From The Head We have had the usual mixed weather as spring has moved to early summer. Sadly a number of sports fixtures have fallen victim to the weather, but most school activities have continued as planned. There was even, unusually, some sunny weather for the Second Year Camp on Dartmoor. As I write our students are fully absorbed with examinations and a brief period of studious calm may be found throughout the School. However, as the end of term approaches, youthful exuberance will erupt with Sports Day, the Science and Technology Festival, the Endeavour programme and the Swimming Gala; all to pack in before the summer holidays begin. We are preparing for a number of developments over the summer break including refurbished medical room provision, a new reception area and, of course, the beginning of the new Theatre and Art Department, together with an expanded Sixth Form Concourse, to replace the old Dobson Theatre. Construction begins on July 11th with a view to completion by next summer term. Please note that access to certain parts of the School will be restricted during the construction period although the normal functions of the School will continue unimpeded. The number of trips that take place remains a very impressive part of the School’s provision with record levels of pupils involved. Over a third of the students were involved in activities over the spring and many of these are reported in this issue, including a very successful ski trip to Italy, exchange and language visits to Mutterstadt, Montpellier, AndalucĂa and Catalonia and various Duke of Edinburgh expeditions in the New Forest and at Lovaton, our base on Dartmoor. Our charity work remains very active with significant numbers involved in the Charity Commission as well as Summer Camp in the New Forest and our participation in the Goedgedacht Project outside Cape Town. Other students will be spending the summer holiday in southern France with the water sports trip and a group of biologists will be conducting field work in the Galapagos and Indonesia, while our cricket squad is touring in Sri Lanka. This has been a very active term but also a rather nostalgic one as we say farewell to a number of staff including the retirement of Mr Fitzpatrick, Mr Long, Mr Walter and Mr Patten after an extraordinary 141 years of combined service to the School. Miss Lindebringhs is moving to Spain and Dr Prowse retires after four years teaching Geography at KES. We thank them, and the other staff who are retiring or moving to other posts, and wish them all well.
A J Thould Head
King Edward VI School Wilton Road . Southampton . Hampshire SO15 5UQ Telephone: 023 8070 4561
www.kes.hants.sch.uk
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Academic Maths success Following the recent Intermediate Maths Challenge, in which twenty-eight KES students received certificates, Rishabh Chugh, Ewan Murphy, Kelvin Xie, Patrick Lotery and Will Atherton were invited into the Olympiad round on the basis of their scores. Kelvin gained a Distinction in this round and the other four students gained a Certificate of Merit. Eleven of the other pupils progressed from the Intermediate Maths Challenge to the Kangaroo follow-on round and William Rose, Mukund Raghavan, Yuqing Chen,
Georgia Stonadge and Jamie He all received a Certificate of Merit. Georgia was also invited to the Summer School for Girls 2016 following her results. This is being held at St Anne’s College and the Mathematical Institute, Oxford in August and gives an opportunity for high-achieving young mathematicians to experience working on intriguing and stimulating mathematics in the company of likeminded individuals.
Linguistics Olympiad results
Science Competition results
This year’s UK Linguistics Olympiad competition saw the School enter teams at both Advanced and Intermediate level. Several students received notable success.
KES students have taken part in numerous Olympiad competitions over the past couple of months with some impressive results.
At Advanced level David Veres and Toby Saer were awarded Gold and Silver respectively, whilst at Intermediate level, Matthew Barber, Ina Cho, Georgia Everest, Henry Marden, Ethan Sharpe, Iona Todd and Eleanor Turner received Gold and Grace Bailey, Isobel Searles and Iolanta Spanner were awarded Silver.
All about Tsunamis! The Geography Society were delighted to welcome Dr Simon Boxall, Lecturer in Ocean and Earth Science at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton, this term. Simon spoke about the role of an oceanographer and helped students to understand the numerous links to Geography. The primary focus of Simon’s talk was on the topic of tsunamis, whereby he shared his extensive knowledge about tsunamis around the world and his experience of monitoring and reporting on them.
Six thousand Upper Sixth students from around the UK took part in the Chemistry Olympiad and those awarded Gold were in the top 7% in the country. Gold awards went to Alex Chamberlain-Clay, Oliver Rose and Eleanor Turner, Silver to Georgia Everest and Bronze to Henry Marden. The results of the Biology Olympiad saw Phoebe Hine, Rhianna Jones, James Leask and Sam Tan all receive Silver awards. Thousands of students from around the country also entered the Physics AS Challenge obtaining some excellent results. David Veres received a Gold award, placing him in the top 5% of students in the UK, George Horner achieved Silver and Bronze went to Georgina Hoile and Claudia Tam.
Les Garçons! This term, Third Year French classes enjoyed a production by the Onatti touring company of the play ‘Les garçons’. It was a fast moving farcical performance with audience participation providing plenty of opportunity for the pupils to use the French that they have learned in class, as well as to sharpen up their listening skills!
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Co-curricular Sixth Form Climbing Upper Sixth climbers enjoyed a fabulous afternoon and evening at Dancing Ledge near Swanage in May. The sun shone and the rock was sticky, although not enough for some as they kept swinging over a cave as the overhang proved too much. A few improved their ‘trad’ climbing techniques practising setting gear while still on the safety of a top rope. The group retired from the cliff with some very tired bodies as the sun was going down.
Easter Duke of Edinburgh Expeditions During the Easter break, KES ran four DofE expeditions, with two visits to Dartmoor, one to the New Forest and one to Snowdonia. These trips covered all three levels of the award and saw ninety-nine students successfully participate and take a step closer to achieving their goals. During their challenge, the students encountered wind, rain, hail and even some sunshine as they walked and camped in the great outdoors.
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Spanish trip to Catalonia Forty-four First and Second Year pupils thoroughly enjoyed the annual trip to Catalonia in May. As an introduction to this fascinating part of Spain, they spent a day in Barcelona, moving from the Ramblas and the gothic part of town to the modern port area. They experienced some of Catalonia’s best-known art and architecture, courtesy of Gaudi and Dali, and explored the city walls and Jewish quarter of the medieval town of Girona. A lot of fun was also had in the pool or on the beach at Tossa de Mar and Roses.
KES Hosts Christian Union Event On 21st April, KES hosted the Inter College Christian Union Event entitled, ‘Rooted’. KES students organised the event and invited Tom Heasman to speak on the ‘Search for Satisfaction’ from John 4. Further guest speakers (Niv Lobo, Karen Jones and Jonny Clifton) all led seminars and sat on a question and answer panel during an exciting evening of teaching, discussion and worship. The event saw fifty-five students from nine different Hampshire colleges attending.
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Sixth Form German exchange with Schifferstadt A new Sixth Form German exchange with the Paul von Denis Gymnasium ran during the last week of the Easter holidays. The itinerary for the week included a morning at the grammar school itself, Frankfurt, the German Film Museum, the beautiful city of Heidelberg, a guided tour of Speyer and a visit to an exhibition on Spies and Secret Agents. The Sixth Form Germanists rounded off the trip with a meal in a Bavarian restaurant and a film at the cinema.
Second Year Camps Over the May bank holiday weekend and during half-term, two separate groups of Second Year students headed down to Dartmoor for the two annual Second Year camps. During their stay the students enjoyed a range of team building activities and raft racing on the open moor, cooking outdoors on trangias and a climbing excursion.
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Cordoba Trip Twenty-nine members of the Third and Fourth Years, accompanied by three members of staff, spent five days during the Easter holidays in the Andalusian region of Southern Spain. They spent their first afternoon getting their bearings in the city centre before meeting their host families, whilst the following day’s excursion took them to Granada for an amazing visit to the Alhambra fortress where they visited the Nasrid palaces and the palace of Carlos V. During their stay they also visited the main sites within Córdoba itself and, on the final day, visited Seville. The students had a chance to experience real Spanish local life and practise their Spanish by staying with host families.
Robotics Competition At the beginning of May, a KES robotics team travelled to the Student Robotics Competition, a national competition with fifty competing Sixth Form schools and colleges. The competition is run by Bristol and Southampton Universities with primary sponsorship from Motorola. The team put in hundreds of hours of time to design and develop the fully automated robot to enter the competition which consisted of playing a game inside an arena. They faced numerous technical issues and managed to solve many of them, but were unfortunately knocked out in the first round. However, they learned much from the experience and are set to build on this robot for next year’s competition.
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Third Year German exchange with IGS Mutterstadt Nine Third Year Germanists took part in the away leg of the Third Year German exchange with IGS Mutterstadt over the Easter holidays. The full programme of activities included soccer-golf, a morning’s climbing at the Speyer climbing centre, a day in school, a visit to the Technology Museum and IMAX cinema, an excursion to Heidelberg Castle and the biggest wine barrel in the world, and a final farewell party. KES students welcomed their exchange partners to the UK in May.
Cactus Club visit to Lovaton During the last weekend in April, the Cactus Club set up base camp at Lovaton from where they visited the Eden Project in Cornwall. Sir Tim Smit’s conversion of a chalk pit, into an environment in which cacti and other plants and birds can live in harmony, and Ralph Northcutt’s passion of a lifetime; to bring the greatest collection of succulents under one enormous greenhouse roof, greatly impressed the group.
Reaching The Summit of Everest George Skinner completed an Everest cycle challenge this term. This involved climbing 100 times up a very steep hill, covering over 270km and ascending more than 9,000 metres in the process. The challenge took him nineteen hours during which time he was supported by Mr Miller, Mrs Burnett and a number of KES students in order to raise over £1,000 for Help the Heroes.
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Montpellier: les manifs et un temps variable! This year’s Sixth Form trip to Montpellier proved unusually eventful. The group arrived to find the peaceful southern town of Montpellier disrupted by student demonstrations and this meant that the words for riot police and tear gas were added to the list of new vocabulary! Nevertheless, KES students still managed to make excellent progress in their French lessons and succeeded in eating large amounts of ‘crêpes’. Other activities included: Nîmes during a thunderstorm, ‘pétanque’ in the hot sunshine, a ‘jeu de pistes’ in the medieval town and a rugby match on the beach!
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Duke of Edinburgh Diamond Celebrations 2016 is the 60th anniversary of the Duke of Edinburgh Award and in May, two KES Gold award students, Samara Jones of the Sixth Form and Ali Diaper, former pupil, were invited to Buckingham Palace to receive their awards and meet Sophie, the Countess of Wessex. It was a great occasion with representatives from hundreds of schools from across the country. The following week, as part of these celebrations, the School held its own D of E Diamond Challenge. Students and staff abseiled through the roof of the Main Hall in a charity fundraising event.
Senior Team Barbecue On 4th May, the School held a barbecue at Wellington to thank the senior team (including Heads of School, Prepositors, Heads of Houses and those holding other senior positions) for their work throughout the year. Everyone enjoyed a beautiful spring evening which included croquet on the lawn outside the pavilion.
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Greenpower 2016 Sunday 18th April saw the end of the Easter holidays and the start of the KES Greenpower team’s 2016 campaign and a record thirteen students travelled to Goodwood for the season’s opening test session. The weather was ideal for a good day’s testing with light winds blowing up the start/ finish straight, and blue skies. The day got off to a wobbly start with a battery problem on the very first lap, but the more experienced members of the team carried out a thorough inspection before swapping the batteries and sending the car back out onto the circuit. The remainder of the test sessions passed without incident allowing every member of the team to drive, as well as practise multiple pit stops which proved key to the success of the team last season. The team competed at the regional rounds in June finishing in 5th place and hopefully qualifying for the international finals in October.
Au marché In May, KES Third and Fourth Years hosted a group of pupils from Sherborne House School and helped them as they prepared for their forthcoming trip to France. They practised buying food and drink from a ‘French market’ and revised how to ask for a variety of food.
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Ski Trip 2016 This year’s ski trip to the picturesque village of Clavière in Italy was extremely successful and enjoyed by over forty pupils. The Hotel Clari provided excellent accommodation and the party enjoyed six excellent days of skiing, even though the last two days were hampered by low cloud, rain, snow and poor visibility. KES pupils had daily ski school lessons with their Italian instructors, venturing into the neighbouring resort of Montgenèvre in the latter part of the week. There was a range of evening entertainment including the ski instructors’ end of season ski show, a karaoke session, a quiz evening and a skidoo ride up the mountain.
KES Chess Championship The school phase of the Delancey UK Chess challenge took place last term and twenty KES students qualified for the Hampshire Megafinal that took place in May. The School Championship was won by James Lesniak who beat all of his opponents in the competition to win the trophy whilst Chris Lotery secured the Hampshire Championship title at U15 level.
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Creative Arts Gold certificate for Music Department The Music Department is celebrating being awarded the ISM’s (Incorporated Society of Musicians) Gold certificate in music in 2016. It has been awarded for the excellent results in GCSE Music examinations last year. More than 20% of the Fifth Year cohort at KES achieved an A*-C in GCSE Music, which placed the School 37th in 5,000 Schools across England. The data highlights the reach of music within the School and whilst the ISM award was for schools with A*- C grades, the whole KES Music cohort produced 100% A*/A grades.
Youth Jazz Orchestra success Congratulations to Joe Winter who has been offered the position of drummer for the Southampton Youth Jazz Orchestra.
Music Competition 2016 On Wednesday 15th June, following a wonderful day of top quality music making, and over sixty entries, the results of the KES Music Competition 2016 were as follows:
Grade I-III Winner: Anoushka Umranikar Runner up: Huw Dunlop Grade IV-VI Winner: Linus Etchingham Runners up: Erik Hillman and Alex Hopkins-Manceri Grade VII+ Winner: Eleanor Dunlop Runners up: Chris Lotery and Aelfred Hillman This year’s competition was adjudicated by professional violinist and OE Avril Freemantle.
Trombone success Following a recent audition at the end of last term, Second Year pupil, Erik Hillman, has been offered a place to study trombone at the Royal Academy of Music, Junior Department. Erik was invited to audition following a recent National Children’s Orchestra residential course and will now travel to London every Saturday for a full day of music making with some of the country’s leading musicians.
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Alice in Wonderland This much loved classic tale by Lewis Carroll, adapted for stage by Simon Reade, provided an entertaining, thrilling and, at times, bonkers show for audiences in June. Pupils in the Lower School performed this delightful piece that was directed and choreographed by the KES Drama and Dance Department.
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Sport U13s reach finals of National Hockey Championships In May, the U13 boys’ hockey team travelled to Nottingham for the National Hockey Finals having qualified 2nd in the south. They were unlucky to suffer a 3-1 defeat against Harrogate Grammar School in the first game and, in the second game, they lost 4-0 to eventual finalists Dean Close, although again the score line was not a fair reflection of the game. Against Ratcliffe College from Nottingham they started to play the level of hockey of which they are capable, but the game finished as a 2-2 draw, even though they were ahead for much of the game and gained much confidence. They completed the group games with a 2-0 victory over Felsted Prep School to finish 4th in the group and move into the play-off for 7th and 8th place. In the play-off they beat Trent College 2-0 to finish 7th in the country.
Development London Squad Marathon selection success Congratulation to Alice Ridley, James Harden, Tom CroftBaker, Matthew Bell and James Lander who have all been selected into their respective Regional Performance Centre Training Squads.
Congratulations to Sixth Former, Hannah Smith, and Miss Enfield for completing the London marathon this year. Miss Enfield was running to raise funds for Summer Camp and was aiming for a time under 4 hours and 30 minutes. She achieved this with a time of 4 hours, 29 minutes and 59 seconds.
Football victory Fred Davies concluded his season with BCW Saints U16 football squad in the Nerf Junior Premier League this spring. The team came away from the Final Super 8s as U16 league winners for the 2015/16 season.
Captaining Wales Michael Gorry recently captained the Wales Exiles U17 rugby team during a Home Nations Tournament leading them to victory.
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Hockey tour to Holland During the Easter break, the boys’ 1st XI hockey team travelled to The Hague in Holland to take part in the 20th JIPHT Tournament. This tournament attracts teams from around the world and, in 2016, welcomed over thirty boys’ and girls’ teams from a variety of countries. The KES side played teams from Holland, Poland and Scotland to progress to the play-offs for 3rd and 4th place. In this match they again faced the Dutch side to whom they had lost in the pool rounds but, after a number of brilliant saves from goalkeeper James Thomson and three goals from Louis Kolliari, the team secured a 5-2 victory finishing in 3rd place. They also received the ‘fair play’ prize for the tournament.
Sailing success Henry Beardsall has achieved a place on the Royal Yachting Association UK Junior Sailing Squad. Henry’s selection for this squad recognises his potential to progress within the British Youth Sailing Team, with the aim of winning selection for one of the UK Youth Squads or beyond into the Olympic Development programmes. Following a four day selection process over the bank holiday Elizabeth Beardsall has also qualified for the GBR Development Team and will be competing at the French National Championships in July. She remains the highest ranked girl in her age group.
U15s perform well in National Cup
Competing in horse trials
Congratulations to the U15 cricket side who reached the final sixteen teams of the National Cup by beating Marlborough College and Cheltenham College but, unfortunately, their cup run came to an end in defeat to King’s Taunton. Each of the other age group teams have also currently reached the semi-finals of the county cups.
Hattie Smith competed at this year’s recently renamed Mitsubishi Motors Cup Series and Championship. This competition offers ‘amateur’ riders the chance to qualify and compete at one of the world’s most prestigious venues – The Mitsubishi Motors Badminton Horse Trials. Hattie, and her horse Finn, finished 18th out of over 110 competitors.
Athletes qualify for county track finals Congratulations to the First and Third Year boys’ athletics teams who both won their respective qualifying heats earlier this term. Their success means that they progress to the Hampshire County Final.
Science and Technology Festival The Science and Technology Festival spanned three days at the end of June and offered a variety of talks and activities with something for everyone.
During the day pupils from all years experienced everything from a mobile planetarium, laser show, forensics workshop and working wind tunnel to a visit from the Hampshire Air Ambulance and a science fancy dress competition. Sixty pupils from Wordsworth Primary School also came to build and test water-powered rockets whilst pupils from local prep schools presented their science investigations in ‘The Big Question’.
King Edward VI School Wilton Road . Southampton . Hampshire SO15 5UQ Telephone: 023 8070 4561 . www.kes.hants.sch.uk
The evenings offered a full schedule of lectures by visiting speakers and included ‘Science v Religion’ from Professor Keith Fox, ‘Mapping the Universe’ from Professor Will Percival and adventure scientist Huw James who talked about the science of survival and even gave pupils, parents and teachers the opportunity to feast on mealworms and other savoury bugs! The final day ended with a giant solar system rolling around the school field, incredible psychology, ‘Magic Science’ and astronaut shows and, in the evening, ‘Dr Dance’ discussing the psychology of dance moves. This rounded off an eclectic, educational and entertaining festival.