Senior School Newsletter February 2018
For Year 8’s first Classics trip, we
went to the British Museum to
see the Roman and Greek
artefacts. We saw an eclectic mix
of objects ranging from a
terracotta rattle for a child in the
shape of a pig, a terracotta figure
of a ram and blown glass jars. My
group took particular interest in
a bronze statue of a goose, which
we said would be perfect for any
Roman’s atrium, and another
bronze statue this time of a
‘dancing’ baby (as we interpreted
it) thinking it would make the
ideal garden statue for when
Caecilius est in horto.
After entertaining ourselves
more than intended with our
‘interesting’ interior design
choices, we went to see the
Parthenon exhibit. We especially
enjoyed it when Miss Patel
suggested that we recreate the
West Pediment, since there were
five figures and five in our group,
realising that life apparently does
imitate art and lifting our
pre‐lunch spirits.
After lunch, we made our way to
the National Gallery. When we
arrived, we were shown around
the Gallery to view three
paintings in particular. Bacchus
and Ariadne was an informative
representation of Ariadne and
the heartache she experienced
after Theseus left her on the
Island of Naxos. The Marquise de
Seignelay and Two of her Sons
painted the year after her first
husband’s death was revealed as
the equivalent of a modern
dating profile, and displays the
Marquise as the water deity
Thetis and her children as
Achilles and Cupid. The
Judgement of Paris told the tale
of the competition that was held
between the three goddesses
Athena, Aphrodite and Hera to
see who was the most beautiful.
It was amazing to see these
intricate paintings and to hear
about the stories that they tell.
Thank you to the Classics
Department for a very
interesting and fun trip that our
whole year thoroughly enjoyed.
Year 8 Classics Trip Harriet Riddiough and Nancy Saville Sneath
Britain’s First Astronaut Russ Ives
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covered all aspects of her space
experience, from launch to wash‐
room facilities, eliciting wows
through to giggles from her
audience. Helen then fielded a
huge range of questions and only
the need to return to Earth and
our classes stopped us from
spending the rest of the morning
finding more to ask.
Finishing off on a selfie‐stick
moment with the whole school,
Helen left us all cheering!
NHEHS was extremely proud to
welcome Helen Sharman, CMG,
OBE, who in 1991 became the
first British astronaut when she
launched on a Soyuz spacecraft
and also became the first woman
to visit the Mir Space Station.
The entire Senior School were
joined by Junior School girls from
Year 5, who have been working
on a project about Helen, as she
captivated us with a wonderful
Presentation. This covered her
life and career, from university,
her work in the confectionery
industry, her astronaut training in
the former Soviet Union, right
through to her time on the space
station.
Weaving biology, chemistry,
physics and psychology through
her talk, she also showed us
amazing imagery, provided by
NASA and Helen herself, which
26 GCSE artists from Year 10 visited the Tate
Britain gallery to see the Rachel Whiteread
exhibition as a reference for their GCSE
coursework units as well as to explore the gallery
for other artist reference ideas.
We were particularly intrigued by the very yellow
installation ‘ Echoes’ made by Marguerite Humeau
which incorporated sound and sculpture with very
eerie and otherworldly effects!
Year 10 at Tate Britain Elisa Cagnino
Westminster‐based, free‐market
led, think tank, The Adam Smith
Institute, for a day of thought
provoking lectures.
Dr Madsen Pirie, Sam Dumitriu,
Philip Salter, Matt Kilcoyne,
Sophie Jarvis and Daniel Pryor of
The Adam Smith Institute spoke
on subjects as diverse as The
Economics of Uber, the prospects
for trade after Brexit, the
importance of entrepreneurship
and possible ways of regulating
sex work. They also for took part
in very lively question and answer
sessions which followed their
talks.
Economics Conference Shane McComb
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Robotics Finals After winning their regional heat our FIRST
Lego Robotics team are off to the national
finals in Bristol on 24 February
Young Enterprise Our Young Enterprise teams set out their stalls
at the Old Spitalfields Market Trade Fair
Cream or Jam First? Visiting students from Beijing 80 enjoy a
farewell English tea
NHEHS sixth form students of
both economics and politics were
joined by students from Dormer
Wells High School, The Globe
Academy, Acton High School, City
Academy, St Benedict’s School
and Wimbledon High School as
the Economics Department
welcomed speakers from
U15 Cricket Medallists Sophie Nicholas
The NHEHS U15 Cricket Team
finished in third place at the Lady
Taverners U15 Tournament,
gaining a bronze medal. The
team narrowly lost out to
St Paul’s Girls’ School for the
Silver medal place by just 2
runs! Well done to all girls
who were part of the team:
Vicky Newton, Nikola
Kuzmanovic, Sophie Claxton,
Eleanor Ritchie (Captain),
Annika Malhotra, Anaiya
Thakore, Charlotte Derrick,
Amelia Emerson, Mia
Mutadich, Amelia Samtani and
Evie Bryant.
Time to Start Thinking Ahead Catherine Parr
Flossie Morris is through to the
final of the GDST Chrystall Prize
for Public Speaking following her
semi final round at Northwood
College where she competed
developed online tool called the
‘The Career Investigator’.
This psychometric test presents
the girls with a wide range of
questions. Their responses allow
the tool to identify each girls’
interests, strengths and values.
Each pupil then immediately
received her personalised career
investigator report via e mail.
Armed with this new
information they headed to
their first NHEHS Careers
Convention with confidence and
a real sense of purpose!
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Highgate U13 Hockey The Highgate U13 tournament saw NHEHS play
against teams from Emmanuel, St Augustine’s,
Harrodian and Highgate. Despite the weather it
was a great morning and we enjoyed the
chance to play some long back to back matches
each of which lasted 20 minutes.
We lost our first game to Harrodian 1‐0 –
perhaps we were not quite awake at this stage.
However, we then went on to beat Emmanuel
4‐0 and St Augustine’s 2‐1. We then faced
Highgate in a game we needed to win to
secure the tournament’s runners‐up spot. This
was a fabulous game in which we
dominated play and NHEHS parents who’d
come along to support us were engrossed in
the game and thoroughly enjoying watching it.
Then a slip of concentration. We failed to get
back quickly enough to defend a free hit. The
ball was pushed down through the middle of
the pitch and suddenly there was a
counterattack underway against us.
Frustratingly we gave away a goal meaning we
finished in third place.
Despite this, lots was learnt by the girls in
preparation for the U13 Middlesex Hockey
Tournament that this team will play in at the
end of February.
Annette Greenslade
Chrystall Prize Finalist
against speakers from Norwich
High School, South Hampstead
and Northwood The final will
take place here at NHEHS on
9 March.
This term Year 9 have had their
first exciting taste of the world of
careers. As part of a PSHEE
programme they spent 20
intense minutes using a newly
Languages on Stage Simon Piesse
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On Friday 26th and Monday 29th
January, Onatti Productions
visited NHEHS and performed
plays in French, German and
Spanish to our Year 9 students.
Onatti is a specialist company
producing plays acted by native
La Casa Encantada Betsy Gooing and Georgie Condie
enjoyable element to the
performance.
As you can see from the article
below the girls really enjoyed the
intriguing storylines, the
humorous acting and the
opportunity to talk to the actors
afterwards; we were also
delighted to host girls from Ellen
Wilkinson School in North Ealing.
Well done to all those who took to
the stage themselves, in what was
an excellent opportunity to
develop their linguistic
confidence. Thank you to
Ms Barbosa for masterminding
this event!
speakers and specially written for
audiences of language learners.
Their plays also contain some
carefully devised audience
participation which brings a
particularly humorous and
When we first walked into the
main Hall we were immediately
extremely intrigued and excited
by the very interesting set.
participation, which made it even
more entertaining.
Overall, the play allowed us to
widen our knowledge of the
language and understand more
everyday vocabulary. Afterwards,
we spoke to the actors about
different places in Spain and
asked them questions about their
characters.
En nuestra opinión, creemos que
fue muy divertido y gracioso. Los
actores fueron tan amistosos
When the play began most us
were slightly confused as the
actors spoke very quickly,
however we quickly picked it up
and followed along.
The story was about two people
finding a haunted house yet it
was surprisingly funny, especially
when they sang Despacito. The
actors played many different
characters, for example a ghost, a
zombie and a police man. Also,
there was some audience
Maths Fest 2018 Sharuka Ravichandran, Elena Tybulewicz, Karen Ramzy Yacoub,
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On Tuesday 6th February Year 12
mathematicians congregated
outside the Piccadilly Theatre,
ready for a day of lectures by
some of the maths department’s
favourite mathematicians.
Secret Codes
The first lecture was entitled
“Enigma and the Secret World of
Code Breaking” delivered by
Ms Critcher’s favourite
mathematician, James Grime.
Taking a hypothetical scenario
where we were attempting to
break into a locked box, he took
us through several ways of
unlocking this hypothetical box.
The first was the Caesar Shift,
named after Julius Caesar, where
each letter in the alphabet was
shifted across by a certain
number of letters. This code
would give you 25 different keys
making it rather easy to decode.
Next he showed us a harder
code, based on substitution,
which meant that all the letters
were completely muddled up
and this gave a possible
26! (factorial) different keys
which is 400 million billion billion
(4x10^26). Grime went on to
explain that if every person in
the world tried one key every
second, it would take us 2 billion
years to break the code, making
this a much better method for
coding. However, this type of
code can be broken by looking at
the most common letters in the
message.
Having brought a real World War
II enigma machine with him,
James showed us how they work
and opened it up to show us the
rotas, lights and the specific
instructions that had to be used
to break codes. He briefly
mentioned Bletchley Park, which
at the time was called Station X,
and Alan Turing and his Bombe
Machine. James Grime
concluded his talk by explaining
how internet encryption works.
modelled for human behaviour.
By finding answers to: how long
it takes people to walk 10m,
explaining crowd density, and
accounting for the three main
areas in which people could be
during a festival (listening to
bands, waiting for food or using
the toilet), Aoife explored how
humans move in crowds and how
different variables affect mass
flow. Of course, some of our
favourite graphs such as the
normal distribution made an
appearance!
Dealing from the Bottom
Rob Eastway posed a question –
‘if a pack of cards is shuffled,
where is the second black queen
most likely to be?’ You would
assume that it would have an
equal chance of being in every
position in the pack, except for
the first, but that isn’t the case.
At first, consider the first black
queen. The probability of it being
first is 2/52. Then the probability
of it being the second card is
2/51 x 50/52 and the third:
The Maths of Crowd Flow
Aoife Hunt talked us through ‘The
Shape of Escape’, or the maths of
crowd flow. Working in places
such as Wembley, the O2,
Glastonbury, Reading and the
Olympics, Aoife explained how
mass evacuation can be
2/51 x 49/52 and so on. This
shows that it is most likely to be
the top card. To work out where
the second card is most likely to
be, simply turn the pack over. So,
the second queen is most likely
to be the last card in the pack.
Round Like a Circle
Ben Sparks, a mathematician and
musician, explained the maths
behind circles and spirals. He
talked about how Pythagoras and
Hippasus were involved in the
discovery of irrational numbers
and how irrational numbers are
vital in everyday life (in the
making of a sheet of A4 paper for
example) as well as complex
patterns such as spirals, which he
demonstrated with various
animations. To finish an
enlightening lecture, Ben then
sang a song called ‘The Windmills
of Your Mind’ and played his
guitar as well!
Domestic Programming
We learnt about "domestic
programming" with Seb Lee‐
Delisle, who showed us the
basics of programming ‐ all with‐
out us struggling through
complicated maths! If you have
ever thought about a career in
programming, you should be
happy to know that most of the
time all you will need is a little
trigonometry. He made sure to
show us dome particle
simulations using JavaScript. We
even got to see the "most
awesome particle effect", the
code used to project lasers
onto the Gateshead building
among many others. If you
have ever played games such
as Extreme Pamplona or even
Nev's Jam Buster, games that
provided most of the
entertainment in our early
years, you will surely be
pleased to know that the
"domestic programmer" who
we met was the one who
programmed them.
The Winning Ticket
The day of exciting lectures
ended with Hannah Fry’s
‘Totally Random!’ talk.
Everyone in the audience was
given a raffle ticket with a
different four‐digit number on
it. We then participated in a
series of activities together, to
generate the winning three‐
digit number. First, we all had
to text Hannah one number
between 0 and 9. 7 was the
number that was the most
popular amongst our audience.
However, was this random? It
turns out, if you ask someone to
choose a number between 0 and
9, it is likely that they will pick 7!
So, we all decided that the first
number of the winning raffle
ticket would be 7. Other numbers
often crop up much more than
one might think. Hannah
demonstrated this to us by using
a variety of different newspapers,
and experiments. She asked
several members of the audience
to select five different numbers
from a newspaper. She predicted
from her research that 1 would
be the most common single digit,
and she was right! Thus, we
decided that one of the numbers
in our winning raffle ticket would
be 1.Hannah also looked at what
randomness really is, and how to
tell whether someone is faking a
set of results by using the idea of
randomness and probability. She
helped us understand these
concepts by showing us an
experiment with the heads and
tails of coins, and scientific
pendulums. After the long and
exciting run of experiments, we
finally came to our magic raffle
ticket number, which ended
which ended up being 7041.
Much to our disappointment, no
one at NHEHS won!
Overall, we all thoroughly
enjoyed this informative day of
lectures!
7
Maths Fest 2018 Phyllis Keen, Philippa Jones, Iva Grujic and Anika Haran
Year 8 at Hampton Court Kitty Scales
found at and linked to Hampton
Court Palace, including a small
piece of crockery which Hannah
Boynes and Charlotte Pons,
through their careful deductions,
correctly identified as part of a
chamber pot.
Year 8 enjoyed a trip to Hampton
Court Palace to complement their
studies of the Tudor Period. It
was very atmospheric as we
toured Henry VIII’s state
apartments, taking in the Great
Hall with its expansive tapestries
on the walls and hammer and
beam ceiling, all adorned with
stag antlers. We saw the chapel
where Henry and Catherine Parr
were married, and got to marvel
at its painted ceiling, ornately
decorated with golden orbs and
the words Mon Dieu et mon droit.
We also enjoyed a warming
roaring fire in Henry VIII’s royal
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kitchens, which would have been
ready to roast large pieces of
meat on spits, infused with herbs
gathered from the grounds.
As well as our Tudors focus we
explored some of the later
Georgian parts of the Palace
including William and Mary’s
more homely apartments and
their chocolate kitchen.
A real highlight of the day was the
work shop led by a very
charismatic Dan who explored the
nature of evidence with us. This
culminated in the opportunity to
investigate several artefacts
Middlesex Cross‐Country On Thursday, 25 January a team of 17 girls from
NHEHS went to Harrow School to represent
Ealing in the Middlesex Cross Country
Championships. This is the largest team we
have ever had selected from NHEHS to
represent the borough at this level. All our girls
put in great performances on the day over a
very tough and muddy course. This is a rapidly
improving team and, running with growing
confidence and strength, their efforts were
rewarded when nearly all finished in the top
third of their respective races.
Particular congratulations to Jasmine Palmer
who finished 14th out of over 70 girls in her age
group and has been asked to be a reserve for
Middlesex County at the English Schools Cross
Country Championships in March and also to
Cameron Thomas and Megan Burns who
finished 9th and 10th respectively out of 70
runners in their category.
Lauren Munro Hall
9
Middlesex Cricket Champions Sophie Nicholas
On Tuesday, 30th January, the
U12 Cricket Team travelled to
Lord’s for the Middlesex U12
Indoor Cricket Tournament. It is
more than 20 years since NHEHS
has entered this competition
and the girls have been training
every Friday after school since
September in preparation.
They played superbly on the
day, learning and building as a
team, game by game. After
playing in the pool stages the
girls made it through to the semi
‐finals, where they played
against a very competitive team
from St Paul’s Girls’ School.
Some outstanding batting from
the NHEHS team saw them take
the win 67‐48, confounding
those who were not expecting
to see NHEHS make the final in
this their first year of
competition after so many
years.
In the final the girls then met
Godolphin and Latymer’s
A team: the team who have won
this tournament and been
county champions for the last 7
years. NHEHS won the toss and
fielded first. High energy, self‐
belief and team work saw the
girls keep the opposition’s score
down to just 22 runs in their
innings, with nearly all members
of the NHEHS team making
catches. The NHEHS girls then
batted strongly, and were able
to take the game 63 runs to 22!
This means NHEHS U12 are
County Champions 2018!
Many congratulations to all of
the team, who all played a huge
part in the day: Eleanor Leathem
(Captain), Caitlin Thompson,
Nur Mohiuddin, Josephine
Carter, Sephera Forrester, Milla
Freeman, Sophia Barboni, E
leanor Leathem, Louise Owen
and Kavnett Dhillon.
Inspiring Each Other Natalie Burns Spence
National Finalists Our U14 Netball Team have qualified for the
national finals after a seven‐match, southeast
regional heat which took place on a freezing
Sunday in Rainham, Kent.
The girls played tremendously, beating schools
with noted netballing prowess including
Guildford High School, Forest School, Highworth
Grammar, Rochester Grammar and Bancrofts. In
total, out of their seven matches, the girls won
five matches, drew one and lost one. This meant
that at the end of the day they were tied with
local west London rivals Godolphin and Latymer
who had drawn with NHEHS in their match. A
slightly better goal difference saw Godolphin
secure top place but finishing in second place
means the NHEHS team is safely, and most
deservedly, through to the national finals on
17 March.
Reaching a national final is a great achievement
and officially makes this team one of the best 12
for their age group in the whole country!
Congratulations Sophie Claxton (Captain),
Isabella Holmes (Vice Captain), Mia Mutadich,
Isobel Thornton, Natasha Jones, Amelia Samtani,
Jasmine Saha, Jasmine Palmer, Edie Elwes, Ria
Datar Jones, Grace Kenyon and Bea Farrell.
Sophie Nicholas
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marketing agency Ogilvy &
Mather. We then continued with
a fantastic discussion by a
brilliant panel of alumnae: Anna
Allatt (NHEHS 1996) Digital
Senior Broadcast Journalist, BBC
News, Rachel Aroesti (NHEHS
2008) Writer and Editor at
The Guardian, Sophie Cater
(NHEHS 2007) Head of Digital
Content at KNect365 Finance,
Amabel Polglase (NHEHS 1986)
Advertising and Brand Consultant
and Holly Smith (NHEHS 2008),
Senior Account Director at
Mischief PR.
This was followed by a lively
question and answer session
which could have continued for
another hour but instead
everyone moved through to a
drinks reception which provided
the opportunity for some useful
networking.
We were delighted to welcome
alumnae from the fields of
Communications, PR, Media,
Journalism and Broadcast to the
inaugural event in our Inspiring
Each Other series which offers
alumnae the opportunity to
network and connect with each
other within their professional
fields.
As well as a large number of our
own NHEHS alumnae, we were
also delighted to welcome
London‐based alumnae from
other GDST schools including
South Hampstead High School,
Portsmouth High School and
Wimbledon High.
The event began with some
inspirational words from Cheryl
Giovannoni, CEO of the GDST and
previously of advertising and
Head of the Internet of Things and Head of Cloud Catherine Parr
11
The2018 Parents’ Guild Careers
Convention was yet again a first
class event. Over 80 advisors
from many different professions
kindly gave up their evening to
chat to over 200 eager girls from
Years 9 to 13. Both advisors and
girls found the event inspiring
and conversations were going
strong still at 9.30pm!
We encouraged the girls to select
jobs that they thought they
might want to try, plus some
they might never have heard of.
So, armed with brochures,
biscuits and a floor plan the girls
negotiated their way around the
busy Hall and quizzed the
advisors about the nature of
their work and the skills that they
needed in order to succeed in
their profession.
Our girls realise that they need to
have more than just great grades
to stand out and differentiate
themselves. They need other
capabilities such as resilience,
positive attitude, communication
skills, problem solving, critical
thinking, coordinating with
others, people management and
emotional intelligence. This very
special evening is a unique
opportunity to begin to think
about how they can develop
these skills and prepare them‐
selves for the world after school
and university.
At 8pm the first of the two
‘Instacram’ pop up sessions
started. Girls flocked into the
drama studio to hear 7 people
describe their careers in
60 seconds. The girls heard from
advisors as diverse as the Deputy
Editor of Clash Magazine and the
Head of the International
Foundation at the University of
London.
Another highlight of the evening
was the ‘Digitime ‘panel in which
six women described their roles
at the cutting edge of
development in new or emerging
digital roles. As they explained to
the audience, they are now doing
jobs that have not existed before
and that are certainly not related
to the subjects that they studied
at university! Heads of the
Internet of Things and Cloud, a
data scientist and digital
marketing leaders provided the
girls with a fresh and unusual
insight into how the arrival of
technology at speed is changing
the nature of work, skills and the
roles they might be filling in the
future.
Thank you to all the parents, Old
Girls and friends of the school
who acted as advisors and to the
Parents’ Guild Careers
Committee for the tremendous
work and commitment that
makes this fabulous evening
possible.
Visitors from Beijing 80 School
This term we once again
welcomed students and
teachers from Beijing 80 School
to spend two weeks at NHEHS
and take part in lessons and
daily school life. Each girl was
assigned a buddy to help her
find her classes, negotiate the
dining room and answer any
questions and everyone helped
to make our visitors very
welcome. The group also had a
series of special English classes,
did some sightseeing, went on a
trip to Chinatown and the
British Museum, taught us
traditional dance skills and
spent some of their time
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Ealing Champions Badminton Club has been well‐attended since
the start of the school year, and club members
have made considerable progress in their skills
and understanding of the game.
Four Year 7 pupils from Badminton Club were
selected to represent the school at the Ealing
Borough Championships at Dormers Wells
Leisure Centre, in Southall.
Each round consisted of 2 singles and one
doubles match, and the team went into the final
round with a hundred percent success rate. In
the final round, Dormers Wells ‘A’ Team and
NHEHS were neck and neck, having each won a
singles match, with just the doubles left to
decide the outcome of the tournament. Keeping
cool and calm under pressure, NHEHS delivered
a swift series of clears and drop shots to win the
necessary 21 points.
Congratulations to Tara Al‐Haddad, Sephera
Forrester, Nyla Kete and Venus Rahman for
becoming U12 Borough Champions, and worthy
winners of their Gold medals.
Jennie Scott
at weekends being hosted by
NHEHS families who very kindly
provided our visitors with a
glimpse of family life in London.
Finally, we rounded off their
time in London with a
certificate award ceremony and
a traditional English tea party .
We hugely enjoyed having the
students and their teachers
with us and are delighted that
both they and our students
have enjoyed the experience of
spending time together,
practising their English or
Mandarin and making new
friends. We look forward to the
next opportunity to welcome
students from Beijing 80.
GDST Young Musician of the Year Imogen Barter and Miranda Simmons
13
Following qualifying heats at
school we arrived at Howells
School Llandaff on 7th February
to take part in the GDST Young
Musician of the Year
competition. We were met with
the rather unusual sight of a
giant blue dog watching us from
the roof. We also soon
discovered that NHEHS was not
alone in owning a terracotta
warrior. This warrior however
was far superior being 6ft tall.
Along with a second giant dog
discovered later in our stay this
was one of the many photo
opportunities we enjoyed
during our stay at Howells.
We were warmly greeted by the
Head Mistress and an
outrageous number of daffodils
which ensured we knew for
certain we were in Wales. We
then split into two groups, with
the vocalists performing in the
vocal heats and the
instrumentalists rehearsing the
piece commissioned by the GDST
for the competition. The
instrumentalists then went to visit
the Royal Welsh College of Music
and Drama (RWCMD). which gave
an insight into what conservatoire
life might be like. The
instrumentalists then returned to
be reunited with the vocalists for
the announcement of the vocal
finalists. We then were treated to a
delicious dinner followed by an
evening of bowling with our new
friends.
The next day was the instrumental
heats while the vocalists worked
on singing the commissioned
composition and took a tour of the
RWCMD. The instrumental finalists
were then announced and all the
students rehearsed the
commissioned piece.
That evening was the highlight of
the trip as we first performed the
commissioned piece, ‘In the Clouds
of Falling Foam’ in front of an
audience of teachers, parents and
representatives of the GDST. We
were then able to sit back and
enjoy the incredible performances
by the finalists who were all
deserving of their place in the final.
There was then a drinks reception
followed by the results of the
competition and a gala dinner. The
dinner took place in the ‘Great
Hall’, the same place where we had
performed earlier, which looked as
if it was from Harry Potter with its
panelled walls, murals and stained
glass windows. We enjoyed a meal
of traditional Welsh dishes before
heading back to our hotel for one
final night in Wales.
We really enjoyed our experience
in Wales and the chance to
perform in front of such esteemed
judges. It was amazing to meet so
many other like‐minded musicians
and find out just how high the
standard is in the GDST. Thank you
to Miss Goodsell for taking us to
this competition, it has been such
an honour to represent our school
and has been such a memorable
experience for both of us.