Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School Inspiration and Excellence
Spring Term 2017 Message from the Head
Though Spring 2017 has been touched by the sadness of events in Westminster, the abiding atmosphere here at Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School has been one of hope and optimism. As you can read in this newsletter, some of our students participated in the Young People’s Parliament for Erdington at the Houses of Parliament. Other have been pleased to welcome (and importantly) question representatives from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties to BVGS. Commitment to democratic values is alive and well here. Elsewhere, I have been pleased that our playground space has been restored to full capacity with the final removal of our temporary accommodation block. Meanwhile, we are delighted by the many academic and personal successes of so many students mentioned in this colour newsletter or celebrated in assemblies or on our website/Twitter feed. This Spring has been a time of interesting innovation. Read on to find out about our new corporate partnership programme or the welcome improvements in our careers provision embodied by the work of Pauline Knowles, our careers advisor, and the recent Careers and Jobs Fair. The writer T.S.Eliot once described April as the 'cruellest month.' I beg to differ. This Spring has been full of positivity. I wish our senior students a purposeful, balanced and effective holiday revision period and to all our families a very happy Easter season. With my very best wishes, Headteacher
Bilal Ahmad (OV 08-10), above, came into school recently to have lunch and talk to future engineers about his career path with BP. He also led an assembly for Year 11 and was presented a gift from the Governing Body as a thank you for his three-year service.
School Captain Reiss Chahal and fellow Erdington constituents Mohammed Ali, Jamaal Sims, Jacob Richards and Aaron Pahal represented our school with pride at the Young People's Parliament for Erdington at The House of Commons chaired by Speaker John Bercow and accompanied by Erdington's MP Jack Dromey. They discussed many vital issues concerning their neighbourhood.
Careers Fair
Part one held on the afternoon of Friday 31 March saw careers advice in the form of a Q&A panel discussion, a trading game with Deutsche Bank and two 1-hour seminars. It was fantastic to welcome back OV Stephan Wade (1988) Russell Lowe (2000), Paul Giannecchini (2002), Ashley Evans (2007), Josh Seaton (2008), Bradley Allen (2010), Michael Evans (2011) and Frances Bentley (2012) as well as parents Sheridan Bird and Paul Anderson and Natalie Clemson from Pick Everard. All of our speakers gave excellent insights into their professions and companies, with representatives from Google, Advanced and Babcock Engineering. Part two on the Saturday saw seminars running at regular intervals throughout the day in Old Big School and FF9 in the STEM block on topics such as engineering, financial services, architecture, dentistry, teaching and physiotherapy. Many thanks to OV Dan Codd (1998), Nick Clewer (1998), Amit Chudasama (2001), Tom Narraine (2008), Tom Beasley (2008), Stuart Drinkwater (2008), Owain Jones (2009), Amo Panesar (2011), Catherine Smith (2013), Andreas Papastylianou (2013) and Orlando Woodburn (2013), as well as Katy Hanby from KPMG. All of the attendees commented on the high quality of the seminars and we are very thankful to everyone that gave up their time on a Saturday to come in to school and talk with our students. There were also 16 exhibitors throughout the day in Big School. These included several of the School’s corporate partners, Honeybourne Facilities, Wow Zone, Align Architecture, Unitemps, Tamworth Steel and Bell Lax Solicitors. Also present were The Army, The Belfry, Western Power, Advanced, EY, Gowling LLP, KPMG, Southall Harries and The University of Law. There were also a couple of volunteers offering CV tips and careers advice, and it was good to see another couple of OV present on the Gowling stand, Sam Wallis (2007) and Richard Crawley (2008), as well as James King (2007) with his PoshCartCo serving refreshments throughou. All those that attended got valuable insights into a range of careers, and made some excellent new contacts. This event will be tweaked, but will now be an annual event, so we look forward to building on the success of the inaugural event in 2018.
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Spring 2017
Vesey's Got Talent 2017
It was great to welcome back Vesey’s Got Talent this February. School Captain, Reiss Chahal and Deputy, Angalea Varma, did a brilliant job of compering. Meanwhile, our new look judging team of Mr Greenwood, Miss Gaydon, Mr White and our charity partner, Aspire to Africa, did a very professional and sensitive job. The quality of contestants this year was very high. There was some accomplished singing by students from Year 7 and 8 and a dynamic singing and dancing duo from the Sixth Form. Angus Carter, 11R, wowed the Big School audience with his virtuosic trumpet skills. Meanwhile, pianist and vocalist Syakir Saiful, 11R, put in a characteristically soulful and musical performance. The top performers, however, this year were our magician, Bilal Abidi, 11R and the outstanding pianist/vocalist Ben Thompson, 11R with an exceptionally thoughtful and sensitive interpretation of Sam Smith’s 'Writing on the wall.' It was very close but Ben Thompson was finally judged the winner by the audience through public acclamation. An excellent lunchtime entertainment, which raised a lot of money for charity. A big thank you to our charity team of Mrs Overton, Dr Reilly and our outgoing student charity leaders, Megan Littlewood, Lauren Abbott and Isabella Page.
Musical Magicians! There have been plenty of opportunities for Vesey musicians to shine this spring. Year 7 enjoyed their trip to Britain’s greatest concert venue, Symphony Hall, to hear the world-renowned City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under the direction of their charismatic young conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla. We are proud of the musical contribution our students make across the Midlands to ensembles and orchestras beyond BVGS. I had excellent reports, for example, about our clarinet ensemble at the University of Birmingham on Friday 31 March and the role of the two ‘Freddies’ (Messrs Goodrham and Coleman) and Liam Wragg as part of the Birmingham School Singers at the Elgar Concert Hall on Saturday 4 March. However, the biggest musical event of the term was our Spring Concert. With 243 different performers on the Vesey stage, this was an excellent evening. There were plenty of highlights. We were delighted to see so many guitarists (30!) in our ensemble. The Year 7 choir and brass groups both sang and played with enthusiasm. I was really glad to see our singers putting their heart and soul into proceedings. It was lovely to see the Vesey family working together across the age groups with Sixth Formers rubbing shoulders with, and inspiring, the younger ones in the orchestra or the Vesey voices. There were lots of wonderful solos. Hitesh Jhall in Year 7 clearly has a very promising future on the violin. For many of us the performance of the evening (there were so many to choose from!) was probably the creative and sensitive rendition of 'Stairway to Heaven.' I’m sure the unimaginatively named 'Sixth Form Band' will be taking bookings into 2018 based on that performance!
Vesey musicians playing at the Sutton Coldfield district concert at the University of Birmingham on Friday 31 March.
Elsewhere, for the second year running our saxophone and piano ensemble impressed diners at the Greater Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Dinner at the International Convention Centre (above). A big well done to Tom Eglsefield, Ben Clay, James Forbes, Alex Hughes, Jack Wade, Emmanuella Olatundun, Ben Thompson and Ned Walklett
ARTiculation
A big well done to Evie Shipp, one of the ‘A’ level Art students in the Upper Sixth. She entered the ARTiculation Prize 2017 and took part in the regional heat at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. She did really well and out of 8 contestants she came FIRST!!! Her presentation was challenging and in depth. She analysed the work of Zoe Buckman; Untitled 9. Evie delivered it so confidently, putting a great deal of her own personality into it. Evie then progressed through to the finals at Cambridge University. She was well-supported by our Sixth Form artists and performed excellently, finishing as a runner-up. Joanna Littlejohns, Head of ARTiculation wrote to Mrs Heer, Head of Art, “It was a great pleasure to welcome you and Evie, to the ARTiculation Final in Cambridge. It was an extraordinary event and Evie did brilliantly while delivering a fantastic presentation. The Adjudicator, Tim Marlow, was incredibly impressed by her presentation and we all want to congratulate Evie on making it through to the Final of this national competition.”
Spring 2017
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Youth Speaks
Debating Success
Well done to our Year 7 team who performed brilliantly at the regional final of Youth Speaks at Bablake School on Saturday. Harry, Charlie and Shailan argued that 'footballers are overpaid'.
Well done to Nickeal Sidhu and Sophie Lloyd. In February they took part in the Cambridge Union Debating competition at Solihull School and acquitted themselves superbly against competitors from schools such as Warwick. Toughened up by this experience, they were wellprepared to shine in the Sutton Coldfield School Parliamentary Debating Competition. They did a fine job of arguing against voting being compulsory and performed skilfully in the unseen motion section. The outcome was a close BVGS team victory against a very competitive field with Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls (Emma Lloyd and Hanifa Alia) coming second and a pair of very memorable speeches by Thomas Lafferty from Bishop Walsh won Thomas the Best Speaker award. We look forward to hosting next year’s competition in March 2018. In the meantime, all contestants including Sophie and Nickeal, have been invited down for a day at Parliament with Sutton Coldfield MP, Andrew Mitchell.
We welcomed the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Councillor Carl Rice, to school on Tuesday along with Martin Burton MBE and Nazir Awan, who presented a cheque for £600 to BVGS for winning the Lord Mayor's Sixth Form Mega Quiz in November. Well done once again to our quiz champions Courtney Szanto, Kate Horton, Daniel Patrick, Isaac Stevens, Ben Clay and Juliette Thomas.
Lessons from Auschwitz Miss Langham, Angalea Varma, Charlie Steventon, Emily Coleman and Ben Smith, as part of the 'Lessons from Auschwitz' project visited Aushwitz and Birkenau in February. Their next step will be to work with students from BVGS to create an exhibition to pay tribute to the tragedy.
Lessons From Auschwitz Angalea Varma U6 As we stepped off of the plane at Krakow airport in February, the air was crisp and cold; snow blew down in a horizontal blur. Myself (Angalea Varma), Charlie Steventon, Emily Coleman and Ben Smith are lucky enough to be a part of the Lessons From Auschwitz project and we were about to embark on the second part of our journey: the visit to Auschwitz Birkenau. Before we actually went to the concentration camps, we first visited the town of Oświęcim. Prior to 1939 the population of Oświęcim was around 59% Jewish. The Jewish community lived freely and unchallenged. Our educator, from the Holocaust Educational Trust, showed us photos of the hustle and bustle in the market square on a Saturday morning with happy faces of Jews and Christians alike. The tone of normality had been set as we learnt about pre- war Jewish life. This sense of normality was the antithesis of the horrors we unearthed later in the day. Today, there is no Jewish community in Oswiecim and that’s because, most chillingly, it is just a stone throw, all but 2 km, from the former Nazi concentration camps: Auschwitz I and II.
Visting both the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps was, without doubt, one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. Every room told a different story. Some were brimming with photographs of prisoners, their heads shaven and their faces shroud with fear- all were gassed at Auschwitz. Others had thousands of shoes, glasses, suitcases and other commodities. Perhaps the most eerie was the hair room, which contained mountains of blond hair from the heads of 40 000 women. It was here that our group was too stunned for words: the hair room made envisaging the horrors of the Holocaust so tangible and haunting. Arriving at the second and larger death camp, Birkenau, the grey sky and notorious train track deepened feelings of angst amongst the group. We silently walked from block to block, struggling to digest the gargantuan number of innocent people who perished, in the most horrific way, under the Nazi regime. As darkness fell, we finished our trip by paying tribute to all who were murdered through a memorial service with the Rabbi. We each lit a candle and placed it along the track, in the aim of bringing some light and peace to a place so shrouded with the darkest of histories. Seeing the history for yourself is nothing like hearing or reading about it. It is an experience that will stay with each of us eternally. Now we are in the final, and most important stage of our project. It is our responsibility to uphold the legacy of the Holocaust. It has taught the human race that the exclusion of any group in society is self-defeating. For our Next Steps project, we will be working with students at Bishop Vesey's to create an exhibition, which pays tribute to the tragedy and keeps the memories and invaluable lessons at the forefront of our school and wider community.
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Spring 2017
Coastal Geography in Action Geography field trip to Portland in Dorset. The students were exemplary and a big thank you to all the Geography team and Miss Egan for an outstanding trip.
Twenty Years of Anglo-German Partnership We are proud of our 20 year Anglo-German partnership with the Wirtschaftsgymnasium school from Bayreuth, Bavaria, Thank you to all hosting the exchange visit. Without your support parents, these opportunities would not happen for your boys! Thank you also to the amazing Mr Götschel, who has made it happen.
BETT Show Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
The Tech Comm accompanied by Mr Lintern and others made their annual pilgrimage to the BETT show to explore the latest in technology. (above) The students came back to school brimming with lots of ideas!!
Coca Cola Challenge
What a fantastic team of Year 10s taking part in the Coca Cola Challenge this year. They worked superbly together and deservedly won the award for the ‘Best Radio advert campaign.’
The Pitt Rivers has to be one of the quirkiest museums in Oxford (right). The curator of archaeology there is an Old Veseyan , Professor Dan Hicks. Our now annual Art visit with Year 8 went very well indeed. An excellent trip. Thank you to Mrs Heer (Head of
Bardonecchia 2017 We had a wonderful ski trip primarily for Year 8 and 9 and in February half term. A big thank you to our trip leaders, Miss Egan, Mr Bousfield, Mr Dobson, Mr Greenwood and Mr Yates. It sounds like there was some fantastic skiing in beautiful surroundings and above all an exemplary community feel to the trip. Well done to all the boys for their excellent behaviour and engagement and a special thank you to our excellent Sixth Form leaders: James Cutting, Tom Hooper and Joe Perrin.
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Spring 2017
New Leaders 2017-18
Following hustings, votes and interviews this week, we are delighted to announce our new Student Leadership Team. For the first time ever we are appointing two School Captains (one male and one female). This acknowledges the substantial number of female students that we have at our school and the outstanding contribution that they make to the Vesey Experience. School Captain : William Hennessey, School Captain: Sophie Lloyd, Deputy School Captain: Matthew Price, Deputy School Captain: Nickeal Sidhu, President of the School Council: Louis Kill-Brown, Vice President of the School Council: Tanya Takavarasha, Charity Captain: Sheamol Obeda, Charity Officer: David Green, Charlotte Frazer-Morris
Spelling!
Oxbridge Success
Alex Mole-Williams 7B taught his ‘Secret Spell To Spelling Strategy' at the 'Best You' EXPO at the Excel, London. Alex has written and published his first book aged 9 3/4 and he now has a new publisher who helped him re-design the front cover and we hope to get it up on Amazon soon. Alex has also built his own website with the help of the staff at the Apple shop Sutton. Fantastic work Alex. We are very proud of you.
Sophia Thorn (Natural Sciences, Cambridge), Rory Gaskin (Law and French, Oxford), Will McCreery (Earth Sciences, Oxford), Josiah McNeill (Fine Art, Oxford), Jake Robinson (Economics and Management, Oxford), Molly Willars (Mathematics, Oxford) and Jemima Richardson-Jones (Geography, Oxford). Jemima has also won a choral scholarship.
Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award Mr Greenwood and the team were very proud of the boys on expedition. Some excellent camp craft skills and teamwork in evidence! (right)
Big Maths Quiz
Physics Olympiad Fifteen of our U6 students competed in the full Physics Olympiad earlier this year. This is UK’s top Physics competition. It is very challenging and our students did extremely well. They are: Molly Willars, (Bronze I), Iqram Choudhury (Bronze I), Alex Burden (Bronze II), Georgia Curry (Bronze II), Sophia Thorn (Bronze II) Callum Delaney (Bronze II) Thomas Parkes (Commendation), William McCreery (Commendation), Johnny Day (Commendation) Samuel Smith (Commendation) Omair Quyyam (Commendation) James Wyatt, (Commendation), Syed Gillani (Commendation), Joe Frankham (Commendation) and Euan Cox (Commendation).
Aspire to Africa
On 8 March two teams from Y10 spent the day at the University of Birmingham participating in 'The Big Maths Quiz' (above). Along with 88 other secondary schools - a total of 380 students, we were all tested from algebra to 'Countdown'. Both teams were really good, and were well placed in the top scoring teams.
We are proud of our fund-raising for ‘Aspire to Africa.’ The Charity Team were proud to present the Aspire Sports Trust £7,254.55 to support their work. Some of the committee will be going out to Tanzania in the summer with ‘Aspire to Africa’ to support their inspirational work with the Buyuni One Primary
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Daffodils for Marie Curie A total of £143.00 has been raised for the Marie Curie charity that care sfor people with terminal illness. With spring arriving, and our own school daffodils out in bloom. It has been a pleasure to see so many students wearing their daffodils with pride‌and a smile.
Mental health and wellbeing The conference on Tuesday 21 March at Newman University aimed to increase understanding of the challenges faced by schools in responding to the needs of students experiencing mental health difficulties and to explore a range of strategies and approaches currently being used within schools to support young people experiencing mental health problems whilst promoting the wellbeing of all students. Kate Steadman, Assistant Headteacher and Zak Smith and Ella Sykes, as 'Time to Change' ambassadors, spoke about how young people attending BVGS are encouraged to seek help early if they are experiencing mentalhealth problems and to talk openly about the challenges they face.
Cross-country Success Three Year 7 boys (left) were selected to represent North Birmingham Schools in the West Midlands Schools Cross Country race last Saturday, 21 January. The boys came 2nd, 3rd and 6th in the Year 7 race. This race was against other year 7s across the region, which not only covers Birmingham, but out as far as Coventry and Wolverhampton. The North Birmingham team for the Year 7s was made entirely of boys from Vesey. l-r: Ethan Patel (2nd), George O'Conner (6th) and Jack Wakefield 3rd.
Well done to Georgia Curry representing the West Midlands in the English Schools' Cross-Country Championships. She came an incredible 13th nationally. Wow!
Wednesday 1 March saw the final league race of the cross-country season in Sutton Park which, BVGS as a team, comfortably won. Once again, many thanks to Mr Potter for his generous support for our crosscountry team and for helping to set out the course.
Swimming
Well done to Leo Karski Y11 who was selected to swim for the West Midlands Division team. The event actually took place in Liverpool over last weekend (March 11th and 12th). The West Midlands Division actually won for the first time by the narrowest of margins (by 1 point!). The main organiser, Neil Monkhouse was so impressed by this result and given the 1 point margin, made it clear that every swimmer played a vital part. Leo swam as part of the senior age group team and actually won his 200m butterfly event (time of 2 mins 8.63 secs) which, given that he was competing against swimmers in years 12 & 13, was a very good result. In fact for his age group, this ranks Leo 5th in the UK in the ASA rankings.
Squash Well done to Karim Labib 11W, who came 11th out of 32 competitors in the International Junior Scottish Open in Squash.
Rowing
A large rowing squad travelled to Stourport Head in March with some excellent performances to start the new year and a win for our Year 9 coxed quad who won their event. Well done to Charlie Richards, Dan Jones, Will Sedgwick, Nektarios Kourtidis-Sextos and Jack Glover (cox).
To Tokyo and beyond Chess Champions Hamish Carter (below) won Silver in the Mens' Masters National Floor Competition and was Junior Male Sports Person of the Year in the Sutton Observer Sports Awards.
Well done to Chirag, Stephen, Nayan, Hugo, Ruben and Hei-To for their amazing record in Chess. Not only have we won Division 4 (a league that includes players up to 18), but we have convincingly triumphed in the U13 League. We are looking forward to a successful year in Division 3 in 2017-18
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Spring 2017
Attain Travel is a proud sponsor of Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School Sports
Junior Hockey Tour 9-11 March 2017 Sam Stoddart and Morgan Simpson of 8G provide their highlights of a memorable junior hockey tour this year. “We were very excited in the days leading up to the tour. So when our first match was cancelled on the day we left BVGS, we were a little down. But not for long! We were taken instead to Docklands and the 2012 Olympic Hockey Stadium for a training session that we will all remember. The pitch was awesome and Mr Devey put us through our paces- we felt like Olympians! After checking in to our hotel and a quick dinner we then managed to pile onto a different coach and go bowling. The hotel was brilliant and the food was great- the plates at breakfast weren’t built to cope with all the food we piled on them. On Friday we went to Legoland in the morning and filled the coach with huge doughnut cushions and bouncy balloons as presents to thrill our parents. We then played Sir William Borlase Grammar in Marlow that afternoon and both U13 teams played really well. We supported the U12’s in their matches when we could. In the evening we had a restaurant all to ourselves, which was a very good thing for the other hotel residents because we had a very noisy sports quiz which ended in a three way tie and a play off. On Saturday, we went to Whitgift School, perhaps the top hockey school in the UK. We were all nervous about this, because we desperately wanted to do well for Vesey. But we think that Mr Devey and Mr Howell were proud of us that day. Both A teams played well but lost. The U13B team beat Whitgift and the U12B team played out a thrilling 3-3 draw. Then we ate the contents of the Whitgift school kitchens and got on the bus to come home. By the way, when is the next hockey tour?” (Footnote from Mr Howell - Morgan Simpson scored a record 8 goals in the U13B team 11-1 win in Marlow. Sam Stoddart scored a hat-trick in the U13B 3-1 win at Whitgift- delighting his Grandfather who comes from the area and knows the school well.) MEGA THANK YOU to Mr Howell and his team for giving us such a great tour.
Basketball
Results Round-up Hockey 2016-17
Well done to Joseph Hill, Chris WalkerTwigg, Zain Khan, Farhad Waseem, Sam Bryers, Sachin Murria, Sonny Leishenring, Declan Efa-Quayson, and Jordan Adoghe. We reached the finals of the Birmingham JR MBA Competition following fine victories over Archbishop Ilsley's and Baverstock School
Rugby 2016-17
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Spring 2017
BVGS 1949-50
Vex Robotics
The VEX Robotics Company runs robotics competitions annually for students from primary school up to university level. Teams have a year to programme a robot with which to play in games. Jon Jon Tian competed in the regional stages of the competition at De Montfort School in Evesham, his team claiming the tournament champion award and the Think Award. His team went on to compete in the national stages of the VEX Championships. Well done Jon Jon! Jon Jon has also been very persuasive in motivating staff to enter a Vex Robotics Team for 2017-18. More on this coming soon!
Thank you for the submission of this brilliant picture from the archives of the 1st XV from 1949-50.
Netball at the Nationals
Once again, for the second year running our U19 Netball Team became regional champions and qualified for the National Finals for the third year running. An incredible achievement. Well done to Mrs Clarke and all the girls (see below) as well ,of course, as all the amazing parents and supporters in the cold and wet conditions of Bromsgrove School. At the Nationals in Welwyn Garden City, the girls played with great spirit coming 13th nationally. We are proud to introduce our Corporate Partnerships Programme. We have now over 20 companies involved. A big thank you to Mr Brian Davies, our Development Director for leading this exciting project for the school.
We have pleasure in announcing the launch of our partnership with Aspens Services who will be our catering providers from the start of the Summer Term. Aspens will be providing new and exciting ideas and menus and will be supporting the school in developing and extending our offer. There will be more details on our website soon but in the meantime please see attached details about the new Aspens App.
http://www.bvgs.co.uk/alumni/alumni-community