Year 10’s Oxford Dons!
On the 23rd May, 14 year 10 students swapped the industry and bustle of Birmingham for the Cotswold stone and colleges of Oxford. They had an inspirational day chock full of aspiration and great advice from current student guides. The guides armed our students with students with everything needed to make a strong application to a top university. The highlights of the day included a wonderful guest lecture from current PHD student Clare Burgess where the lads excelled in their perceptive questioning and got a chance to showcase their scholarship. Next we followed in the footsteps of JRR Tolkien and visited the breath-taking Exeter College. In the words of Ethisham Hussain (10N):I learnt a lot from the experience, such as the fact that Oxford University consists of near 40 colleges. The tour of Oxford displayed its long and evident history, as well as the fact that it has also changed with time, and so has maintained its relevance even today, nearly 1000 years since its original founding. The trip has solidified my thoughts of attending a university like Oxford, or potentially even Oxford itself. I thoroughly enjoyed the tour and found it fascinating hearing about the journey from secondary school to Oxford, from Oxford students directly.
Visit of Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden
On the morning of Friday 10th May, Handsworth was pleased to welcome the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England for Financial Stability, Sarah Breeden. Sarah along with team of economics supremos from Threadneedle Street kindly gave up their morning to inspire and educate our economics students. The talk was an amazing in its insight and ability to vivify and highlight how the theory they learn about in the classroom has real world consequences for all of us and the pounds in our pocket. Sarah also explained how the role of the central bank has changed over time and will continue to change due to themes such as AI, climate change and geopolitical tensions. I have never seen economics students so rapt as when Sarah was explaining how she personally crafted the responses to the run on Northern Rock and the unintended consequences of the Truss mini budget.
The visit also allowed our year 12s to meet and cement relations with fellow students from Aston, Handsworth Girls and Handsworth Wood Girls Academy and it was great to hear Sarah explain how important it was for the Bank to help make economics more diverse. My personal highlight was feeling proud as punch listening to the astute, engaged and thoughtful questions the students asked of Sarah – they grasped the opportunity with both hands. The Bank of England team concurred and were bowled over by the quality of questions from all students. To any readers of this piece I just want to share Sarah’s final and by far most important lessons from her career – be a learn it all not a know it all, be a sponge to those around and civic duty is a virtue rather than a vice.
LAMDA Results
Our latest LAMDA results are below, these are excellent performances from the LAMDA Exams taken at the Birmingham Public Centre in March 2024. Congratulations to all involved and to Mrs Reynolds our LAMDA teacher.
