WILLIAM At the start of the year, House and Vice Captains – Suffian Fadl- Elahi and Vivek Narandas – led an inspirational assembly on motivation. Over the summer 9W were busy taking selfies for the photography competition and they achieved the highest number of entries from a single form group. Well done! The October Inter-House sports saw House William coming second and third respectively, in the Year 9 Table Tennis and Handball competitions. The Year 11 Football Team finished fifth and first place was achieved in the House Debating by 9W. The Year 9 Basketball team completed a competitive round of results by winning the House Basketball. The House Quiz and House Spelling competitions are always competitive, and special thanks must go to all who took part. This year’s spellers were Jiaxi Lu (7W), Adam Munir (8W), Adnan Karim (9W) and Syed Ali (10W) who all overcame their nerves and performed well in front of their peers during assembly. During the Spring term, the Year 10 debate was keenly fought, and House William had strong opinions both for and against the idea of school uniform, eventually finishing in fifth position. The Year 10 footballers performed admirably, and finished in a credible fourth place. The February Inter-House competition saw House William achieve fourth place in the Year 8 Table Tennis, fifth in the House basketball, and a gallant third place in the Year 8 Handball. This year has seen three new events added to the House competition. Neil Chen (9W) finished third in the House Connect 4 competition, and Year 8, captained by Neil Chakrabarti, were fifth in Indoor Cricket. The House Rowing competition, a new event, was held as part of Sport Relief Day; a hundred boys from across the year groups took part in a keenly fought competition. In Year 7, William were the winners. The individual top performers were Adam Ahmed (7W) and Oliver Beasley (8W). The most recent Inter-House competition saw winning performances in both Year 7 Table Tennis and Year 8 Handball. Year 8 was also the winning house in the Debate competition. The Year 8 footballers put in a good performance finishing overall third. Finally William recently received a thank-you letter from Birmingham Children’s Hospital. We have raised over £3500 for this very important charity helping towards the cost of a dialysis machine, a physiotherapy gym and a wireless voice communications system. GALAHAD After becoming the first house to retain the House Cup last year, Galahad began the year with high expectations. This year, we all started from scratch again with a new cohort of Year 7 students making their first contributions. As house leader of Galahad, I have been keen to promote enjoyment, participation, competitive spirit, and a sense of camaraderie with other Galahad forms and indeed forms from other houses. At the time of writing, even though Galahad have done well in the events, William have a substantial lead on SIMS, which plays a significant part in the overall outcome. I think that maybe sports day could be particularly decisive this year. Regardless of that, we have achieved some very notable successes during the year: Amar Aulakh & Dylan Guiney-Bailey won the Year 7 House Quiz, and 7G were also winners in the House Debate. Individual Table Tennis winners were Sulayman Khan for Year 7, Sadeem Ali in Year 8 and Thien Tran in Year 9. Year 8 won both House Table Tennis and House Basketball and Year 9 was victorious in both House Handball, House Rowing and Debating. Chris Lee was particularly impressive in the House Rowing! Ishmael Mohammed, also of 9G, is an extremely talented young cricketer who plays for Warwickshire U14s. Year 10 proved themselves as House Football winners at “Goals” and House Debating winners. We also did well in House Photography with Akeem Hibbert taking 1st place for Year 8 and Sahir Kayani the runner- up; Year 9 Aadam Saleem 2nd, Roshan Patel 3rd; Year 10 Yusuf Sakhawat 2nd, Raees Tariq 3rd. Staff Mrs S. Vaughan 2nd. In addition to these house events, Galahad also had students in all year groups who made a significant positive contribution to the house through SIMS which recognises academic excellence, good behaviour, and extracurricular activities amongst other things. Our two most notable successes on SIMS in each Galahad form, Year 7-10 were: Amar Aulakh +255 and Abdulrehman Shaker +210; Krishan Patel +299 and Akeem Hibbert +276; Rajan Aulakh +213 and Roshan Patel +212 and Dhiren Gaddu +181 and Rohan Nath +132. Well done and thank you to everyone who has tried to make a positive difference – come on the unstoppable G-force!! A.K.Campbell NELSON It’s been a year of near misses for House Nelson; we haven’t been able to rely on consistent performances on SIMS and unlike past years we haven’t been able make up the difference with our sporting achievement. This has sadly left us languishing near the foot of the table when it comes to the race for the house trophy. It has also been a year of great change following our referendum on our house charity with us choosing to ditch Acorns Children’s Hospice, for which we have raised thousands of pounds over the past three years. An overwhelming majority voted for SIFA Fireside, a charity devoted to the welfare of the homeless in our society and helping them get back on their feet. 8 Nelson continue to lead the way for House Nelson, winning the House Cricket and House Football, ably managed by Mr Dhillow. A special mention to Maheen Uddin in 10 Nelson for winning the Year 10 Spelling Bee. There is one tradition we managed to uphold this year and that was the House Quiz: both 8 Nelson and 9 Nelson won their respective competitions, so a big shout out to Hasan Shah, Reece Qureshi, Devjot Surmay and Craig Oshiogwe – particularly Craig who I am led to believe was on sparkling form throughout, almost single-headedly winning the quiz for Nelson. We would also like to welcome Sunni Purewal and Sana Imran as our Co-Captains for the next academic year and we look to them to take us through a “transitional phase” for House Nelson. Hopefully they can take us back to the dizzying heights of 2015. Come on you Nelsons! 31