Welcome to our 2021 Open Evening! We find ourselves in unprecedented times and as a result of the pandemic we are holding a virtual Summer Open Evening over the course of this week.

Founded in 1862 King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School is the oldest Grammar School in Birmingham and enjoys a fine tradition of excellence and achievement. We are very much in and of our community being proud of our ethos, culture and traditions. We are part of the King Edward VI Foundation and our admissions at 11+ are managed by the Grammar Schools in Birmingham. We are creative, innovative and forward thinking as well as being conscious of our historical roots.

We aim to make a real and significant difference to the lives of each and every student we educate regardless of background. Every student has a vast array of clubs and societies that they can choose to join whatever their interest as well as being a member of a House with all the competition and friendly rivalry that brings. The extensive opportunities available are created by a school that has acknowledged excellence in a range of areas but which is able to balance the academic, pastoral and extracurricular needs of the community with that of the individuals that form its student body. We are fortunate to have  a talented and motivated staff who are able to nurture the best from each and every student.

Our students enjoy coming to school and they make excellent academic progress and reach high standards. Our GCSE and A Level results are testament to this with our sixth formers going on to study at the best universities such as Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester, Warwick and Cambridge. We develop habits of resilience, questioning, thinking and collaboration. This enables our students to know what to do when they don’t know what to do. They are a force for good and use their knowledge to make informed decisions. We see this through the charity work that goes on at every level in the school and through the work of the School Council and volunteering programmes that run on a weekly basis.

In our most recent Ofsted inspection we were graded as Outstanding in every category. We do not rest on our laurels and constantly look to improve how we do things both in and out of the classroom. However at the heart of all we do is our community – people. Both students and staff. We are a genuinely happy school with students and staff working together in harmony. We have fun here and we often laugh together. We are not pretentious or arrogant. We recognise that choosing the right school is a difficult decision so please do look at what we offer here at HGS. When we are able to we will welcome you in person.

With my best wishes.

Stay safe.

Dr Simon Bird

Please click here for more details.

Watch our video below:

Our newly appointed Head Prefect, Harikesh Murugan, is the research lead at the Young Person’s Advisory Group at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. The role is to help, shape, and improve local healthcare. Some of his duties include sitting on interview panels for medical staff and sharing ideas for research projects with staff. He is currently leading a project based on improving doctor-patient communication.

As part of his placement in Year 10, he did a week of work experience at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. This involved Harikesh worked alongside many doctors, nurses and administrative staff which kindled his interest in and enthusiasm for such a career. These opportunities have taught Harikesh the necessary attributes for the world of work, such as being disciplined and dedicated in order to meet expectations as well as the skills of collaboration and teamwork.

More recently, Harikesh is volunteering every weekend at a local care home. This has taught him the importance of catering to the needs of different people as well as developing the important attributes of compassion and empathy. These core attributes will help him to secure a place at University to study Medicine.
We wish Harikesh all the very best in his new role at King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School as well as his work in the local community.

Congratulations to Mr Conway who has been selected as a Visiting Fellow (Facilitator) for the NPQ programmes being delivered through the Arthur Terry Teaching School Hub, North Birmingham.

Visiting Fellows on the NPQ programmes

Visiting Fellows are integral to the implementation of the National Professional Qualification (NPQ) programmes to support participants to contextualise and make sense of the curriculum. Visiting Fellows will work directly with participants by facilitating conferences and clinics.
The following is a list of the requirements needed in order to become a Visiting Fellow at the Ambition Institute:

Be Qualified to teach in the UK (hold QTS)
Have experience of teacher education at school and/or MAT level
Holds, or has held, a relevant leadership role in a school
Has a track record of excellent teaching/leadership and delivering exceptional outcomes in a similar context of the schools they are supporting (e.g. pupils with low prior attainment or schools with above national average levels of pupil premium)
Has strong understanding of best practice in teaching and learning
Has a good understanding of, and commitment to, the relevant NPQ framework
Holds a commitment to engage in our quality assurance process and a drive to keep getting better.

We congratulate Mr Conway on his appointment and it builds on his extensive Mentoring portfolio, which has seen him work with aspiring teachers and leaders from the University of Birmingham, Birmingham City University and Newman University over the last decade.

Mr Dubay (Head of English) has recently had an article published in an educational journal – Curriculum Wide Newsletter. It focusses upon the effective delivery of the curriculum and the barriers that can exist which in turn prevent the best outcomes for students.

Please click on the link for more details.

https://www.curriculumwide.co.uk/issue/Jun_2021.html

Nitrogen cycle article written by Mubarak & Kiran 8N – 19/05/2021

This week in the Tropical Fish Club, we learned about how we care for fish tanks at home. We learned that keeping healthy fish means that we must first, keep healthy bacteria! We learnt about the nitrogen cycle and that we need a good understanding of this in-order to develop the tank the way that we want.

The Nitrogen Cycle is probably the most important thing for a tank to keep going. This cycle, maintains a healthy state in a tank; the cycle works like this:

When a fish gets rid of it’s waste it sinks to the bottom and starts to decay, like anything which has nutrition (this also includes uneaten food). This makes Ammonia which is really dangerous to fish and is lethal to them. Amongst other issues, ammonia can harm the gills of fish which will disrupt their method of taking in oxygen!

So our filter in the tank needs to be given the chance to develop a bacteria which can convert the ammonia into nitrites (NO2−). These nitrites are also deadly for fish though. When there is enough nitrite around in the tank, other bacteria will develop in our filter which will convert nitrites into nitrates (NO3-). Fish are able to cope with nitrates in the water, unlike ammonia and nitrites.
These nitrates are also very good for the plants, the plants will use these nitrates as a source of nitrogen for their growth (acting as a fertilizer). Having said this, too much nitrate can kill fish, which is why we must carry out regular water changes. This will reduce concentrations of nitrates weekly, so we will never reach toxic levels.

This means that bacteria which convert ammonia to nitrites, and nitrites to nitrates are very important to establish in our filters before adding any fish. We can do this by regularly adding fish food to fish tanks (without fish in) to begin to build up these bacteria within the running filter. Alternatively, we can add products into our tanks which contain these bacteria, such as the ones, kindly donated to us by API! They very kindly gave us some of these quick-start bottles which speed this process up! They also gave us some test kits which allows us to monitor the water chemistry in our aquarium. We would like to thank API for sending us so much equipment which will help us with our projects!

This has given us a lesson in patience, water chemistry and responsible pet care. This is going to be helpful in the future, especially for beginners like some of us in the club!

Mubarak DeSilva & Kiran Patel 8 Nelson

Week 9 & 10

Week 8

Week 7

Week 6

Week 5

Week 4

Easter

Week 3

Week 2

Week 1

Introduction