The Official Magazine of St. Birinus School

Ed Vaizey visit

“On Your Marks” Maths Challenge

South Africa Link School Visit

Celebrate

St. Birinus School, Mereland Road,Didcot OX11 8AZ

01235 814444reception@st-birinus.oxon.sch.uk

www.st-birinus.org.uk

“Inspiring Excellence”

Message from the Editor...

Not only is this the first edition of Celebrate of the academic year, it is also my first as Editor, so I hope I turn out to be a suitable successor to Mrs Wilson (who we would like to extend our warmest congratulations to on the recent birth of her baby!)

Once again, we have a magazine packed with news from St Birinus, and for this we must thank the hard work of the Press Club (see below). We’re also looking for stories from past pupils, so if you used to attend St Birinus (or know someone who did!) please get in touch.

The school has now got a Twitter account too; you can see the newsfeed on the homepage of our website and we’d love it for people to follow us to keep up to date with our news. You can find the details on the back page of Celebrate.

Mr Brown, Editor

National and InternationalLink School VisitWe were honoured to host a week long visit from Felicia Gqokoda (pictured below), the Deputy Head of Sakhululeka School, our South Africa Link School. She had a packed week of meeting staff and observ-ing school life, but managed to squeeze in an interview on her last day.

She discussed the differences between the lessons offered between our schools. For example, they do not have any Music or Psychology les-sons and PE is part of their PSHE lessons, but they have a sophisticated set-up for Com-merce Studies, which is split into three separate classes (Ac-counting, Business Studies and Economics).

Later, she talked of the benefits that all the donations from St Birinus have made to their school, especially after their

devastating fire; now that they have more books for read-ing, the pupils’ vocabulary has improved, they use the new science and technology equip-ment daily and uniforms have been given to those who were most needy. She also told us how her students fought to keep their school open after the fire because they enjoyed the teaching methods used and wanted to work with the teachers to achieve positive results.

She also mentioned how we have a good culture of work at the school, with everyone rushing to their lessons when the bell sounds, and approves of the School Council. She plans to take many of these ideas back to her own school.

Ms Gqokoda was interviewed by Liam Hancock, Chris Gadd,

Joe Guntrip and Tom Lawrence

This edition of Celebrate was put together with the hard work of the following members of the Press Club:

Ala’Eddin BayaaLee Besley

Morgan DaviesChris GaddJoe Guntrip

Marc HackettLiam HancockHarry HastingsTom Lawrence

Matthew O’Dea

If you’d like to help with the next edition, please get in touch with Mr Brown who can let you know when the Press Club will be meeting next.

Earlier this year, James Harrison from the Sixth Form, was selected to carry the Olympic Torch through a stretch of Kidlington. James was then kind enough to come to SBS twice to show other pupils his torch. Below is James’ personal account of his experience.

“Around December 2011 I received a phone call from the Torch Relay Team asking me if I wanted to be a Torch Bearer. At first I was pretty sure it was a joke, but after a con-versation with the team member he assured me that I would be running with the Olympic Flame. I was de-lighted, as I’m sure the other 7,999 carriers were! When I found out the date and where I would be carrying the flame I became even more excit-ed, being so relieved that I would be carrying it so close to my hometown!

I had been nominated to carry the flame by my brother; he too was a member of St Birinus School and was diagnosed with cancer in 2001. Since then I have done a lot of fundraising for a charity called O.S.C.A.R. which offers sup-port to children and relatives that have had brain or spinal tumours.

The day finally came around, getting up considerably early to make sure I had everything I needed and mainly because I couldn’t sleep with the thoughts “What if I drop it? What if it goes out? What if I fall over?” swimming around my head a mil-lion times. But eventually I got to where I needed to be and met some of the other inspirational people who would be carrying the flame before me. We then hopped onto a bus and were placed in our start-ing points. The 10 minutes I stood there were the most surreal min-utes of my life, being asked by peo-ple for photographs, telling people why I was carrying the flame and generally being wished good luck.

Eventually it was my time, a ‘kiss’ of torches had connected and my torch was lit! I was tapped on the shoul-der by one of the security team and was told that we “were going for a little run”. I honestly can’t write what happened next because I can’t remember; all I could do was run, smile and wave to the thousands of people that had come out to see the flame. This added two things - more pressure to not fall over! But mainly an enormous sense of pride; to final-

ly see first-hand what the Olympics does, bringing everyone together, seeing so many smiles on young and old faces. That’s what the Olympics means most to me, not the fact that people win and lose, but the idea that people have come together.

When I look back over this event in my life, I think I will al-ways remember that day as one of the best days of my life.”

James is pictured on the front cover.

Olympic Torch Bearer

On Your MarksOn the 13th and 14th June, 41 year 8 boys took part in the On Your Marks Maths Challenge. This was set up by Mathletics to celebrate the 2012

Olympics, with 20,000 pupils across the UK taking part. As a school we achieved 3rd place overall, with in-dividual pupils doing exceptionally well too: Nathan Hawkes came 9th out of all secondary school pupils, with Keiran Agg (12th), Matthew Slade (16th) and Ben Carless (58th) not far behind.

As a result, we were invited to the House of Lords to pick up our trophy. As I could only take one pupil with me, I decided to do a raffle so that everyone who took part would have a chance of going. To make it reflect the effort the boys made, I gave each

of them a ticket for every 1000 points that they achieved - some boys had one ticket whilst others had up to 13! Mr Richards came along to a cel-ebration event and picked out Ben’s winning ticket.

On the 27th June we went to the House of Lords where Lord Knight of Weymouth proudly presented Ben the trophy on behalf of the school.

Mrs Geary-Andrews andHarry Hastings (8.4)

Ben is pictured with Lord Knight of Weymouth and the trophy.

Enterprise DayOn the 29th June, Key Stage 3 pu-pils took part in an Enterprise Day. The challenge was to use their maths and science skills to plan a major sporting event in the local area. They had to think about how it would excite, inspire and showcase local and national talent.

Each team chose a sport and a loca-tion, and then had to work out what resources, facilities and equipment would be needed for the event. They also had to work on lowering the carbon footprint of the specta-

tors attending and design an app for the ticket buyers as a souvenir of their day. The teams had to pro-vide enough evidence to convince a panel of judges that their event was accessible, sustainable, and that it would leave a lasting legacy for the local area.

The day was a version of the Olympic Challenge event organised by STEM, and the pupils’ efforts will contrib-ute to completing the Bronze Crest Award from the British Science As-sociation.

Matthew O’Dea (10.2)

WimbledonMr Tamblin and Mr Tomline accompanied the St Birinus Tennis Squads on their annual visit to the Wimbledon cham-pionships last Summer. They watched new British hopeful Heather Watson win her 2nd round match on Court 2 and then saw Men’s 8th seed Janko Tipsarevic win his 1st round match. The boys all had the opportunity to watch some tennis on centre court includ-ing Novak Djokovic. A great day with some fantastic strawber-ries and cream!

Harry Hastings (8.4)and Mr Tamblin

MazamaMembers of the Mazama Saxo-phone Quartet came to school on the 4th July. They brought their soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophones to play to many Gifted & Talented pupils. The name “Mazama” comes from a volcano which is now a crater with a lake in it. Just before coming to SBS they had played in Oxford and then were going to St Andrews, Scotland soon after for a big concert.

The professional Quartet comes from America, but is in the UK touring a program called Pubs, Churches and Don-keys. They have played across the globe, including at North American Saxophone Alliance conferences, a tour of Mexico and at the China Music Trade Show in Shanghai.

Lee Besley (8.3)and Mr Walker

SwimmingHarry James (6th Form) has been swimming competitively for about 7 years. Last term Harry qualified for the Youth Nationals in Sheffield in both the 100m and 200m breast-stroke events - his qualifying time was 1 min 7 sec-onds, which put him in 4th place in the country going into the competition.

He has also been selected to go to Australia on the 20th December to compete in the

New South Wales Youth Olympics as an individual and as part of a relay team. We have asked him to keep a diary with photos so that he can share these with us when he returns to college; he will be spend-ing Christmas Day on the beach and visiting the Blue Mountains as well

as training hard!

This is a once in a life-time opportunity for Harry and we wish him luck in his competitive swimming career and look forward to hear-ing his news.

Dr Zabierek

New BuildingsWelcome back! While you have been away St Birinus School has been busy working, working to pro-duce some fantastic new buildings. Firstly, a large extension has been added to our dining hall, with an opening ceremony planned during September or October. The new extension offers 50-60 new seats and large doors opening out to a picnic area outside. Here the walls have been decorated with a mural created by students during Alterna-tive Education Week with a time-

line showing different people and events throughout the 75 years the school has been here. Also there is another new picnic area situated between the Maths block and the history ‘L’ block. This one has been designed to have a canopy covering benches which students can eat at.

wing-length measurements to identify the sex of the mosquito, identification of genetically altered mosquitoes and com-parisons of different mosquito species. This was a fantastic opportunity for our year 12s to see some ground-breaking research and be able to learn a little bit more about genetic engineering ready for their A2 course next year.

Dr Hill

Sports DayThe annual Sports Day took place at the end of last term. Since most of the term had featured rain, there were fears of a washout, but with beautiful blue skies the day was a great success!

As usual, the field events took place

in the morning. All events were well attended by participants, with a notable performance coming from Eima Maede from Year 10 in the Tri-ple Jump.

Track events were hotly contested in the afternoon, but by the end of the day Spartan House had tri-umphed, winning the overall House Sports Cup for 2011-12. The full

sports results are as follows:

1st: Spartan, 29 points2nd: Athenian, 18 points3rd: Corinthian, 16 points4th: Trojan, 14 points

Harry Hastings (8.4), Mr Tamblinand Mr Brown

Photo by Marc Hackett (11.3)

Oxitec VisitOn the 25th and 27th July, 35 Year 12 biologists went to Ox-itec in Milton Park. Oxitec is a small biotech company that aims to control insects that spread disease and damage crops around the world. The students were given an intro-ductory talk by Dr Derric Nim-mo about his work with mos-quito species. In addition to the talk, students were able to have a go at some of the prac-tical techniques that the com-pany use. This included taking

This project was first thought of by a combination of the governing body, Student Council and of course Mr Rich-ards himself. The school has used money left to us by Mr John Richards when he passed away; both his children came to this school, so Mr Richards wanted it to go towards im-proving life here for students.

Marc Hackett (11.3)

Year 7 Band Last term a year 7 band played their first gig. The band members were William Fothergill (guitar), Harry Suafin (guitar), Lewis Heinz (piano and vocals) and Dan Ow-ens (drums). They practised every day during lunch 2 before the gig. I went to watch; before they started it was a little crazy but when they started to play it was great! They hope to start writing their own songs soon. They would like to say thank you to Mrs Almgill.

Harry Hastings (8.4)

Ed Vaizey On the 5th July, St Birinus and Sixth Form Councillors had the honour of meeting the Didcot and Wantage MP and Minister for Cul-ture, Ed Vaizey. Ed Vaizey came to St Birinus to talk about what is happening in Didcot.

Around 12:30, Ed Vaizey entered the main school building and was greeted by many staff and students before being taken to the school hall where members of the School Council were waiting. He was then shown a video presentation that had been made for the Mary Por-tas Project to do with improving Didcot. The video came 5th in the competition, but the community still received money for further im-provement and redevelopments

to the town and its shops. Next, Ed Vaizey explained what he does as an MP (working in the “Ministry of Fun”) and how it is like having four different jobs. He mentioned that he also helps the town itself, and that his priorities are to help peo-ple who are poor, unfortunate and in need of urgent support.

At 1pm, the students began asking a range of questions to Ed Vaizey about his work and issues relat-ing to Didcot. For example, he was asked for his opinion on University fees, which he replied “students are really put off by the increase of fees, so some are not going to Uni-versity but to work in apprentice-ships”. He was also asked about his views on military cuts, responding that “it is a tough decision”. Other topics discussed included the rise of academies, post office closures,

safety in schools, the Olympics’ ef-fect on Didcot and why he became an MP, with all questions coming from the students.

After the questions, the MP thanked the people who were in-volved in the meeting and gave hopes to everyone to have a good future. Then there were extra questions during a small break be-fore everyone was dismissed.

Mr Duxbury, co-organiser of the event, said “Ed Vaizey spoke enter-tainingly about his background...then was grilled by our School Councillors. He commented on the quality of the questions and the impeccable behaviour of the boys. All in all, it was a very enjoy-able and successful event”.

Morgan Davies (10.5)

Gravity Racers On the 8th July a group of year 10 en-gineering students took part in the Gravity Racers com-petition at Richards Castle near Ludlow. The boys raced cars that nearly 60 pupils in year 10 had helped to build. The teams managed to achieve 5th, 8th and 13th place, which was an exceptional result

considering they were competing against professionals.

Mr Brown

House Competition!If you’re in Year 7, you could win 10 House points by sending us a short article (no more than 300 words) about any aspect of SBS’s history.

You could interview a teacher and ask them what has changed whilst they’ve worked here. Or you could ask an older sibling or parent who used to come to St Birinus and find out how the school used to be.

You could focus on a specific topic, for example what new buildings there are, or what lessons are now on offer that didn’t used to be. You could even find an old photo of the school and describe it!

Whatever you write about, make sure you submit it to Mrs Taylor by 12th October for your chance to win!

Over the Summer we had the usual A-Level and GCSE results days. Once again, student results were ex-tremely high and everyone was delighted to see their hard work pay off.

To help celebrate, many of our A-Level students were interviewed by BBC Radio Oxford and broadcast later that day, whilst Pete Read, the Mayor of Didcot, came and congratulated many of the GCSE students a week later at their results. Mr Read was especially excited to see so many Year 11 pupils signing up to stay on at the 6th Form College and called St Birinus “a school of choice in the area.”

Of the 174 students who sat their A2 exams this summer:

• 99.4% of pupils achieved the pass rate• 73% of all entries gained A*-C grades• 44% of all entries gained A*-B grades• 99% of all entries gained A*-E grades• 21% of all entries gained A*-A grades• 4% of all entries gained A* grades

‘These results represent excellent achievement for our students and continue the trend of Didcot Sixth Form College returning strong results at A-Level year on year – well done to all students and staff! We are very proud of all of our students and wish them all the best for their futures.’

Alwyn Richards

Of the 204 pupils who sat their GCSE exams this summer:

• 59% of all entries gained 5A*-C grades including English and Maths

• 70% of all entries gained 5A*-C grades• 95% of all entries gained 5A*-G grades• 17 students gained 7 or more A/A* grades• 26 of the 28 Year 10 students who took their

GCSE Mathematics early gained A/A* grades

‘These are very pleasing results – and I am delighted for all of the students who worked so hard. A big well done to all! This success continues the mo-mentum built up from last year’s record results and means that we will be raising the bar still further for next year’s Year 11 students.’

Alwyn Richards

A-Level Results GCSE Results

Summer Exam Success

Weightlifting James Harrison (front cover) isn’t the only pupil from St Birinus to be involved in the Olympics this year; several members of the school’s incredibly successful Weightlifting Club have also played their part. Mr Karlsson, the Weightlifting Club’s head coach, came and talked about some of the club’s latest successes and their involvement in London 2012.

The club had a recent match in Spain against various European regional clubs (including teams from Cat-alonia, Brandenburg and Lille). Despite tough com-petition, the team from St Birinus came 2nd. Ben Watson - past Birinus pupil and current British Sen-ior Champion - made a guest appearance. Ben holds the current British record on the Snatch (146kg) and has recently rejoined St Birinus whilst training for the Commonwealth Games. He was also selected to help load the bar at the Olympic Weightlifting competitions and so played a vital role during the Games.

Josh Cox, who recently left the Sixth Form, was chosen to be another Torch Bearer for the Olympic Flame. He carried it through Norwich. Josh is also a member of the Olympic extended squad and, along with James Bywater, was also a Games Maker, sup-porting the athletes who competed at London 2012.

This is just a small amount of the great successes our Weightlifting Club has had and so should be something St Birinus is incredibly proud of!

Mr Brown and Mr Karlsson

Top Left: squad members (top row) Robert Green, Ben Watson, (bottom row) Josh Cox, Eddie

Chambers and Alex JohnsonTo the Left: Josh Cox with his Olympic Torch

More...? As you can see it was a busy end to the year last term; so much so that we’ve not been able to cover everything in one edition of Cel-ebrate! A quick mention should be

made of other activities that took place, including the annual Hag-bourne BBQ, the Primary Interna-tional Day, the South Oxfordshire School Games (where we were placed 2nd overall!) Celebration Assemblies, the Birinus Bake-Off and, of course, Alternative Edu-

cation Week. But never fear, as all these and more have been re-ported on our website so why not log on and discover more about the successes of all our pupils. You should also follow us on Twitter for the most up-to-date news from St Birinus!

www.st-birinus-school.org.uk @StBirinusSchool