Year 8 Boys Football

The year 8 boys football team headed to John Warner for the first match in the district competition.

The team played well and represented St Mary’s fantastically, despite not winning the game. With no recognised goalkeeper in the squad, Samuel, Aren and Bobby showed strong team spirit by volunteering to take a stint in between ‘the sticks’. You would have been hard pressed to know that this wasn’t their normal position based on their performances! The team will be looking to build on their performance in the next game and are already keen to get back to training next Tuesday. Squad – Amir, Santiago, Kerem, Andrew, Matthew, Bobby, Mason, Ahmed, Ozan, Natan, Samuel, Aren, Luca, Max

Player of the match – Samuel

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Gatsby Benchmarks for Careers Education and Guidance

We received confirmation on 1 December that we have all eight of the Gatsby Benchmarks for “world class careers provision in education”.

We are proud of this achievement and the statement it makes about our high-quality careers and guidance programme. This is a result of the broad ranging programme of lessons in PSHE, events such as the careers fair and mock interviews, outside speakers, and superb work experience we organise for the students at St Mary’s. It is this evidence that led the recent Ofsted inspection team to say Personal Development and Curriculum are GOOD and that “The school prepares pupils well to make decisions about their next steps in employment, education and training… They receive careers guidance that helps them shape their career goals.”

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Mayoral Debate Team 2023

On Wednesday 29th November a group of four of our KS3 students, participated in the annual Mayoral Debate Competition at Broxbourne Council Chambers, delivering their speech on what they want the Borough of Broxbourne to be like in another fifty years time and how they should achieve this.

They competed against other local schools and presented their speech to a packed audience of parents & carers, the Mayor and Councillors. Whilst on this occasion, they were placed third, all of the students spoke extremely eloquently, passionately and with clear understanding of the topic and showed excellent leadership skills. We are all very proud of their achievement in working hard as a team on this project and producing what was a quality speech together. Very well done to Gabriella, Isaac, Megan and Mason.

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Year 7/8 Girls’ Football

Well done to the Year 7/8 girls’ football team who played their first match in a friendly against Goffs Academy.

With the majority of the team having never played in a competitive football match before, they showed great determination, excellent sportsmanship and were fantastic representatives for the school. Congratulations to all the team: Itohan, Kheira, Ruby, Michaela, Kayla, Filomena, Andra, Shumaila, Eva, Sofia, Frankie, Selin, Alexia, Rihanna and Yasmin.

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Modern Foreign Languages

Last week a group of Year 9 French and Spanish students participated in the National Language Competition organised by GCHQ, one of the UK’s intelligence agencies.

 

The competition aimed to inspire language learning in schools from around the UK. Over the course of five days, students worked in teams of four to score points by tackling a variety of fun, language-themed challenges hosted on an online platform. The event saw students decoding words and phrases involving lesser known languages and even some made up languages! The challenges really got the students thinking and were very tough but they enjoyed the experience. Team “Great kind barnacle” with Talliah, Jaden, Anusha and Umut scored the highest within St Mary’s …congratulations!!

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St Mary’s Chefs

Yr7s culminating their skills on dough making, by developing the basic scone to a Pizza Scone; the top baker for this activity was Katie.

Yr10 are continuing learning about different methods of cooking. Recently they made Croque Monsieur using the method of grilling along with making their own white sauce and the top students were Harrison and Austin. They also learned about, and developed skills in, baking. Students made cakes using the creaming method to produce Pineapple Upside Down and Orange cakes-Top Bakers Cristiano and Eve.

We are wondering when these fabulously talented students will be on the Great British Bake Off!

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Sixth Form Open Evening

The school hosted over 120 students and their families at the 6th form Open Evening on Wednesday 15th November.

This was a chance for young people in Y11 here and at other schools to discuss the many subjects we offer at A level and Level 3 BTEC and to hear about 6th form life. In his address, the Head Teacher Mr Simms gave a brief overview of the recent Ofsted report and reminded visitors that we were graded GOOD for 6th form provision in 2023, but also in 2019 and that we have a long heritage of quality and success in the 6th form tthat goes back well over five years. Mrs. Mathews then gave detail about the 6th form, its benefits and successes as well as the responsibilities that come with being a student at that level. She detailed the importance of 6th form study and success at this level in the current climate and explained what we do to help young people be the success they want to be. Y13 student Sylvia then spoke eloquently of her experiences in the 6th form.

There is still time to apply so if you are interested click the link () – you have until Friday 8 December to do this and remember there is stiff competition for places at our 6th form!

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Passport to Science – Festival of Learning

In an exciting foray into the realm of secondary school science, the bright minds of Bonneygrove Primary School recently engaged in a series of captivating lessons at St Mary’s that delved into the realms of chromatography, electro-magnets, and acids and alkalis.