Blog # 27 – w/c 24/05/2021

PHEW!!!

Well, we did it! This has been our first uninterrupted half term since the beginning of 2020 and a lot has happened since the end of the last lockdown. As you will be aware, staff have been working very hard to ensure that all of our year 11s have fully assessed work in all of their subjects to support the best possible GCSE grades. Obviously, we cannot confirm what those grades will be at this stage as that decision ultimately rests with the exam boards and they will want to moderate a range of assessed work before grades are published. However, we have taken every possible step to make sure that student outcomes will not be compromised because of the impact of Covid 19.

Thanks must go to the support of parents and carers at this very busy time, and also for the patience and maturity of the other students in the school for whom the last fifteen months has been massively disrupted. The work never stops but we can all now approach the last half term of the year with renewed energy; can someone please turn the sun on to ‘full’ now?

The Pledge - Duke of Westminster visit.

On Tuesday 18th May, Blacon High School hosted a fundraising event for The Pledge, which is a charity working with schools in Cheshire and Warrington to support school career programmes. It aims to link business with schools for the benefit of the students.

The charity is bidding for funding from The Westminster Foundation and, last week, two representatives from the Foundation came to school, along with the Duke of Westminster, to hear from staff and students about how much we value The Pledge. Year 10 students Alisha, Owen and Max spoke about what they had learned from their experiences after taking part in a recent project with the Bank of America.

We were more than delighted to welcome Hugh Grosvenor, the 7th Duke of Westminster to Blacon High School and are grateful for the time he spent chatting to our students, along with other representatives of the Westminster Foundation. It was a superb afternoon and we wish The Pledge the very best in securing the funding.

The Oscars

Mrs Salisbury hosted the annual Oscars Event for our Performing Arts students on Wednesday, where the creative achievements of our talented young stars were celebrated.  Students each received an Oscar statuette to keep as a reminder of their days studying the BTEC Tech Award in Performing Arts.  A total of 26 categories were awarded for performance and production roles in Shakespeare's ‘Twelfth Night’, which was performed at the Floral Pavilion, Susie Crozier's contemporary comedy ‘The Wizard of Odd’, Jim Cartwrights ‘Two’ which was workshopped and rehearsed at Storyhouse, and Shakespeare's ‘Romeo and Juliet’.  Our stars enjoyed a delicious buffet, prepared by Kellie Broadbent and her team, and a personalised and delicious chocolate cake.

Congratulations everyone and good luck for the future, or perhaps I should say: ‘break a leg’!

Goodbye to our Year 11s

On Friday 28^th May, we will be saying ‘goodbye’ to our Year 11s with a somewhat scaled down event. That said, it will still be a celebration of all of their achievements during the time they have been with us. Students will each be given their Record of Achievement folders and lots of them will be receiving awards. After the speeches and awards, there will be time for signing shirts and the school has provided a buffet; one last chance to taste Kellie’s delicious food. After today, we still have the Prom’ to look forward to in July. I will share photos and a full report of today’s event in the next blog after half term.

Royal Mail Stamp Competition 

In DT, Miss McIvor wants to share Year 7’s fantastic entries to the Royal Mail Stamp Competition. I’m sure you’ll agree that there are some fantastic designs here and students chose to honour some amazing heroes of our time in their designs. Well done to everyone and we look forward to the judging.

STEM Club

The Blacon STEM Club were recently interviewed for Fun Kids Radio as a result of their involvement in the Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize. Students have been working really hard on their submission and enjoyed getting creative for their team photo. Use the following link to listen to the interview – Podcast May 22; Could humans be venomous? Time of interview: 20:55.

https://www.funkidslive.com/podcast/the-fun-kids-science-weekly/

And finally….

As this half term comes to a close, we wish you all a happy and peaceful break. We look forward to welcoming you all back on Monday 7^th June for the final few weeks of the year.

Stay safe.