31 January - 4 February 2011

Stunning New Sixth Form Centre to Provide Best of Both Worlds
Students and staff at Bolton School are celebrating this week , having had planning permission granted by Bolton Council for the building of a new £7m Sixth Form Centre in the heart of our Chorley New Road campus. Architecturally, the glass and sandstone elliptical building promises to provide a stunning contrast to the School's Neo-Gothic façade and turrets, and the new centre will link to the main building with two-storey glazed walkways. It will provide independence for over 400 Sixth Form students and will include an ICT suite, seminar rooms for project work and tutorial sessions, quiet study areas, a common room, a refectory café area, exhibition space and the main school reception.

More exciting news as we announce that Nigel Short, the UK's most renowned chess player, is to return to Bolton School to help celebrate one hundred years of competitive chess at the school. Having left the independent day school in 1981 as a child prodigy and the youngest International Chess Master in history, he went on to become Britain's strongest Chess Grandmaster of the twentieth century. He returns on Friday 18 February to talk to pupils about his meteoric rise in the chess world and about his recollections of life at Bolton School. Following his talk, he will simultaneously play thirty of the School's best junior chess players in the Great Hall.

Sport has again been on the agenda as Year 13 pupil Sam Higgins represented the country as part of the Independent Schools Barbarians U18 National rugby squad, in an impressive first match against Irish Exiles. The Barbarians beat the Irish Exiles 55 points to 17 in their first game of the season with Sam scoring 'an excellent breakaway try'. A team of five Bolton School boys beat off the competition to become the U14s badminton County Champions, and are now set to represent Greater Manchester in the regional round in March, with the prospect of making the final of the National School Championships, and girls and boys from both the junior and senior schools of Bolton School met with success at the Northern Semi Final of the English Schools' Biathlon event. An outstanding team effort from the Year 6 boys meant they finished first overall and automatically qualify for the National final in London in March. The rest of our teams and individual entrants also gave excellent performances and now wait to find out if they have made it through.

And the SHINE: Serious Fun on Saturdays dinner was a huge success as forty one pupils from five Bolton primary schools and their proud parents enjoyed their "graduation" at Bolton School, celebrating the completion of the programme.