Former West Midlands Mayor and CEO of John Lewis, Sir Andy Street visited HGS on Thursday 3^rd July to speak to our GCSE Business Studies students.

Sir Andy gave an inspiring speech where he talked about his career starting on the shop floor of John Lewis in London and ascending to be the Managing Director of John Lewis. He told the boys that he had actually been rejected by Marks and Spencer before joining John Lewis and he also explained why the values of John Lewis suited him personally.

Sir Andy then took questions from the boys, and he said that he was most impressed by the quality of the questions.

Many thanks to Mr Harvey, Head of social Sciences for inviting Sir Andy to the school.

Mr Conway

Year 10’s inspirational journey through the world of business with Sir Andy Street began when he gave a brief yet very thorough introduction of John Lewis’s values and company structure. This helped us gain a very enriching experience in how an experimental company flourishes and succeeds in a modern business landscape. Not only was it very intriguing, but he also added elements of interactivity into it to keep us engaged throughout his talk. He made the speech very relevant for us by explaining the path he took when he was our age, such as his light-bulb moment with an economics teacher at a King Edwards VI school, and how we could apply it to our lives.

Sir Andy Street surprised us when he mentioned that John Lewis was not in fact his first choice, but rather as a social worker, despite having a Politics and Economics degree at Oxford University. However, he was rejected twice.

After 20 years of pure dedication, skill and passion, his hard work was recognised when he was appointed the Managing Director of John Lewis. However, the turbulent economic climate of 2008 meant that profits were falling, and urgent change was needed to help save the company from going underwater. His brilliant advertising schemes, such as the well-known Christmas ads, and his huge gamble on e-commerce helped boost company profits and employee satisfaction.

His career at John Lewis ended at the end of 2016 with a grand gesture of a 15% bonus for all employees, costing nearly £180 million for the company due to a massive windfall in profits. However, his journey was not complete. He wanted to give back to his community by running as the first Mayor of West Midlands, and his re-election was won by a landslide of 50,000 votes due to his ethos of trust and approachability.

We finally ended our session with some very thoughtful questions from the Year 10s. Through these, we learnt more about Andy Street as a role model, and his friendly approach was displayed as he ended his oration with a group selfie!

Sir Andy Street is always welcome at our school, and we would love to have him back again.

Jaskaran Virdi – Year 10

On July 1st an intrepid team of Year 9 students rolled up their sleeves and donned their chef’s whites to take part in a Guinness World Record Challenge organised by Jamie Oliver to have the largest cookery lesson ever take place.

Along with 15000 other young chefs in the UK, our Handsworth Team cooked home-made pasta and tomato sauce from scratch, following the recipe via the big screen and helped by Ms Hill and Mrs Jameson. The resulting dishes were truly impressive- delicious hand rolled pici pasta (like fat spaghetti) with a sauce of freshly chopped tomatoes, basil, olive oil and parmesan. Buon appetito!

It was fantastic to see the skills and co-operation of our young chefs as they brought their dishes to life. Well done to everyone who took part and to Ms Hill and our amazing DT department for giving our students the opportunity to take part in this challenge.

Just like tennis from the centre court at Wimbledon and cricket from Edgbaston, the advent of high summer here at HGS means only one thing: our hotly-anticipated sports day, where our 5 noble houses go head to head in defending their honour!

This year’s event, on Tuesday June 17^th , was no exception as students, teachers and parents gathered at the world-class Alexander Stadium in Perry Barr to compete in a range of track and field events including the much anticipated tug of war!

The beautifully sunny and slightly breezy weather made for excellent conditions, and with Mr Conway on the microphone and Mr Johnson on the medals, the event was a runaway- and very noisy- success with our students shouting their encouragement to the wide range of competitors from all year groups and houses.

It was fantastic to see the winners streaking ahead, but it was also lovely to see the encouragement and applause given to the students bringing up the rear, determined to get over the line. Well done all of you!

Many school records were broken during the event as you can see from the attached photos and we would like to congratulate everyone who broke a record on their outstanding achievement.

Well done to all our competitors, supporters, staff and parents who made Sports Day 2025 such a lovely event- and if you didn’t compete in 2025, now’s the time to lace up your tainers and get practising…

Click here to view more photos in the gallery.

Record Breakers