Education

Learning by heart

Wellies are an essential part of the uniform at Rydal Penrhos Pre-School… Creating happy, confident and resilient children

and young adults has never been more important for schools – a mission we take very seriously here at Rydal Penrhos where children start from as young as two years old.

We are fast approaching a time when our new Pre-School children will never have known a time without COVID-19. Most of their life so far may have been spent with people wearing masks and they may potentially have had some or all the normal activities small children take part in restricted in some way or another.

Rydal Penrhos Pre-School is the perfect setting for young children, an education provider, not a nursery, an environment where it is all about helping the children to learn. An environment focused on building a child’s self-esteem and confidence by making sure they feel safe and happy. We

see each child as an individual with their own passions and challenges, and we treat them accordingly.

It is honestly hard to imagine a more joyful place to begin a lifetime of education than at Rydal Penrhos Pre-School. The teaching team, headed by manager Letitia Spencer, who also teaches ballet and yoga which the children enjoy enormously, have hit every challenge and hurdle that Covid-19 has thrown at them running, they have been making life not only normal for the children but wonderful – with a song in their heart, a spring in their step and an awful lot of giggling along the way.

Learning how to learn is one of the first skills taught and from

as early as two, our children begin to learn the basics: how to read, write and work with numbers, following the “Foundation Phase Profile”. But this more traditional classroom education

is extended and enhanced using the wider school facilities for dancing, music, PE (Physical Education) and swimming as well as exploring the forest and the coast. Our Pre-School mantra is about trying new things, letting children explore the world we live in, have adventures, and learn along the way, thus allowing each child to discover more about themselves socially, physically, emotionally, and academically.

Provision both for those children that have been identified

as having learning needs and those who are gifted and talented is vital to the early development of our children and something we track carefully with the use of a key workers allocated specifically to a child.

We are fortunate to have exceptional facilities that enable our children to thrive further. Rydal Penrhos has its own swimming pool, Forest School, Music rooms and Dance rooms, situated just a stone’s throw from the Colwyn Bay beach, which is the home for our Coastal School activities and, as we say, wellies are essential!

Communication is another of our most important jobs. It can be a nerve-wracking experience leaving your child in the care of others for the first time, but Rydal Penrhos Pre-School staff

are constantly keeping parents updated on the “Evidence Me” app, which shows what the children are doing during the day with photos and descriptions, encouraging interaction from family members.

Pre-School children also benefit from trips out to further

enhance their overall experiences and early development along with wrap-around care for families until 6pm, and a Holiday Club run by their very own teacher Ms. Spencer.

Pre-Schoolers are part of the Rydal Penrhos family. Everyone from Pre-School up to Year 6 eats, plays, and dances together. Our recent Nativity Production “Lights, Camel, Action” was a fine example of this and an absolute triumph!

Pre-School forms the bridge between home and school and is a young child’s first experience of an educational

environment. It is therefore an important stepping stone in a child’s life and there is no better place than Rydal Penrhos for this transition. n

John Waszek

is the Principal of Rydal Penrhos

EDUCATION NEWS

Owain Evans invited to train with Wales U20 rugby squad

St David’s College has revealed that one of its exceptionally talented young rugby stars has been training with the Wales Under-20 squad. Owain Evans has also been selected for the squad to play against Scotland Development. It’s a fantastic achievement as Owain, at 18, is training a year ahead of his age group. If he impresses the coaches at the WRU training academy at the Vale of Glamorgan, then he could be picked to play for Wales during the forthcoming Six Nations Under-20 Championships. It would be the first

time a St David’s pupil has ever been called to play for Wales, and it would be a dream come true for Owain as he’s always harboured an ambition to play for his country. Owain plays for RGC (Rygbi Gogledd Cymru) the regional team for the North Wales Rugby Development Region, Llangefni Rugby Club, and is Captain for the 1stXV. Owain also excels academically and joined the school after gaining a raft of A* and A grades in his GCSE’s. He is studying maths, PE, physics and biology A-levels and is hoping to further his studies at University. “Owain is walking on water at the moment,” commented Director of Sport, Dan Lycett. “He’s a very intelligent player with the way he manipulates the ball. Wales became interested in him when RGC played the Osprey’s development squad and he ended up scoring three tries against them. He’s fantastic off the pitch excelling academically, the world is very much his oyster.”

Image courtesy of Tony Bale

Motor vehicle student faces tense World Finals wait

A Rhyl College-based Motor Vehicle student who won a silver medal at the WorldSkills UK finals last year has gone one better, claiming gold in

this year’s Vehicle Body Repair competition and being crowned the best new talent in the industry. 20-year-old Tiler Moorcroft-Jones now faces a tense wait to see if he has booked a seat on the plane to Shanghai to represent the UK at the global finals next year. The Coleg Llandrillo

student pitted his skills against five of the best young Vehicle Body

Repair students from across the length and breadth of the UK during the tense national finals, which were held at Cardiff & Vale College.

All six had to tackle a range of different challenges within a set time period. These included detailed jig work, changing a quarter panel within five hours, and repairing a wing without using filler. Tiler, who

lives in Johnstown and is employed by Body Perfect in Wrexham, combines his work commitments with his training at Coleg Llandrillo’s Rhyl campus. “I’m absolutely over the moon with the gold and can’t wait to see if I will be representing the UK in Shanghai next year,” commented Tiler, who now has ‘the full set’ medal-wise, after initially claiming bronze at 2019’s Skills Competition Wales finals.

EDUCATION NEWS

Rydal Penrhos pupils support good causes

Rydal Penrhos is very proud of its charitable work throughout the academic year. This is something that forms a key component of the school’s ethos and has been prevalent across campus with initiatives and fundraising days for worthy causes across the North Wales area and beyond during the autumn term. During the Christmas festivities, the school launched a campaign to support those less fortunate and began accepting donations to assist the Conwy Home-Start appeal – a local community network of trained volunteers and expert support helping families with young children through their challenging times. This has once again received a tremendous response from the school community, with Key Stage 2 (Years 3-6) collecting a huge array of gifts that were donated to the Prep across every year group. Once all items were collected, members of the charity have collected these generous donations in order to give themselves time to wrap and distribute them to local families in need. The school is enormously grateful to the Rydal Penrhos family for their incredible generosity, which comes following a fantastic BBC Children in Need Day – complete with a day-long Dance-a-Thon – which raised more than £1,600 collectively. A large number of items were also donated to the school’s annual Harvest Food Drive, which saw an exceptional amount distributed to the Conwy Food Bank and the Kind Bay Initiative.

Celebrations at official opening of Xplore!

Wrexham’s Science Discovery Centre has had its long-awaited official

opening, marked with a special ribboncutting ceremony. Xplore!, which is now based at the heart of the town centre on Henblas Street, has been open to the public for some months and has already welcomed a number of visitors including Minister for the Economy, Vaughan Gething MS. However, due to the pandemic, this was the first opportunity staff, stakeholders

and dignitaries have had to safely gather together to celebrate the launch of the centre in its new location. The centre, run as a charity owned by Wrexham Glyndwr University, first

opened on the university’s campus in 2003 as Techniquest Glyndwr – and continued to grow until reaching the stage when new premises were needed. In moving to Henblas Street, the centre has breathed life back into a space which had remained empty for many years, a building fondly remembered by local people as the old TJ Hughes department store. The centre has been developed with a multi-million pound investment from Wrexham Glyndŵr University, the Inspiring Science Fund (Welcome Trust) and the Targeted Regeneration Investment Programme (TRIP) for Wales. At the opening ceremony, the Deputy Mayor of Wrexham, Councillor Brian Cameron (pictured) was on hand to cut the ribbon.