On the 22nd January, year 11 embarked on a school trip to Birmingham Town Hall, to see a selection of 7 poets perform and explain some of their most famous poems, including poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy.  Year 11 also hoped to gain guidance from one of AQAs chief examiners regarding how to form responses to GCSE English literature questions more effectively.

At 9am on Tuesday morning, year 11, along with all the English staff, left Handsworth and promptly arrived in Birmingham City Centre.  The long walk in the cold to the venue was more than worth it. Upon entering we were greeted by an introduction from Tony Childs accompanied by a subtle hum of excitement from all the other schools attending.  The crowd broke into applause once the first poet, Imtiaz Dharker stepped on stage.

Pakistan born, Imtiaz, read aloud her poem “Tissue” which, she explained, is a comment on the fragility and impermanence of man and how the smallest details of our lives are what truly define us.  She also read aloud two further poems before taking questions and exiting the stage.

Next onto the stage was Grace Nichols, a Guyana born poet, whose talent had even earned her a Commonwealth Poetry Prize.  Her poetry was very unique, as it coalesced both Standard English with Creole (the dialect of English spoken in Guyana) – all her poetry was rhythmically complex and engaging, particular her “cat rap”, a poem dedicated to her daughter Catherine.  Grace gave a warm message about how we can be whatever we want, before departing and announcing the next poet’s name.

Judging solely from the roar of applause that filled the auditorium, the next poet was clearly the favourite.  John Agard greeted the audience with an enthusiastic, toothy grin, cheerfully reciting his most well-known poem “Checkin’ out me history”, a comment on the erasure and separation of black history from the education system, which I’m sure resonated with many in the audience.  He then gave a long speech upon the significance of poetry and language, finishing with another one of his most well-known poems, “Half Caste”, a comment by Agard on the usage of the term half caste to describe mixed raced people. The poem and subject matter were clearly extremely personal to John, as you could hear the emotion in each and every syllable he spoke.  The audience were left in a silent awe and all were thoroughly disappointed when Agard left the stage, but thoroughly excited for lunchtime nonetheless.

After a half an hour break the presentation continued with a talk from a chief examiner about the best ways to analyse poetry in order to secure top marks and a presentation from Gillian Clarke and poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.  All the poems they recited were about their lives in the past and carried a somewhat melancholy tone. Carol Ann Duffy’s poem, “Before you were mine”, was about her mother’s life, before she was her mother and was especially sombre.  They took many questions and provided a lot of insight in to the nature of creative writing, along with the precise feelings conveyed in their works. After leaving the stage, we were all allowed another short break to stretch our legs, before being seated, once again in wide-eyed excitement.

The audience became a sea of clapping hands and cheers, as Simon Armitage (another favourite I presume) walked out on stage.  Simon gave a long speech into the nature of inspiration and creativity, before reciting his poem “Remains”, a poem he had written about a soldier suffering from PTSD after killing a looter in the Gulf War in 1991.  The poem discusses some of the harsh, but scarcely talked about realities of war and the effect combat can have on soldiers long after they have left the battlefield. Armitage introduced the next poet, Daljit Nagra, before leaving the stage, we were all disappointed to watch him leave and to see the end of the day rapidly approaching.

Daljit was one of the more light hearted poets. His poem “Singh Song” was a favourite among many in the audience, following a day in the life of a newlywed Indian boy, running a corner-shop with his bride in England.  It was a happy and romantic poem and it looked at ideas about love from an unconventional angle, light heartedly telling the story of a happy young couple, making a living in a strange foreign land, something I’m sure many of our parents or grandparents did at some point in their lives.  The chief examiner concluded the day by wishing us farewell and good luck on all our exams. We left the venue much the same as we entered, but a little wiser and a lot more hopeful for our English literature GCSE.

The day was thoroughly enjoyable and I would love to go to something similar again (hint!). Thank you to all of the English staff for organising it.

Jay Keenan

On Wednesday 16th January, a group of year 12 students went to Birmingham Town Hall for A level Biology Live. We listened to distinguished biologists speak about their respective fields. These scientists gave a series of interesting and mentally stimulating talks on various topics. These included topics such as evolution, IVF, microbes and the brain. There was also examiner sessions, where an experienced examiner gave tips on how to approach exams and do your best in it. All in all, it was a very fulfilling experience that everyone will reflect on. 

A big thank you to Mr Hussain for organising the trip!

Manraj Singh Malhi

Handsworth Grammar School for Boys were the hosts for the latest Senior students’ Conference on January 30th.

Students from KE Aston, KE Fiveways, KE Handsworth Girls, and KE Handsworth Wood Girls all joined our Head Boy Nasim Miah and Head Girl Huda Benrekia to discuss a number of important issues relating to their education. Topics discussed included young peoples’ mental health, charity fund raising and pastoral care within each school.

Many thanks to all of the delegates who visited the school and contributed to make the conference so successful.

If you are a previous student and want to be entered for any retake examinations in the Summer 2019 season, you need to come into school and fill in a retake form and pay correct fees. Cash is accepted but no change is given, or you can pay by cheque made payable to King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys.

Each student MUST pay a £15 administration fee on top of the examination entry fees.

The deadline for resit entry is Friday 15 February at midday.

Resit Fees Summer 2019

On January 11^th, our group from HGS left school at about 1:30pm to head to Austria. We put our luggage on the coach and said our ‘hellos’ to our coach-share group from Boldon School in Tyne and Wear. 19 HGS students went, together with 3 teachers, Mr Jones (the Party Leader this year), Mr Bird and Mr Gallagher.  About 23 hours later we arrived in Mauterndorf and everyone was ecstatic since there was a lot of snow and beautiful views of the surrounding mountains. Our hotel was called Mauser-Muhltaler.

We made ourselves comfortable in our dining room and were kindly welcomed by the hotel manager who went through all of the house rules. We then went upstairs to unpack before heading out to explore the town and visit a supermarket called ADEG to buy a few things. Later we popped across the road to the ski hire shop where we got our skis, boots, poles and helmets. Back at the hotel, dinner was at 6:30pm and on that night we had soup as a starter, pasta as our main course and cake as our desert.  We went to bed at 10:00 pm and ‘lights out’ was at 10:30 pm.

The next day we woke up at 7:00 am and, after breakfast, went up the mountain on the gondola lift to meet our instructors. We were put into groups according to our skiing ability and then off we went skiing!  Lunch was at 12:30pm each day at a restaurant up in the mountains where we either bought lunch or ate a packed lunch we made at the hotel in the morning. We carried on skiing until 4:00 pm.

The routine was basically the same each day and, at the end of the week, Mr Jones was keen to stress that nobody lost any skiing time because of injury, illness or bad weather. One local said that it was the best snow conditions they’d had in the resort for 30 years!  However, we missed a couple of evening activities in other towns because of closed roads. By Tuesday, the roads had improved so we were able to go swimming in a nearby town called Tamsweg.  This was one of the best experiences I’ve had for quite a while – there was an outdoor part of the pool and a long slide. On Wednesday evening, the hotel put on some apres ski entertainment outside and, after this, we walked to a pizzeria in town – the pizza was delicious.

Every year on the Ski Trip there are the ‘Muppet’ and ‘Wipeout’ competitions.  Every day after skiing we met down in the lounge and voted for who we thought deserved the awards. The ‘Muppet’ award was for accidently doing something silly, like putting your ski boots on the wrong feet, and the ‘Wipeout’ award was for a spectacular fall.  The people who ‘won’ had to wear bright yellow jackets until the next day and the next vote.

At last, our final day arrived. We had breakfast as normal, went up the mountain, skied, had lunch and finished a little early as we needed to go back to the hotel, shower, eat dinner, load all our bags onto the coach and head off home.  About a day later, we arrived back at HGS. I had mixed emotions about this as I really enjoyed the skiing and didn’t want to stop but it was good to see my family again.  Overall, the ski trip was absolutely amazing and definitely better than last year’s led by Mr. Bird (but don’t tell him I said that!)

Adam El-Modir

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