20th April 2012

The Easter Holidays have flown by at Bolton School and the Summer Term is upon us once again.
In conjunction with local marketing company Silk Group, we are proud to announce the opening of our new online store. The new store boasts an exciting range of quality Bolton School branded items - whether you are a young pupil from Beech House or whether you left the School 50 years ago, the site promises something for everyone! Please visit: http://www.boltonschoolmerchandise.org/. All profits made from the enterprise will go into the School's bursary fund.
We can also announce that tickets for the Beech House Spring Ball are now available, costing £50 each with money raised going to kiDs of Bolton, a charity set up By Kevin Davies to help disadvantaged children in and around Bolton. The event will take place at the Reebok Stadium in the Lion of Vienna Suite on Saturday 12 May at 7pm. Download a ticket order form. Opportunities are also available for sponsoring aspects of the evening and advertising within the programme and we also need donations of raffle prizes. To support the ball in this way complete this form.
Good news for Rachel Flanders, who left Bolton School in 2009, and is set to carry the Olympic flame when it is processed through Bolton on Thursday 31 May and Friday 1 June! During her time at the School, Rachel, aged just 17 at the time, became the youngest person ever to row across the Atlantic Ocean. The torch comes to Bolton on Thursday, May 31, as part of its 70 day journey around the UK and will stay overnight before moving on to the next town. After travelling through the town the flame will arrive at the town hall before continuing on to Queens Park, where Bolton is hosting a free evening ticketed celebration. The torch will leave Bolton on June 1, just after 6am, from Victoria Square and will travel on to Chorley New Road, go down Scholes Bank in Horwich before arriving in Chorley at approximately 7.20am. Fingers crossed that Rachel will get to carry it past her old school!
And you may have seen another Old Girl, Professor Jenny Clack, on BBC4's Beautiful Minds programme on Wednesday 11 April. Jenny is a professor at Cambridge University a pioneering palaeontologist who made evolutionary history by discovering how we on earth went from water to land dwellers. The programme was the first in a series of three programmes where three influential scientists explain how their thoughts and discoveries have revolutionised the way the world is perceived.
And it’s not just the Old Girls in the limelight, Old Boy Chris Fairweather, aged 21, rowed in number 2 position for the ISIS (Oxford) crew that won this year's reserves' boat race. Chris left Bolton School in 2009 and is still an undergraduate at Oxford. The ISIS crew gradually pulled away during the course of the race and won with a comfortable margin of 5 lengths. Their finishing time set a course record for the reserves race and was equal to the third fastest time the course has been completed in the history of the race.
Pupils from Years 7, 8 and 9 in the Girls' Division have shown real imagination and flair in their entries to a Maths Photography Competition run by the Oxford University Press (OUP). The girls were asked to submit a picture that somehow related to something mathematical and were allowed to use up to 20 words in their caption. You can see many of their submissions on the OUP site here.