14-18 March 2011

Headmistress of the Girls’ Division Mrs Gill Richards has announced her retirement after five and a half years at the head of the School. The new Headmistress of Bolton School Girls' Division will be Miss Sue Hincks, currently Senior Deputy Head of The King's School, Worcester, who will take up the appointment in September 2011. Sue Hincks obtained a First Class Honours Degree in Modern History and Modern Languages, from Magdalen College, Oxford.

Musicians from Canon Slade and Rivington and Blackrod schools joined pupils from Bolton School on Thursday to enjoy a day's music workshop with the Northern Chamber Orchestra's (NCO) Wind Quintet. The quintet spent the early part of the day performing for Junior Girls and Junior Boys at Bolton School and encouraging the pupils to try out different wind instruments. They then performed a 20 minute concert for the 140 Year 7-13 students and spent time talking about their individual instruments including the oboe, the French horn, the bassoon, the flute and the clarinet. After the concert pupils worked in groups to prepare pieces for the Ensembles' Concert in the evening, where they performed outstandingly as a Massed Wind Band to a delighted and appreciative audience.

Also this week Bolton School hosted its annual Maths Challenge day for local Primary Schools to help get young people involved in Maths in a fun way. Twenty two Primary School teams took part in the challenges, which were based around an adventure in space! They had to tackle a series of different mathematic activities on each planet including constructing keys and building power packs for their spaceship, spotting the odd alien out and working out the weight of space rocks. After completing the challenges, pupils were able to build their own rockets! After a morning of brain taxing puzzles, the teams had a well deserved lunch in the school Dining Hall before regrouping to hear the results. This is the second year the event has been held and once again the day was a huge success, becoming another established community event at the school, alongside the SHINE programme and the Language, Sports, Literacy, 5-a-side Football and Science Festivals which Bolton School run for local Primary Schools.

In sport, Year 13 student Alex Davidson will make his debut for rugby league giants, Salford City Reds, in tonight's Engage Super League clash against Hull KR. Alex, who is likely to be on the bench to start with, is fully expected to make his debut as prop; he will find himself up against Hull's recent signing and rugby league legend Willie Mason. And Bolton School Swimmer Emma Saunders has secured her place in the World Youth Championships this summer by putting in a strong performance at the British Gas Championships in Manchester.

And it was red noses all round today as all the Schools did their bit to raise money for Comic Relief. Children at Beech House were delighted when Mario and Luigi, the famous video game characters, dropped into their school to help out with the infants' fundraising. Pupils were hoping to raise in the region of £1,000 during the day, through dressing down, a cake sale and a book and dvd sale. Junior Girls set up stalls selling cakes, raffle tickets to win teddies and a giant lollipop, silly bands and tattoos, and also had their own singing competition, finishing off the day with a whole school comic relief song performance.