following Odysseus on his journey and exploring wider Ancient Greek culture. Year 9 Ancient Civilisations are continuing their study of the Romans, exploring the turbulent politics of the fall of the Roman Republic; the assassination of Julius Caesar; the rise of Augustus; and all the intrigue and controversy of the Julio-Claudian emperors.

In KS4, Year 10 Latin students have continued to make great progress in their GCSE course in Latin literature and produced very good results in their end-of-year exams. Year 10 Ancient History students have continued to engage well with the material and shown enthusiasm for the topics, developing discussions around themes of Ancient Greece and Persia. We said farewell to our Year 11 and Year 13 students and wish them luck for their future undertakings.

In Year 12, our Latin and Classical Civilisation students have completed their exams and are now working on their UCAS applications.  We have a number of students hoping to study Classics-related subjects at university. 

Both staff and students were excited by the return of our Classics trip to Italy - our thanks to all the students for their exemplary behaviour and endless enthusiasm, and for making our 31st annual trip great fun.  Hot on the heels of this trip, Mrs Coe has been busy planning Greece 2025 and we look forward to that with great anticipation.

Additionally, Ms Romain organised a trip to the British Museum for both GCSE and A Level students in July, so that they could see first-hand the material culture prescribed by the exam board and some exciting artefacts from a range of ancient cultures. 

Following the success of our inaugural Romans in Britain tour for the current Year 8s earlier this year, Mrs Coe has been organising the same exciting three-day trip for our upcoming Year 8 cohort of Ancient Civilisations and Latin students for Summer Term 2025; details will come out in September about how to express interest in this trip.

Congratulations to Sophie F who was our annual winner of the Margaret Beddard Award. Miss Beddard was Head of Classics and later Deputy Head at HGS for many years. She kindly set up the award for students who show promise and commitment in Classical subjects. Sophie has been a dedicated student of Classics throughout her time at HGS, studying Ancient History at GCSE and Classical Civilisation at A Level.  We are grateful to her for the coaching and revision support she gave to various GCSE classes. She also co-wrote, co-produced and took a starring role in ‘Pandora’, our Senior Classics Play this year. We wish her all the best for university.

We said farewell to Mr Norris, our trainee teacher from the University of Cambridge, who will be teaching Classics at Stamford School from September.  We wish him well in his future career.

As term draws to a close, Mrs Rowe hosted our annual Classics Society BBQ for our senior students and the cast of the play. This is a lovely tradition that brings our Classical family together to celebrate the end of a busy academic year.

Mrs Rowe, Head of Classics

In Computing, Year 8 students have made Google Sites for a festival this half-term, which have been really well thought out. Year 7 students meanwhile have been learning about using Google Sheets.

As we end another year, I would like to remind all students about the importance of staying safe while you are away on holiday - no posting information about where you live. Hackers take every opportunity to deceive you so it's important to be aware of all the basics. Always think before you post to any social media site.

Happy Holidays,

Mrs Symeou, Head of Computing & Business Studies

Mr Mason, Head of Design and Technology

The biggest news of this Summer Term from Drama is the fact that Drama is back as a standalone department once again!

We are looking forward to working with the Music department and others in the school on the forthcoming school musical, The Addams Family, which Mr Balfe, the Head of Drama, will be directing.

The English and Media department would like to say a big well done to all students for their hard work this year. There has been a fantastic array of creativity, and this term has been no exception!

Year 7 have been learning about the oral traditions of storytelling and investigating language change this term, taking a trip back in time which began with Beowulf in its original Old English, before stopping off in medieval times to visit Chaucer and learn about Middle English. We sped forward to Shakespeare, and then the Victorians, before landing in the present day.  Their creative work has included fantasy world-building and their own fantasy writing. 

Years 8 and 9 have been studying their class novels this term, including titles such as Zana Fraillon’s The Bone Sparrow, William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and Julian Sedgwick’s Tsunami Girl. We were delighted to work with the Library to host Julian recently! He gave talks and workshops for Year 8, and students and staff alike were thrilled to have this opportunity.

  

At Key Stages 4 and 5, Years 10 and 12 students have been working very hard on their courses. Year 10 students wowed us with their Spoken Language skills and effort: they spoke on such impressive and challenging topics, and it was a privilege to hear their voices and opinions. We know that this part of the course can be challenging and we are immensely proud of their work and resilience. Year 12 students have been incredibly busy, and we’d especially like to thank our English and Media Ambassadors who have been supporting and mentoring our younger students this year.

Mrs Cooper, Mrs Clarke and I have just had the pleasure of taking a small group of Year 10s who have been working on a Reading Fluency project to Next Page Books in town, to reward them for their fantastic work and progress this year. They all chose a book to read over the summer. 

We would like to wish everyone a very happy summer holiday with lots of fun reading! We are inviting students to come back and recommend their favourite reads to each other. We are looking forward to seeing everyone in September after a well deserved break.

Mrs Batchelor, Head of English

This term the Geography department has enjoyed collaborating with local and wider networks. In June, Year 5 students from St Andrew's CofE Primary School joined us for an afternoon exploring 'Why Choose Geography?' as an introduction to the Royal Geographical Society's 'Young Geographer of the Year' Competition. This national competition is open to students in KS2 - KS5, and full details can be found under Opportunities in the Geography Google Classroom as well as on the RGS website. For anyone wanting to produce an entry for this year's competition, the last date for internal submissions is in mid-September. Speak with your Geography teacher for details. 

Meanwhile, Eco Club have seen their hard work on the wildflower patch result in an abundance of cornflowers, corn marigolds, corn cockles, poppies, chamomile and toadflax all in bloom. The club also had the opportunity to contribute to a Citizen Science Project by surveying and logging trees, plants and invertebrates via the iNaturalist app. Our thanks go to Dr Smriti Safaya from York University for joining us to explain citizen science and helping us discover the biodiversity on our doorstep. 

Mr Sutton, Head of Geography

This Summer Term students in Year 7 have continued to learn about Growth Mindset Theory in order to boost their resilience, and they have also had their first lessons on careers and budgeting. 

Year 8 have also been busy learning about finances in these final weeks of term, specifically focusing on how national insurance and taxation work. Perhaps we have some potential Chancellors among us! 

Year 9 have finished their fantastic 'Fuel' sessions delivered by the wonderful Phase team, with each session aimed at improving teenage wellbeing by focusing on pertinent issues such as healthy relationships, self-esteem, emotions and wellbeing. In these final weeks of term, they have been learning about types of bank accounts and how to manage these, as well as about life-saving CPR skills. 

Year 10 have been learning about how the UK electoral system works and about the various political parties in order to consider who they might vote for in future elections, which complemented the general election and the HGS mock-election brilliantly. Year 10 have also had some excellent workshops led by Herts Young Homeless, designed to teach students about the importance of resolving conflict with loved ones in a healthy way and raise awareness of local issues of homelessness. 

Overall it has been a very busy and exciting year, and I want to say a massive thank you to the wonderful external speakers who have enhanced our Learning for Life curriculum. 

Thank you so much to Phase for the amazing KS3 workshops on resilience and e-safety, and the new FUEL programme. We are so lucky to have their support and they make a huge difference to the lives of our young people. 

A big thank you to Herts Young Homeless who have delivered informative sessions on sensitive statutory content such as the dangers of sexting to Year 8, as well as on conflict resolution to Years 8 and 10, and also for supporting our Year 11s to consider what their next steps might be when they leave school. 

And many thanks to Dignify, who have led important workshops with Year 10 on the dangers of pornography and how this can negatively impact a person's self-esteem and relationships. 

It was also a delight to welcome Paul Chambers as a new external speaker for Year 11 this year. Paul ran brilliant workshops for our students on how to manage anxiety before their mock exams. Thank you for the amazing support and advice!

Last but by no means least - thank you to Mary Deller from the Talk about Trust (formerly known as the Alcohol Education Trust) for continuing to deliver excellent interactive workshops with Year 9, to teach students the dangers and risks associated with alcohol consumption.

We are incredibly lucky to have such wonderful local charities and speakers who enhance our curriculum. Thank you also to our wonderful Learning for Life teachers who have facilitated these opportunities and taught excellent content throughout the year.

Have a wonderful, well-earned summer everybody!

Mrs Foster

It has been another busy year for the Learning Support team, helping students both in the classroom and through interventions. Take a Break club has remained a popular lunchtime activity, as has Homework Club. We are very grateful to a parent who donated a huge amount of Lego to the team, to help students interact together and have discussions whilst building. We always appreciate donations of craft materials, games and Lego to support our clubs. 

We are really proud of the achievements of students this year and it has been a pleasure to watch them show perseverance as they worked with the team to complete exams; positivity in their approach to intervention support; kindness during our clubs; respect when working with the team; and aspiration to try their hardest to be successful despite the learning challenges. We have been delighted to see the small steps of progress being made by students we work with, and we look forward to continuing the learning journey with them after a rest over the summer. 

As the year draws to a close, we will be saying goodbye to two team members, Miss Colbon and Mrs Lawrence. Miss Colbon went from being a student here to an LSA, and is now going to move on to join the Police - we wish her well with this endeavour. Mrs Lawrence has been in the team for 20 years and has worked with hundreds of students during that time. Her patience, kindness and student-focused approach to work will be hugely missed, and we wish her the very best for her retirement. 

Mrs Cole, SENCO

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Free online events around Autism that may be of interest to parents/carers:

All events are led by clinical psychologists, sometimes with input from SEN teachers or other professionals.

Autism and planning back to school transitions 
Monday 5 August, 8.30-9.30pm

Neurodiversity and girls
Wednesday 11 September, 8.00-9.00pm

Autism and the diagnostic process
Monday 7 October, 8.30-9.30pm

How to talk with children about autism or neurodiversity
Wednesday 6 November, 8.00-9.00pm

So, my child has autism… what next?
Wednesday 4 December, 8.30-9.30pm

To find out more please visit www.yourwaypsychology.co.uk/events 

or their Eventbrite page https://www.eventbrite.com/o/your-way-psychology-education-64217406063

The busy Summer Term culminated in an exciting visit from Carnegie-shortlisted author Julian Sedgwick. Julian, who wrote Tsunami Girl and 100 Tales from the Tokyo Ghost Cafe, came to talk to our Year 8 students and give two workshops. He spoke about how he researched his books, visiting Japan several times and even venturing into the Fukushima Exclusion Zone. He shared the experiences of some of the people he met there who had survived the 2011 tsunami, and explored the elements of Japanese culture and myth that run through his work.

After signing books for students and staff, Julian ran workshops on creating the opening scene of a ghost story. The students thought up eerie settings and spooky characters to develop into their own short stories and took part in a question and answer session. Julian even found time to visit the Library and meet some members of the Library Goblins Reading Group. It was an engaging and informative day that we hope left Year 8 feeling inspired.

  

Following a clear-out of some old books from the Library we held a bargain book sale to raise funds for Book Aid International. The charity sends new books to schools, libraries and hospitals around the world. Many thanks to the members of the Reading Group who assisted with setting out the stall and selling the books.

The Reading Group also helped to choose some new stock for the Library during a trip to Waterstones . They selected a range of titles they thought other students would enjoy and finished the trip with a visit to Fabio’s for ice creams. Luckily the weather stayed sunny all afternoon!

This term saw the announcement of the Yoto Carnegie winners. The Reading Group shadowed the Medal for Writing award. They read the shortlisted titles and wrote reviews, then met up with members of the HGS evening book group to discuss the books. The adult members of the group enjoyed the books and were impressed by the input from the students. Years 7 and 8 looked at the books shortlisted for the Medal for Illustration and voted on their favourite, which was The Bowerbird, illustrated by Catherine Rayner and written by Julia Donaldson.

Using the research skills they have learned in their Library lessons, Year 8 created some fabulous posters about famous authors. They discovered some fascinating facts about the lives of a range of writers, from Jane Austen to Jacqueline Wilson. Look out for the posters decorating the stairs up to the Library next term.

A special mention goes to Mr Lau from the Site Team who has revamped the Library chairs and given them a new lease of life. Our readers can now sit comfortably thanks to his efforts.

We would also like to thank our wonderful student librarians who assist us at lunchtimes. Your help is very much appreciated.

And finally, we look forward to seeing students in the Library next term when we’ll have lots of new books ready to be borrowed.

We hope your summer is full of reading and relaxation!

Mrs Goose and Mrs Woods

This Summer Term has seen the first cohort take external exams in the new post-16 Mathematics qualification, 'Core Maths'.  Some Year 12s have taken this exam, which has been designed to maintain and develop real-life problem-solving skills. They have studied Maths that can be applied on a day-to-day basis in work, study or life. We are very excited to see how they achieved on results day as well as continuing to offer this course that nicely complements our Maths portfolio at HGS.

Another new course this year has been 'Functional Maths Skills', taken by Year 10 (and 11) Green Route students as an additional qualification to their GCSE. It assesses learners’ underpinning subject knowledge and their ability to apply this knowledge to different contexts. It provides a foundation for progression to employment and further technical education, and helps learners to develop skills for everyday life. We eagerly anticipate the results.

Chess Club

Chess Club continues to thrive during Friday lunchtimes and we intend to expand this next year. The room is alive with students going head-to-head in casual games. We may look to introduce a competition next year to feed into the House Cup.  Anyone is welcome to attend and we recommend using a free chess app (such as chess.com) to practise your skills at chess, improve your problem-solving abilities and deepen your logical thinking.

Outstanding Performance at the Junior Maths Challenge

This year, our school has demonstrated exceptional talent in the Junior Maths Challenge (JMC), part of the UK Mathematics Trust's series. Our students showcased their mathematical abilities and critical thinking skills, making us incredibly proud.

The JMC, aimed at students in Year 8 and below, posed a variety of challenging problems designed to test logical reasoning and mathematical fluency. Our students rose to the occasion with impressive results.

We are thrilled to announce that our school achieved a remarkable number of awards:

Gold Certificates: 2 students

Silver Certificates: 9 students

Bronze Certificates: 10 students

A special mention goes to Anna in Year 8, who achieved the incredibly rare feat of full marks in the JMC and advanced to the prestigious Junior Mathematical Olympiad, where she received a Silver medal. Prior to this, Anna also participated in the Intermediate Maths Challenge, aimed at Years 9 to 11, earning a Gold award and advancing to the Grey Kangaroo round, where she achieved a Merit. Her outstanding performance exemplifies the dedication and skill of our young mathematicians.

Participating in the JMC has been a rewarding experience for our students, enhancing their problem-solving abilities and fostering a deeper appreciation for mathematics. We look forward to continuing this tradition of excellence and inspiring future generations of young mathematicians. Congratulations to all our participants for their hard work and excellent achievements.

Thrive & Fly

Mrs Cooper, Miss Gregory and Mrs Bridge have had the pleasure of working with small groups of students throughout the year on the Thrive & Fly project. This initiative was set up to optimise the chances of students to achieve their potential, and this inaugural year has been very successful. Many thanks to the teachers involved and very well done to the students selected.

Team Challenges

Earlier this year, 16 Year 7s competed in a Team Maths Challenge. Miss Pedge’s Pink Power (one of the teams) placed 2nd in their heat, meaning they made it to the final. A couple of weeks later, Aashi, Grace, Lauren and Lottie turned up at the final with Miss Pedge. After four tough rounds of general knowledge Maths questions, a memory round and much more (including some sweets!), the winners were announced. In the end, Miss Pedge’s Pink Power came 15th out of 106 teams in the region and 15th out of 21 in the final. Overall the girls were very proud and so was the school.

Back in May, two teams of Year 8 students entered a regional Team Maths Challenge competition, both with aspirations of winning. Both groups worked well as a team, and persevered with some challenging questions in the heats.

One team, including Anna, Elsie, Jessica and Niki (all 8J), made it through to the finals, which took place in Stevenage in June. Although quite daunted by the other 20 teams when they arrived, the girls remained positive and performed fantastically, showing their teamwork and scoring a fantastic 58/60 in the memory round.

The final scores were very tight, but of the 91 teams who entered, 21 made it to the final and the HGS team came joint 3rd! I could not be prouder of the kindness and respect they showed towards each other. Well done!

We hope you all have a lovely restful summer holiday, and to those of you receiving external exam results, the very best of luck. 

Mr Allison, Head of Maths

This has been another really successful year for our Year 10 Project Polyglot, in which students planned, prepared and delivered two full lessons of French or Spanish in some of our feeder primary schools. We have been very impressed with the whole group's performance and delivery of lessons, and especially their hard work and commitment to the project and to working collaboratively. 

The lessons focussed on topics such as sports, beach holidays, films, books and food. They were professionally planned and given with enthusiasm and warmth, and the primary pupils were all engaged and thoroughly enjoyed the sessions. The schools have praised the skilled cohort of our students and we all believe there are many budding teachers of the future in the group! Well done everyone!

Year 9 French and Spanish students have been working hard preparing their end-of-year projects on a French or Spanish-speaking country. They have researched different aspects of the country and summarised their findings in a final presentation. Some students also brought in food items from the country to share in class. These Year 9 Spanish students shared these traditional Cuban cakes!

Some of the Year 8 French students have been researching the much- anticipated Paris 2024 Olympics and made these fact files. Not long now until the opening ceremony!

And finally, good luck to all those students who have sat either GCSE or A Level examinations in any language this summer. We hope you get the outcomes that you have worked so hard towards.

Bonnes vacances à tous,

Mr Dellar, Head of Modern Foreign Languages

It has been a successful and thriving term for the Music department both in and out of lessons.

The Spring Concert got the term off to a great start, with more than 90 students performing music from a variety of genres as part of our extracurricular ensembles.

Junior Choir had the pleasure of visiting Whitehill Junior School to sing in their assembly. We hope that this inspired the pupils to get involved with the music groups we have on offer at HGS.

At the end of June, Senior Choir and Brass Group represented HGS in an exemplary manner, performing beautiful music in our annual Founders’ Day service alongside Hitchin Boys’ School. Congratulations to Imogen in Year 12, for composing an excellent fanfare that was played at the start.

To top off that week, more than 50 students gave up their Sunday afternoon to perform in the Herts Music Service Priory Picnic. Our combined choir and orchestra delighted the audience with renditions of Toto’s ‘Africa’ and Mcfly’s ‘Love is Easy’. Luckily, the rain held off too!

Back in the classroom, Year 7 have been developing their keyboard skills and learning how to read musical notation. Year 8 have channelled their inner Julie Andrews by learning about musicals from across the past century, and performing their own covers of songs from shows. Songwriting has been the focus for Year 9 - some students have used Soundtrap to produce their own tracks, while others have opted for an acoustic sound.

The final musical event of the year was the Music Curriculum Showcase. An array of students from Years 7-10 provided parents and carers with an insight into some of the fantastic work that's been done in lessons this term. From djembe drumming to musical theatre, from solo instrumental performances to film score compositions, the standard was high.

I would like to extend my thanks to all our peripatetic staff for their ongoing support of our students. And thank you to Mr Ingham and Mrs Atkins for their wonderful teaching, enthusiasm, time and efforts.

Have a wonderful summer and we look forward to beginning work on The Addams Family at the start of the next academic year!

Miss Atkins, Head of Music

The Philosophy and Ethics department is pleased to announce that the 2023-'24 academic year has been the best on record for the number of Interesting Thoughts produced. This year, HGS students managed to think a staggering seven-hundred and fourteen thoughts that were considered to be Interesting or Very Interesting by their teachers: this figure represents a 17% rise on the long-standing previous record from 2006, and an enormous 24% improvement on the rather dismal performance of 2022-'23. If this were not enough cause for celebration, the year also saw a surge in the number of Really Good Ideas, with a correspondingly healthy quantity of Opinions that Make You Furrow Your Brows a Bit and Go "Hmm..." 

Even back in September, there were early signs that a truly exceptional year could be on the cards - in a Year 7 lesson on concepts of the afterlife, Tabi (7B) wondered what it would be like to be reincarnated as a bowl of ramen. Spurred on by Tabi's example, the other students in 7B were soon having Interesting Thoughts of their own, with Grace offering a fine explanation of her opinion that Egoism ought not to be classified as an ethical theory at all.

The Spring Term has historically been a very productive one for students’ thinking and this year was truly no exception, with Kye (Y13) deciding to borrow my biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and arriving at the opinion that he probably wouldn't have been such a good philosopher if he wasn't also so weird. This was in fact such a good thought that I attempted to photograph it for the Newsletter, but unfortunately it escaped into the air conditioning before I could trap it under a coffee mug and record it for posterity.

The torrent of interestingness barely slowed even as the year drew to a close, and as recently as last week, Year 10 were considering whether it really is unethical to eat a kitten sandwich, and how many guinea pigs you would sacrifice to save a single human. Does it make a difference if the human was remarkably evil? What if they were really nasty guinea-pigs? Regardless of the permutation of the question, the quality of Year 10’s insights was consistently high. 

The department would like to thank everyone who has been interesting in lessons this year and would remind all KS4 and KS5 students that a wide range of philosophical books are available for loan from the class library in W90, should anyone wish to spend the summer being interesting in their own time.

Ben Adams, Head of Philosophy & Ethics

 

It's been another term bursting with sporting events and fixtures. There are so many highlights to share, including Sports Week and the Gym and Dance Display. There are also many congratulations and thanks to give to students and staff.

 

 

Biology

Students in Year 12 entered the Biology Olympiad with even greater success than the year before, achieving five Silver and three Bronze awards.

Meanwhile Students in Years 9 and 10 entered the Royal Society of Biology's Biology Challenge competition recently. This involved answering some very challenging questions on the natural world and took into account wider knowledge of Biology than purely the curriculum. More than 45,500 students took part in this contest globally, and we are very happy to say that our students achieved 8 Gold, 26 Silver, 46 Bronze, 49 Highly Commended and 56 Commended awards along with lots of awards for participation. Many thanks to Mrs Pearce for coordinating this. We are also delighted that four Year 12 students recently attended a week’s Biomedical Summer School at UCL’s Institute of Women’s Health.

In conjunction with Eco Club, more than 20 students participated in a school ‘Bioblitz’ organised by Mr Beardmore-Crowther. Dr Smriti Safaya of the University of York led students in a 'Citizen Science Project' identifying more than 100 different species on the school grounds in little over 90 minutes!

Mr Buckridge, Head of Biology

Chemistry

Nine students attended the Teentech Festival at the South Central Institute of Technology with Mr Horner and Mrs Hume, and enjoyed a day of STEM-related activities. A few comments from the students: 

"The day started off with us meeting the employers and apprentices. We met people from AWS (Amazon Web Services) and we learnt how to terminate a wire, which was a great experience and developed my knowledge of tech, and we also took a closer look at AI." 

"We moved on to learning about Anglian Water and how they filter their water as well as maintaining an efficient plan. After that we learnt about end-to-end encryption and explored what it's like when you text and message. It was very interesting to learn about the evolution of messages."

"Then we went on to do some coding using an app similar to Scratch. We worked in groups to program a bot around a map, then we had to use these skills to problem-solve in a larger scale situation. It was very interesting to see a snippet of people's work (their job is to guide submarines and use code)."

"In the next session we made different paper planes. We went on to test them to find out which was the quickest and easiest to make. For the final session we grouped up and thought of ideas about new technology. It was very interesting and there were a lot of good ideas, which we went on to develop further. It was great to hear people's experiences and how it can be beneficial for the future."

"Overall, I really enjoyed my day and it really opened up my mind to jobs in STEM, especially technology."

"I really enjoyed the day and found it very interesting. My favourite part was meeting the employers, it was nice to see what different companies do. I also enjoyed the innovation session and coming up with ideas."

Finally, the lucky Science Fair winners went to Snozone in Milton Keynes as part of their prize accompanied by Mr Horner, Mr Derrett and Mrs Hull. 

Mr Horner, Head of Science / Chemistry

Physics

The Physics department has continued to support students in their progress through the Science curriculum. This has included a series of end-of-year assessments in Years 7, 8 and 9 which was an opportunity to demonstrate what they have learnt over the course of the year. Students in Year 7 will round off the year by studying space, the solar system, climate change and global warming. Year 8 students will be looking at The Universe in greater depth, and Year 9 students will complete a project around solar panels and clean energy. Higher up the school, Year 10 students finish off their busy year by looking in detail at the nature of Forces and Year 12 students have undertaken their A Level mock exams.

Mr Derrett, Head of Physics

It has been a whirlwind Summer Term in Social Sciences, with students across the Key Stages completing 17 examinations between the four disciplines, the majority of which were external. This is in addition to controlled assessment and coursework in Criminology and Health and Social Care, assessed throughout the year. 

All students in Years 10 and 12 had the opportunity to take part in academic research with the University of Greenwich earlier this month. We welcomed a research team who were investigating emotional coping in adolescence. Students completed an extensive questionnaire and were able to experience being a participant in real-world research. It is exciting to know that we have contributed to a study which will be published in an academic journal, and that our students have been part of a project that they would usuall only learn about second- hand in a classroom. I would like to thank all parents with their support in completing the consent forms. Your co-operation and the students' dedication also earned us £440 to spend on resources to enhance learning across the department.

Health and Social Care students in Year 12 enjoyed a visit from Mrs Gales and baby Alfie, in preparation for their next piece of coursework. They were able to learn more about the process of childbirth and the care of baby and mother post-partum, and it was wonderful to see the girls' nurturing sides as they interacted with Alfie, as they asked important and pertinent questions.

Criminology students in Year 12 enjoyed a conference at the Priory School where the highlight was a talk from a recovering drug addict and dealer. He was able to explain to students what impacted his crimes, and his experience of prison and reform. The students were captivated by his raw and honest story.

We have now welcomed Miss Paul to join our team as teacher of Sociology alongside Mrs Garthwaite. We have also appointed Miss Hobbiger as Second in Department. We look forward to the year ahead, and in particular welcoming more guest speakers; developing links with local primary schools and other external bodies; and exploring more trip options to enhance the student experience way beyond the curriculum. 

Have a wonderful and restful summer, and thank you once again for supporting your children in their endeavours within the department.

Mrs Edwards, Head of Social Sciences