The Winning and the Taking Part

After the excitement of the 500 Days to the Olympics countdown and Comic Relief, last week was dominated by Year 10 exams and preparation for the Year 7 themed curriculum workshops which began yesterday. The latter coincided with the termly visit of our School Improvement Partner Nick Williams, Headteacher of the Brit School in Croydon. Nick was able to drop in on four different workshops and was highly impressed with the levels of enthusiasm and engagement of students.

Each Year 7 student has had the opportunity to choose from a menu of different workshops covering history, geography, the arts and technology over the next two weeks building up to their final Global Towns assignment — a 21st century ‘scrapbook´ showcasing their knowledge of the culture, demography and history of different countries. I am looking forward to leading my own workshop on Renaissance Venice this morning as a small contribution to this exciting programme. Aim: to get every Year 7 enthused to visit this most beautiful of European cities!

Year 10 took their exams seriously and the majority heeded the advice given to them by Year 11 through an assembly last month — the most powerful strand of which was ‘you´ve always got less time than you think you have.´ The Year 11s particularly emphasised the need to get coursework out of the way in Year 10 in order to concentrate on learning and preparing for the actual exams in Year 11, and
highlighted ICT as a ‘must do´ area which could profitably be completed early. Many students still don´t realise that they are required to have an ICT qualification in order to complete their college courses; our Art Mentor Sophia Tarin confirmed this by pointing out that she is now having to spend half a day a week doing this in Year 12 at Richmond College — when she would much rather be doing art!

It´s been a good week for sport too, and many congratulations to our Key Stage 3 boys´ Trampolining Team who won the Borough Championship held at LEH last Friday for the second time in three years. Congratulations to Josh Dillon, Louis Grace, Tom Goggin and George Dietrich for bringing home the trophy. Another highlight, at least from a student point of view, was the staff vs. students fixtures for Comic Relief. The girls triumphed in the netball, with Migena Dollani leading a determined all-age team to a crushing 6-1 victory, whilst the football went right to the wire until a thrilling last minute goal from Ricky Sayer clinched it for the boys. Ms. Nuttall´s determined coaching and leadership in both games were nonetheless impressive as she urged her grown-up boys and girls to keep playing and not give up.  Staff were however rewarded for their efforts by winning the volleyball game!

All good fun, and lots of money was raised through these and other activities, the highlight (or lowlight depending on your point of view...) being the sponsored leg waxing of Mr. Molin, Team Leader for Wordsworth College. If you can bear it, watch the clip on Hampton Academy´s YouTube channel — it sounds like Mr. Finch (as chief wax-wielder) and Ms. O´Brien were enjoying it rather more than the victim! But it was certainly worthwhile from a charitable point of view, with over £400 pledged in sponsorship. Our young fundraisers — step forward Shefali Pandhu in Year 8, latest Jack Petchey Award winner — are certainly becoming ever more innovative in their schemes for supporting those less fortunate than themselves. Over £1200 has already been raised and I am still running into small boys with large buckets going round the base groups determined to extract every pledged penny from staff and students.

Modesty forbids me to mention the result of the hugely successful Hampton Academy Association Quiz night, but I must thank our indefatigable hard working parents for laying on such a splendid evening; and the Rotary Club of Teddington and the Hamptons for the brilliant curry. Ravinder and his team cooked up a storm for well over a hundred quizzers and helpers; delicious! It looks as though another four figure sum has been raised for the students of Hampton Academy. Lovely to see the ‘Class of 2007´ in the form of Sam, Alex and Jess competing on a weekend home from university (Aberdeen, Durham and Aberystwyth respectively) — even if the prize they won wasn´t perhaps the one they´d hoped for...!

Finally, we wish Tristan and Anjali the best of luck in the Jack
Petchey Speak Out final; congratulate Ben Croucher of Year 7 on his brilliant rugby success as part of Teddington Rugby Club and Annabelle Johnson for singing for her namesake Boris at the opening of Twickenham Riverside, and also on the theme of Boris, applaud our five young citizens who visited City Hall to see the capital´s democracy in action and wrote an excellent report for our website — where you can read all about these and other exploits. And don´t forget you can also follow us on Twitter!

Sue Demont