18 July 2014

The Bolton School Joint Jazz Band hung out with Paloma Faith at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival! In between playing their two sets on the 'Music in the Park' stage at Parc Vertex, they found time to watch some of the other acts and drink in some of the Swiss culture.

You can listen to one of the tracks from their performance at Montreux on the school's Soundcloud:


As the summer weather started to improve, the Nursery took a group of children out for the first official Forest School session. The children really enjoyed being outside in a natural environment, and were given lots of choices of things to do throughout the session.

The end of term saw the Nursery bid farewell to the 'Butterflies' who will be going on to infants' school in September. They gave the children a fitting send-off with a Wild West themed Leavers' Party! With lots of games, a bouncy castle, and even ice creams for everyone, it was a fantastic afternoon.

The Senior Schools were recently included in the Sunday Times Guide to the Best North West Schools, with both Divisions ranking highly. The Boys' Division and Girls' Division were listed as the top single-sex schools north of the M60.

There have also been some amazing individual achievements towards the end of term:

Girls' Division maths teacher Miss Reynolds recently won a grant of £7430.00 in the Let Teachers SHINE competition! She will go on to develop her idea for a maths project that will take pupils off the normal curriculum and experience maths from a different angle.

Kiran Cheema from Year 9 was awarded second prize in The Children's Bookshow national poetry competition! She wrote a poem titled 'Meant to be', which was based on a favourite piece of art.

Thea Simpson, who is in Year 7, has been selected to take part in a National Academy Water Polo Camp at Millfield School over the summer. This is a great opportunity for Thea to develop her skills in the sport that she loves.

Finally, one of the Girls' Division's Year 7 pupils will soon be on television: Sharon Daniel is set to compete in Channel 4's Child Genius television programme! Sharon is one of twenty children chosen from over 2,000 applicants to take part in the second series of this amazing intelligence competition. The first episode of Child Genius will be on Channel 4 this Sunday the 20th of July at 9pm.

11 July 2014

The last few days were packed full of events as the Summer Term drew to a close.

Over the weekend, Boys' Division pupils from Year 7 to 13 put together a Pop-Up Exhibition in the Market Place, Bolton. All of the artwork displayed was created for the exhibition and illustrated some aspect of the pupils' experience of Bolton School.

Last week, Old Boy Sir Ernest Ryder was formally installed at the new Chancellor of the University of Bolton. For the next three years, he will represent the university.

In the same week, two Bolton School alumni, a former school governor and a former headmistress of the Girls' Division were awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Bolton! They received their degrees alongside this year's graduates, and alongside famous faces such as Ryan Giggs and Martine McCutcheon.

Old Girl Aimee Parkinson returned to Bolton School on Monday to give Sixth Formers a talk on working in commercial property. This was a very informative session that allowed the pupils to ask plenty of questions.

Old Boy and Nobel Prize winner Sir Harry Kroto visited the school on the last day of term to promote chemistry to primary school pupils. Four-hundred Year 5 pupils from local primary schools attended the workshop session in the Sports Hall. They listened attentively to Sir Harry's presentation, and afterwards were able to build their own model 'buckyballs', which re-create the structure of the C60 Buckminsterfullerene molecule.

Gifted and talented pupils at a cluster of Farnworth primary schools have recently enjoyed and prospered from extra Maths lessons from two Bolton School teachers, Phil Howard of the Boys’ Division and Lauren Reynolds of the Girls’ Division. These specialist 'Maths Clubs' have raised the children's grades in their SATs and given them additional confidence in their mathematical abilities.

Girls' Division Year 7 pupil Amy Chicken has recently taken part in the Junior Manchester Run and Great Manchester Cycle to raise money for LivLive, a charity with strong links with the Girls' Division.

Year 6 pupils at the Junior Boys' School have also been hard at work. Five groups of boys became young entrepreneurs to raise money for charity, and their ideas and and business plans were very successful. Together they raised £776.15 for Cancer Research!

In sport, the Girls' Division Year 10 Tennis team achieved second place in Division 1 of the AEGON Teams Tennis tournament.

Meanwhile in the Boys' Division, the Intermediate Tennis Championship Finals were held. After preliminary knockout rounds throughout the Summer Term, the last two pupils in the Year 9 and Year 10 groups battled it out for the trophies.

Finally, Year 7 and Year 8 girls rounded off the Summer Term with a spectacular Celebration Evening. The evening of entertainment was based on the theme of 'A Tale of Two Cities' and traced the musical heritages of Liverpool and Manchester.

You can listen to a selection of music from the Celebration Evening on the school's Soundcloud page: click here.

4 July 2014

This week saw the Boys' Division SPACE programme for this academic year draw to a close. The Year 10 boys enjoyed a carousel of activities on the theme of music and dance, while the Year 7 boys played a Fairtrade Football tournament! This initiative, which was run for the first time this year, has been a huge success and has allowed the boys to develop outside of the normal curriculum and the classroom.

The 1st XI cricketers used their final SPACE session to take on the Forty Club - a nomadic cricket club which aims to encourage young people to play cricket in the best spirit. Despite their best efforts, the Bolton School boys were not able to defeat their opponents, but it was nonetheless a great afternoon of cricket and the boys could learn from the more experienced players.

Year 12 cricketer Haseeb Hameed, who is on the 1st XI team, has recently been praised for his performance during the Lancashire 2nd Team match against Warwickshire. His batting helped secure the team's victory.

On Tuesday, a group of Year 7 and Year 8 girls were given a tour of the recently re-named Macron Stadium. This 'access all areas' tour even allowed them to run out of the tunnels! The girls were awarded medals for their successful completion of the Bolton Wanderers' Community Trust football club course.

Also in sport, the Year 7 Rounders Team returned victorious having won the Town Championships!

The Sixth Form boys and girls took part in the first ever inter-divisional Young Analyst of the Year competition! Working in pairs, two of which were mixed, each team was asked to complete an undergraduate level Chemistry task which involved a practical component and a series of calculations, both of which really tested their abilities.

The Girls' and Boys' Divisions also hosted the annual Science Festival for Year 5 pupils in the local area. The pupils were given five tasks, split between the two Divisions, with each one focusing on different aspects of Biology, Chemistry and Physics. The children had a fantastic time learning about science in an entertaining environment.

We also learned this week that children who attend private school will earn £193,700 more on average in their early careers than their state educated peers. This is according to a new independent report by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) think tank, which analyses the Sutton Trust's Open Access programme.

Beech House was thrilled by a couple of special events this week. On Wednesday, the pupils were given a short assembly on dog safety, and one class received a special visit from a puppy at the end of the afternoon!

On Thursday, Beech House was overrun by 'every bear that ever there was' for a Teddy Bears' Picnic! Despite the weather, the children and their bears had a great time with 'lots of wonderful things to eat and wonderful games to play'.

The Junior Girls put on their annual Summer Concert this week. They gave two performances of 'The Song of the Earth', both of which delighted the audience of parents and grandparents. Headmistress Mrs Brierley said of the Concert: “Through song, percussion, poetry recital and dance, the girls wove their way through powerful descriptions of how human beings impact the Earth.”

You can listen to the music and songs from 'The Song of the Earth' on the School's Soundcloud page: click here.

The Junior Boys were also in fine form last week with their production of Tom Sawyer. The boys performed the play, complete with several musical numbers, on three consecutive nights to an audience of parents and grandparents. The shows were a great success!

Finally, Bolton School is delighted to announce that it will be hosting this year's North of England Girls' School Association (GSA) Girls Go Gold Conference on Thursday the 18th of September. The keynote speakers are Olympic rower Helen Glover and Jenny Meadows, the current indoor 800m European champion. The day is designed to inspire the girls attending to believe anything is possible with the right mental attitude and lots of hard work to develop their talent.