Dear Parents Fortunately, we have avoided the worst of the weather in this part of the country and most acvies here have gone ahead as planned. I connue to be impressed by how hard many pupils work and how many commitments they juggle, which will serve as good preparaon for life beyond school. As always, thank you for your unsnng support for the School and your children. FEBRUARY 2015 HEADMASTER’S LETTER T0 PARENTS C H I G W E L L S C H O O L
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Dear ParentsFortunately, we have avoided the worst of the weather in this part of the country and most activities here have gone ahead as planned. I continue to be impressed by how hard many pupils work and how many commitments they juggle, which will serve as good preparation for life beyond school. As always, thank you for your unstinting support for the School and your children.
FEBRUARY 2015
HEADMASTER’S LETTER
T0 PARENTSCHIGWELL SCHOOL
Contents
Page 1 UniversitiesHolidays
Page 2 Investor ChallengeGrade ChangesSurvey
Page 3 Drama
Page 4 Drama
Page 5 Festival of the Spoken Word
Page 6 Festival of the Spoken WordCareers
Page 7 MusicOxford Debating CompetitionBiology OlympiadPaying School Fee
Page 8 Netball
Page 9 Hockey
Page 10 Hockey
Page 11 Summer 2015 Public Exams Parking Staff NewsCricket Course News From Chigwell The School Shop Bad Weather
Page 12 Finally
Page 13 Chaplain
Universities Middle Sixth students have been
receiving offers of university places from
a variety of prestigious institutions. Four
of these hope to be taking up their places
at Cambridge University later in the year:
Nathan Edwards (maths at Trinity Hall),
Helena Tunks (classics, Newnham),
Robyn Schaffer (classics, Downing) and
Gopal Kambo (modern and medieval
languages - French and Spanish, St
John’s). Each of these students has
studied at Chigwell School for at least
seven years and we will follow their
future progress with interest.
Holidays Could I please remind all families that any
request to take children out of school
during term time should be made in
writing and any planned absence does
need to be authorised. We do ask that
pupils are not withdrawn during term
time unless there are very exceptional
circumstances. It is important that they
have maximum attendance in order to
engage fully with the curriculum.
1
2
Grade Changes Very occasionally, when Heads of
Department review public examination
results, they gain the impression that
pupils have not been given the results
that they deserve. This was the case last
summer in art where Middle Sixth
Students all achieved A or A* grades
whilst Lower Sixth seemed to have AS
results that were lower than expected.
We reviewed the results carefully and
followed the examination board appeal
processes, and ultimately the AS grades
were changed so that the seven students
achieved two A grades and five Bs.
Meanwhile, the English department
picked up some anomalous results in the
marking of iGCSE English Literature. We
requested some re-marks which resulted
in grade changes and on appeal, the
examination board agreed to review the
marking of the whole cohort for one unit.
This led to twelve grade changes so that
two thirds of the year group achieved at
least an A grade in the subject.
Investor ChallengeFour teams of economics students took part in the IFS Student Investor Challenge this year.
This competition has over 100,000 students from 2,500 schools taking part and it involves
teams investing £100,000 of virtual money in the stock market. Students need to keep
portfolios healthy by reading and forecasting market information provided online to identify
shares and make judgments about when to buy and sell in order to make a profit.
Congratulations go to Aimee Selling, Tom Parsons, Ethan Rose and Joe Klein who beat the
other three Chigwell teams and made £7,811 profit in two months. This also put their portfolio
in the top 10% of performers nationally. We would like to enter more teams next year and
encourage non-economics students to participate; look out for details in September.
SurveyI hope you have received a link to the parental survey that we sent out earlier this week.
Please complete this and return by Monday 23rd February. We value your comments.
3
DramaThere have been a number of trips to the
theatre this term. The Upper Fifth and
Lower Sixth went off to the West End to
see “The Play That Goes Wrong” and
thoroughly enjoyed this ingenious slap
stick comedy. The Middle Sixth visited the
Lyric Hammersmith to see Frantic
Assembly’s highly acclaimed production of
Shakespeare’s “Othello”, which was an
innovative performance that provoked
much discussion on the tube home.
The Lower Fifth were the first to perform
this term with their GCSE Scripted
performances, a suite of five, thirty minute
shows that were performed after school.
This veritable festival of drama included a
range of modern comedies and serious
dramas, two of which were written by our
very own Miss Janey Foster and Mr Joe
Maingot. Candidates offered acting, light,
sound, costume and make up for
assessment making this a highly
professional evening.
The English play was a fabulous success
with star turns from Jordan Stack,
Lawrence Brooks, Jusden Halabi, Odette
Clark and Kayden Chahal. The Crucible is a
notoriously difficult play to stage with fast-
paced scenes featuring throughout but the
mostly LVI English cohort performed with
aplomb and real engagement with this A2
English Literature coursework text. It is
really pleasing to see non drama students
take to the stage as well, including Rhea
Gupta, Rajas Chitnis, Meha Valera and
Diana Mircea which demonstrates the
spread of talent and enthusiasm for drama
across the Sixth Form.
4
Drama
5
Festival of theSpoken Word Compèred with panache by Harry
Benjamin, Will Lord and Tim Lovett, the
2015 Festival was performed to a
capacity audience. The competition was
particularly keen in the areas of serious
readings and monologues with many
fine and impressive performances.
Annabel O’Reilly won the serious
reading with “Badly Chosen Lover”
while the runner up was James
Mulholland with “Explaining the Plot of
“Blade Runner” to my Mother who has
Alzheimer’s”. The title of the poem was
worth an award of its own!
Zoe Wright was judged the better
humorous reading with Spike Milligan’s
“The ABC” while in the original writing
section Charlotte James-Pajwani impressed
with her piece entitled “Shadowless” with
Freddie Cooper-Rendu second with the
moving “I Cried Real Tears”.
The highly contested monologues left
the adjudicators, Mrs Evelyn Gibbs and
Dr Glen Winfield, with some difficult
decisions but Shanaiya Pithiya with
“Vicious Circles” won the section with
Will Lord’s “Amazing Jesus” second. If
the monologue category was hard to
6
Festival of theSpoken Wordjudge, the ‘more than one’ category