Table Tennis Success
The Under 14 and Under 16 Table Tennis teams all won their recent Aston League fixtures against St Georges 7-2.
Congratulations!
Rolls Royce Apprenticeship
Our congratulations to Dalip Johal in Year 13 who has been offered an apprenticeship with Rolls Royce (Control Systems).
This is a huge achievement given that the company offer about 200 apprenticeships nationally, but have over 35,000 applications for their prestigious company.
Dalip has been very committed to this ambition, and spent half-term on work experience with the company. He has been very determined since last year to try and secure an apprenticeship with Rolls Royce.
It is a real achievement to secure this apprenticeship, and Rolls Royce will now train him, and pay for him to study at university while he works for them.
It is a good reminder for our students that not everyone has to just go straight to university in the conventional way.
Congratulations!
Coronavirus in Schools Advice
Please click here to see Coronavirus in Schools Advice from Public Health England.
Focus on Education
Reading for Pleasure
As you may already be aware, there is a large body of research that indicates that there are many benefits that arise from reading for pleasure by secondary school-age children. These benefits not only include improved academic attainment but also increased empathy, improved relationships with others, and improved wellbeing. For further information about this you may wish to read this article from The Reading Agency website. Please encourage your child to embrace the notion of reading for pleasure!
Ski Trip, January 2020 – Pila, Italy
The 2020 Ski Trip to Pila, Italy, was a week never to be forgotten. It took place between Saturday 11th January and Sunday 19th January and involved 25 students, including 3 Sixth-Formers, who were accompanied by Mr Jones, Mr Bird, Mr Alishah and Mr Griffiths. After waving our parents ‘goodbye’, we set off on our long but enjoyable journey to the Aosta Valley. Fortunately, we were able to depart on an earlier ferry thanks to our coach drivers and, whilst travelling through France, we encountered many captivating views of the mountains and also got a breakfast stop where I was able to practise my almost ‘fluent’ French.
After having arrived in Aosta, we promptly made our way to our ski-fit session, where we ensured our ski attire was a suitable fit. Interski, our Tour Operator, made the process very efficient and trying on our ski boots, skis and helmets, only took a matter of a few minutes, thanks to the great organisation and use of technology. We then headed off to the hotel, where we unpacked and had lunch, which was most surprisingly pasta – who would’ve thought that! After digesting our appetising lunch, we roamed around the village where the teachers located a supermarket and so we decided to top up on our snacks and sweets for the week.
The first day of skiing consisted mainly of us getting to know our instructors and going over the main skiing techniques such as parallel turns, although this was different for the beginners’ groups, who focused upon learning how to snow plough. My instructor, Barney, was an extremely advanced skier who even had the opportunity to ski for GB. He did not accept, however, in order to spend time with his girlfriend – true love does exist! Barney focused primarily on improving our skiing techniques for the first few days, whether it was our balance and posture, our turns and even the position of our skis when skiing down the mountain.
There are always crashes and falls and, on this trip, there were a fair few to say the least! Even the most experienced skiers crash and, in my group, this mainly happened when we went over bumps at high speeds. Barney took our group to the fun slope, where one student attempted to jump over a bump but unfortunately face-planted straight into the snow; he then went on to slide 150m down a black slope after losing his balance and crashed straight into a piste marker – an absolute tragedy if you ask me! Personally, my favourite moment of skiing was when we received the opportunity to ski off-piste in the forests; although it was completely safe, we still had many falls and tumbles due to certain members of the group falling over and causing a domino effect (not mentioning any names). In addition, skiing down ‘The Wall’ (the resort’s steepest piste) was a great achievement, which I hope to match and maybe even surpass in the future.
For lunch, we were fortunate to be served a hot meal on the mountain rather than having to take a packed lunch or come back to the hotel, which was time-consuming on previous ski trips. The après ski activities were extremely entertaining – we had a quiz night, a bowling night, a pool night and a pizza night. For the quiz, we were split into teams of about five and, when the scores came, it was a draw for first place and so our knowledgeable quiz-master Mr Jones had to throw in his killer question for the tie-breaker – “Name a member of The Beatles”. The winners were a team called ‘Versace’ (inside joke). Mr Jones obviously didn’t remember that he’d taught some of us The Beatles’ names on a previous trip! Pool night was an extremely entertaining night. According to my reliable source Mr Bird, the winner of the pool tournament between the teachers was Mr Bird himself, so we would like to congratulate him on his (alleged) victory!
On our last day of skiing we were on a tight schedule as we had a full day’s skiing and then had to return our equipment, shower and change, finish our packing and eat our evening meal before departure. When we all arrived at our hotel, our instructors presented us with a certificate and a glamorous badge according to the skiing level we achieved. Finally, we left the hotel and, although it was nice to be heading home, it was also sad that we wouldn’t be skiing the next day. We loaded the coach and set off; I zoned off into watching a movie for the first hour! We slept for a lot of the way back but enjoyed a full breakfast on the ferry before arriving back to school at 12pm, once again earlier than planned.
Overall, the trip was extremely enjoyable but also physically demanding and, most importantly, educational, particularly for the first-time skiers. We had many moments of laughter over several occasions, whether it was at the bowling night or even during nights in at the hotel – I can assure you that all the students couldn’t have asked for a better time. This was all thanks to our hard-working teachers as well as Interski, who all put in the effort to organise our trip so it ran as smoothly as possible. Let’s hope that future ski trips are just as entertaining and rewarding!
Shivam Kanda, 12PJO
Chamber Music Festival
The HGS Brass Quintet performed at their first external concert on Wednesday at King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls. The short concert included performances from Music Service Ensembles as well as groups based within individual schools. We heard tablas, woodwind, classical guitars and singers in this varied programme. Our boys brought the concert to a wonderful end by playing a March by John Philip Sousa. It was fantastic. So well done to Max Rueff, Dylan Sharma, Hanz Camanzo, Arun Desai and Daniel Earle for their fantastic playing. We look forward to hearing form them later in the year.
Sports Roundup
Basketball
In their last match of the season, the KS4 Basketball team beat George Dixon 36-22. A good end to the season – well done.
The KS3 Basketball team have a match tonight and hope to emulate their fellow squad members.
Stop Press! The Key Stage 3 Basketball Team beat George Dixon 22-9 – A fantastic end to their season!
Football
The Year 9 Football team beat Broadway 10-1 to reach the Aston Cup Final for a third year in a row. This is a magnificent achievement – well done. Unfortunately, they lost in the West Midlands Cup.
Table Tennis
The KS4 Table Tennis team are now the City of Birmingham Schools Games Winners as well as the City of Birmingham Schools Champions. The squad comprises of:
Yaseen Ahmed
Thien Tran
Jamie Corpuz and
Jake Gloag.
This a great achievement and we congratulate them on their considerable success.
GCSE Science Live
As the wind blew quite frantically, we began to assemble outside Birmingham’s Symphony Hall awaiting the gripping talks from the scientists that were to come.
The presentations began with a riveting discussion from Professor Mark Miodownik (by far my favourite lecture), an engineer and material scientist. He discussed the damage plastic is doing to our environment (a significant global issue in our current daily lives) and the shocking reality of “greenwashed” products that claim to be sustainable but, in fact, amplify the pollution in the world. Considering it is a current problem we face, it was really interesting to learn about biodegradable polymers and biodegradable plastics and how, in fact, different types of plastics cannot be mixed as this reduces the amount of plastic that is able to be recycled. One thing that struck me was his concluding statement “there is no sustainable material but there are many sustainable systems”. I’m 100% sure that many students, like myself, found that particular discussion engaging and, in a way, challenged us youth to come up with solutions to these problems!
After a short break, we were spoken to by Chief Examiner Stewart Chenery who stressed the importance of reading questions and understanding question types in exams; he gave quite valuable tips that allow students to achieve the best they possibly can.
Another one of my favourite lectures was from Professor Lord Robert Winston who expressed his enthusiasm for aspects of the development of human life; being a pioneer of IVF treatment and a renowned communicator of science, Lord Winston engaged the entirety of Symphony Hall with his witty remarks and mind-opening observations about the development and divisions of minuscule cells into organisms just like us.
After a well-deserved lunch break and another intriguing talk from the Chief Examiner, the day concluded with a quite question-provoking discussion from Professor Steve Jones. Beginning with the statement “Look to the person to your left, and the person to your right – two out of three of you will die for reasons associated with the genes you carry”, Professor Jones then explored the consequences of our gene make-up and how they shape us, and the possible fate we have that results from what resides in our DNA.
Overall our day at GCSE Science Live was one of attentiveness. It was a great experience and I’m sure that Mr Jones would agree – he even had the privilege of obtaining a free coffee during break time!
Dharam Rana 10G
