11 July 2013

The lead up to the end of term has been eventful as ever, including the whole of Bolton School Boys’ and Girls’ Divisions walking the 12 miles up to Rivington Pike and back to raise money for a range of charities. They were joined on the walk by their teachers, and also by a group of Chinese primary school pupils who are in Bolton as part of the City Link project with Bolton Council. A number of charities will benefit including Help for Heroes, Wish Upon a Star, Lilac Centre, Macmillan Cancer Support, Derian House, The British Heart Foundation, Beanstalk, Seeability, Fort Alice, Children’s Wish and Leukemia Research. The money is now in from the Junior Boys' Fun Run earlier in the year - they raised an amazing £4264 for the RNLI! And pupils in the Junior Girls’ School set up stalls selling cakes, sweets and cuddly toys, raising over £700 for a range of charities.
The Junior Boys shone in their annual drama production, this year entitled ‘Will Shakespeare Save Us! Will Shakespeare Save The King!’ The boys gave three performances of the production to packed audiences of family and friends. The show included fun adaptations of scenes from several of Shakespeare’s plays including Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Much Ado About Nothing.
Junior Girls at Hesketh House celebrated becoming National U11 Girls’ Chess Champions! Four girls took part in the national finals of the EFC Schools’ Tournament held at Uppingham School. They received a trophy and an engraved wooden chess board. Year 6 pupil Sally Cowling has been selected for the Junior Royal Northern Collegeof Music, to passing an audition on the oboe to be accepted. And more music success in the Senior School as Sixth Form pupil Natasha Lomas has been offered a place in the Halle Youth Orchestra for her clarinet playing. The Bolton School music ensembles often go out to perform at local schools as part of Community Music – recently the Joint Junior Concert Band performed at St James CE Primary School, Farnworth and the Joint Training Orchestra went out to Ladywood Special Needs School in Little Lever. In Sport, The Boys’ Golf team has won the annual Bolton Schools’ Golf Championships, while the U12 Cricket team won the Lancashire County Cricket Cup, beating Manchester Grammar School (MGS) by seven wickets in the final. The team will now go on to represent the county in the national competition.
Eight boys from Years 9 to 11 participated in the Withington Girls School Model UNConference and were rewarded with the greatest success yet for a team from the Boys' Division. The boys represented Israel, a challenging delegation, and debated a wide ranging list of issues, from disarmament to health. They competed against over 20 of top independent and grammar school in the North and Midlands and the team won the Highly Commended Committee award - essentially second place out of over 40 delegations – along with a number of individual achievements. The Girls’ Division also took a group to Withington to compete and Year 11 pupil Jess Melling won ‘Commended Delegate’.

28th June 2013

There were yet more Primary School visitors to Bolton School this week as over 20 local primary schools took part in a Science Festival aimed at inspiring young minds. The festival provided an opportunity for gifted young pupils from Year 5 to make use of our laboratories and resources and to absorb themselves in Science for the day. Schools entered teams of four who spent the morning in the Biology, Chemistry and Physics laboratories undertaking a number of challenging practical activities.

The Girls’ Division Year 9 Art Club, in conjunction with the Environment Club, presented the dining room staff with paving stones they have decorated for the Herb Garden this week. The paving stones were donated by Bents Garden Centre and the girls transformed them by painting them to show the variety of herbs growing in the garden. The stones have now been placed in the herb garden which grows mint, rosemary, thyme, parsley and oregano for use in the School kitchens. And art work from both Boys' and Girls' Division Year 11 to 13 students is now on show at the Best of Bolton Schools’ Art and Design Showcase, hosted by the University of Bolton. The exhibition, now in its sixth year, is a collaboration between schools in Bolton and the University and features the best work from pupils from Secondary Schools across the Borough. The exhibition is sponsored by The National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS) who provided sponsorship for prizes which were presented at a private view evening, where Bolton School Year 13 pupil Charlotte Leigh won the Best Fine Art prize. The Bolton School's Art and Design Showcase is open to the public 10am to 4pm until 5th July, at the Innovation Factory Fine Art Studio on the Bolton University Campus.

In sport, Bolton School are Northern T20 Cricket Champions taking them through to the National Finals Day at Arundel Castle CC in Sussex on Friday 5th July by defeating St. Peter’s, York in the Northern Final held at Heywood CC. Having won their initial group stage by defeating Merchant Taylor’s ,Crosby and Lancaster RGS, Bolton gained further victories over Sedbergh School and Manchester GS to lift the Fred Kenyon Trophy as HMC North West champions and forced their way through to play the other three regional winners from the Midlands, the South West and South East. And we congratulate Year 9 pupil Anosh Bonshahi who completed the London to Brighton cycle challenge in aid of the British Heart Foundation, raising nearly 400 pounds. Anosh cycled the 54 miles from London to Brighton with his dad and was among the youngest of nearly 30000 cyclists.
Year 10 pupils in the Girls’ Division enjoyed a day of lectures and debate complementing and extending their learning in school. The intensive one day program of short lectures followed by a debate gave students the opportunity to experience very high quality learning with expert lecturers. Girls spent the morning in the Arts Centre listening to a series of lectures including Time (this gets straight to the heart of relativity), The Politics of tolerance and/or Postmodernism and Does a Snail have consciousness?, and took part in a debate entitled 'This house believes in abortion on demand'.

21 June 2013

The Independent Schools’ Inspectorate has found Bolton School’s Early Years’ Foundation Stage for children aged from birth to 5 years to be ‘outstanding’ in all areas of its provision. The Intermediate Report echoes the findings of the last full inspection in 2010. The report, covering Bolton School Nursery, Infant School (Beech House) and Kidzone, the School’s wraparound childcare service, found there to be excellent progress throughout the age groups: ‘the overall quality and standards of the early years’ provision are outstanding.’ It went on to find ‘the contribution of provision to children’s well-being is outstanding,’ and ‘the setting makes outstanding provision in meeting the needs of the range of children who attend. Excellent teaching means that children of all ages and abilities make outstanding progress.’

Having tampered with The Tempest in English lessons, Year 6 girls from Hesketh House took great delight in performing their devised pieces in the Girls' Division Theatre to parents and friends. Their interpretations of the story saw them use some of the original poetic lines from Shakespeare's play as well rewriting his work in their own scripts, including aspects of dancing and singing to modern tunes.

Talented Year 11 pupil Jainee-Khushali Patel performs in not one but two of the eight recognized and accredited National Youth Music Orchestras in the UK. Not only that but she is the first person to play in two totally diverse NYMOs (National Youth Jazz Collective and SAMYO - the National Youth Orchestra for Indian Music) with two equally diverse instruments namely Sitar and Saxophone\ in each. She is also SAMYO’s first ever musician from Bolton, and the North West of England and is one of ten girls invited to form the Creative Leadership Ensemble in the country - a scheme which will see Jainee receiving training on how to take on a leadership role within music including conducting an orchestra.

Year 7 pupils Eddy Backhouse and Dominic Aly are national winners of the Wallace and Gromit Cracking Ideas competition. Having won the regional round for England in the 12-16 age category, the boys were invited to Blackpool Pleasure Beach for the national finals on Tuesday and were crowned national winners, beating off competition from the Irish, Scottish and Welsh winners. The Cracking Ideas challenge for 2012 – 2013 was based around the subject of space and the boys came up with a wide range of creative and fun ideas, ranging from an innovative new rocket design to a space safe suit for both Wallace and Gromit.

Almost 300 pupils from twenty eight primary schools from across the region took part in the Bolton School Sports Festival this week. The annual event, now in its tenth year, saw teams from Bolton and further afield compete in a variety of sporting challenges. The overall Festival Winner was Haslam Park Primary School with second place going to Gilnow Primary and third to St Osmund and Andrew’s Primary. And a team of Junior Girls entered their first ever Schools’ Basketball Competition and won, despite their lack of experience! The girls were entered on the notion that they had previously played mini basketball in PE lessons and that they were all good netball players, with the emphasis on just having fun. Six schools took part and having made it to the final the girls went on to win 5-0 to take the title.

And Old Boy of the School, Peter H. Bennett will be presented with the American Diabetes Association’s Albert Renold Award at the World’s largest Diabetes meeting this weekend. The award is presented to an individual whose career is distinguished by outstanding achievements in the training and mentorship of diabetes research scientists and the facilitation of diabetes research.

7th June 2013

Bolton School, under the direction of Mrs Linda Frew, will be overseeing a new initiative, the “Bolton Children’s Fiction Book Award”. Mrs Frew, along with other librarians at Bolton School and from schools from across the region, is currently busy reading books in order to draw up a shortlist for the Autumn Term. The event will be officially launched by Brit Writers’ Award Winner, Sufiya Ahmed at Bolton School on 4 October. After that, children in Years 7 and 8 from across the borough will be encouraged to read and vote for their favourite shortlisted books.
Hesketh House pupils have been letting their creative skills run wild for World Hunger Week, developing new recipes and designing new sandwiches. After some imaginative entries, Mrs Karen Riley and Mr Andrew Scialpi-Sullivan, who head up the School's Catering Team, settled upon three winners. Year 3 girl, Georgia McGinty, created a Cheeky Chicken Wrap and fellow Year 3 pupil, Summer Lily-Burke designed a sandwich called Meatball Delight. Year 4 girl, Chloe Ferguson, won the best recipe prize with her suggestion for producing Meatloaf. Each girl was awarded a book token and well done card from the Catering Department. The creations will all be trialled during forthcoming Junior Girls' lunchtimes. During the event, donations from the girls raised £70 for World Hunger Week.

Year 9 pupil Johanna Mercer has had a piece of her creative writing selected for publication in an anthology. The piece, entitled ‘Demonic Terror’, will feature in ‘Trick or Treat: A Collection of Ghost Stories’. Budding author Johanna is no stranger to publication, having had her first book ‘Demon Rose’ published in the Amazon Kindle store in January. And Year 12 pupil Luke Brabbin has written and published his own children’s eBook. Luke’s picture book is called ‘Jeffery, Dillon and Hugo go to the Swamp’ and is aimed at children aged 3 to 8. In the book, Luke tells the story of three monsters who go on an adventure to a swamp, and learn about morals and friendship on the way.

Filming will shortly be getting underway on Red Production Company’s second series of the BBC’s BAFTA-winning comedy drama, Last Tango in Halifax and, once again, Bolton School will be used as a backdrop. In the first series, starring Sarah Lancashire, the School featured as the independent school where she was Headmistress. Filming made use of the Headmaster’s Study, the Boys' Division Great Hall, several classrooms and offices as well as corridors, which were used to represent a quality school in the comedy drama series which also stars Sir Derek Jacobi.

And Bolton School pupils handed over a cheque for £800 to Action for Children charity, which was raised at the Battle of the Bands Competition. The winning band, Off Piste, presented the cheque to Action for Children representatives. The charity supports disadvantaged and vulnerable children in the community. Money raised on the day will be split between Action for Children and the Fabrice Muamba Defibrillator Fundraising Appeal.

24th May 2013

Former Status Quo drummer, Jeff Rich, visited Bolton School Girls’ Division this week as part of a Year 8 Careers Day. Jeff spoke to pupils about the music business, the development of the drum and about his own drum kit. He played a solo on the kit before inviting the pupils up on stage to play percussion and drums with him and also invited any drummers in the audience to come up and play his kit. There were a number of other guests running sessions with the girls on the day, including some successful Old Girls - Actress Anna Northam and Project Support Engineer at Bentley Motors, Amy Durrant. On the subject of Old Girls, Jaiminee Patel who left Bolton School in 2011 has made it to the final 20 of the MTV Student of the Year competition. Jaiminee, now in her first year of Business Management at King's College London, has been shortlisted to progress to the interview finals and now needs as many votes as possible to get through! Get voting for Jaiminee!

Other visitors to School this week were 2013 Rugby League World Cup mascots Grubber and Steed who visited pupils at Beech House along with Leigh Centurions first team player Ryan Brierley, as part of the Try Reading project. The Reception children were introduced to Grubber and Steed and Ryan Brierley read them a story about the pair. Boys’ Division Year 7 pupil Luke James also went along - as a winner of the Rugby League World Cup 2013 Mascot Design competition this was the first time Luke had come face to face with his creation Grubber Bear. One of three winners, Luke’s design was chosen from over 1,000 entries from the UK and France. As part of his prize, Luke also won tickets to two World Cup matches of his choice in addition to tickets to the Rugby League World Cup Final at Old Trafford, where he and the other winners will lead the players out. And award winning author for young adults, Bali Rai, was also in School to talk to Year 9 girls about his writing.

Year 9 pupil Beth Hodkinson represented England in the European Taekwon-Do Championships in Sweden and came away with a bronze medal. Beth won the bronze medal in her individual sparring competition despite being the youngest in the England team and competing against 16 and 17 year olds. In her team event she came away with a draw but unfortunately the team lost out overall. And Junior Boys’ Year 5 pupil, Jude Ashcroft, has won the Regional Mega Final of the UK chess challenge. As the winner, he will now go on to represent the Lancashire region in the U10 age group at the Northern Giga Final in Manchester on 13 July.

17th May 2013

Bolton School Girls’ Division was transformed into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry today as the Year 13 pupils dressed up as characters from Harry Potter to celebrate their last day in school! The teachers got involved too and all costumes were very impressive!

Lots of good sporting news to report - Bolton School are the English Schools’ National U14 Water Polo Champions, completing the double for the School who are also U16 National Champions! They met local rivals, Manchester Grammar School in the final and secured victory in an epic penalty shootout final finishing 5-4 to become Champions of England! The Boys’ Division are also U16 Northern Schools’ Tennis Champions, after Year 10 pair Oliver Harford and Tom Wright beat Manchester Grammar School 10-3 in the final! They were presented with the trophy by the organiser, former Bolton School Chemistry teacher Alan Prince. This was a fitting tribute to the ex-Bolton man who is stepping down this year after 43 years of organising the competition! And three Sixth Form boys managed a very convincing golfing victory over Rossall School in the ISGA Area Plate Final. Sam Towers, Chris Warner and Benito O’Loughlin have now been invited to the National Plate Finals in London on the 26th June.

Budding chemists from the Boys’ Division Sixth Form will represent the North West in the final of a national schools’ chemistry competition after beating off competition from across the region. The boys won the North West regional heat of the Royal Society of Chemistry Schools’ Analyst Competition, held at the University of Central Lancashire. The three chemistry students, Adam Murray, Waqqas Patel and Zubayr Adia triumphed over 10 schools from across Lancashire and will represent the North West region at the prestigious UK final which will take place in Sunderland in June.

Pupils from Thornleigh Salesian College and Harper Green School joined Bolton School Boys’ Division pupils for Physics X - a three day residential trip to Patterdale hall in the Lake District. 33 pupils took part in Physics X, which aimed to engage pupils to think about the physics in exciting outdoor pursuit activities. Pupils took part in a various activities, learning about the physics in Sailing, Archery, Gorge Walking, Climbing and Bushcraft. Pupils also competed in various Physics Challenges including rocket building and accurate timing. The event was funded by the Ogden Trust.

And a fun afternoon aimed at Year 2 girls and their parents was held at Hesketh House this week, with girls from Bolton School's Infant Department (Beech House) and from other schools from across the region taking part. The girls enjoyed a range of activities including a treasure hunt and code cracking, while parents had the chance to meet the Head and teachers and see more of the Junior School.

13 May 2013

An open day at Patterdale Hall, the School’s residential and adventure learning centre on the southern shores of Lake Ullswater in the Lake District, drew in large crowds from across the North at the weekend. Hundreds of adults and children enjoyed tours of the Hall and its extensive grounds, considering it as a venue for outdoor adventures, conferences or corporate bonding and team building, or as a possible family party or wedding venue. They sampled a range of exciting activities, including kayaking, canoeing, archery, fire lighting, orienteering and a low ropes challenge. Patterdale lived up to its reputation for great food with a great barbeque lunch and delicious Patterdale Cream Teas.

A mixed three-piece band, Off Piste, was this year’s winner of Bolton School’s Senior Schools’ Battle of the Bands competition. With this year’s judge being Tim Thomas from Blueprint recording studio in Manchester, the bands were certainly performing to the right audience. In what is always a close call, the judge said he chose Off Piste for their originality, stage presence and the fact that they felt like a unit and performed as such. Money raised on the day will be split between donations to the Fabrice Muamba Defibrillator Fundraising Appeal and the ‘Action for Children’ charity which has a Bolton Branch and supports disadvantaged children.
Congratulations go to the Sixth Form Girls' Athletics Team on becoming Town Athletics Champions for the second successive year. The girls were crowned joint Champions following some impressive individual performances. And Sixth Form students at Bolton School will, once again, enjoy paid summer internships at KPMG, one of the “big four” accounting firms. In what is a unique, tailored programme for a Year 12 girl and boy from the School, students will spend a month of their summer holiday working at KPMG’s Manchester office. They will spend two weeks in the Corporate Finance team and two weeks in the Financial Services Audit department.