Year 11

Year 11 was most certainly a step-up from previous years, but nothing like what we expected. The year seemed to travel faster than sound, with more and more teachers talking about exams and results and organisation - which a few people were certainly lacking in to begin with! What seemed like days after beginning in September, we unzip clear, regulation pencil cases, stuffed to the brim with black biros, and pencils, and four protractors, just in case three spontaneously shatter in the exam hall. We fill in forms - Sixth Form, A Levels, coursework authentications, preparing for the startling fact that upper school doesn’t last a lifetime.

When the classroom doors flew open, however, a more entertaining environment took hold. From Just Dance at Christmas, to endless games of Jenga in the forms - being competitive is part of our daily routine, we assure you. Fuelled by hot chocolate from the machine that was more often out of order than in it, we threw ourselves into the school life we had missed over the past two years, while half-termly celebration assemblies in the theatre gave each of us the chance to congratulate the rest of the year on the hard work, time, and effort spent within the classroom walls.

Within school, we relaxed with extracurricular activities, interspersed with subject clinics, the gentle nag of exams rooted in our minds. In a year of budding geographers, historians, actors, and designers, time outside of school has been equally exciting. The History department took us back through the history of health on a trip to the Thackray Museum of Medicine, while Geographers explored the Christmas Markets in Manchester, and dramatists found themselves immersed in productions of ‘Six’ and ‘A Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime’. Year 11 has been intense, but standing at the end of the year, we’ve got to say wholeheartedly that it was worth every second.

Lola Rigby & Charlotte Lowe