What a fantastic first day of the summer term. Our electric ensemble kicked off the day with some wonderfully rousing music and Ms Boyes hosted a Celebration Assembly, applauding individual and team achievements across the school. There was much to celebrate:

• Staff member Mr Soakell who was awarded, with his son, the very prestigious “Bronze Award” medal from the Royale Humane Society for rescuing a man from a burning car.

• a group of Year 8 students, led by their Head of Year Mr Shaw, to create a Scavenger hunt for Y4. The Y4s absolutely loved this event as did their teacher, Mrs Goodwin. 

• an incredible effort, dedication and personal commitment of Lucy in her DofE volunteering, raising £1,365 for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance by organising a quiz afternoon at her local community centre, a raffle and the sale of merchandise. The DofE program is just one of the ways that students at Wakefield Girls’ are motivated and supported to make a difference in their community.  

• Imogen on her recent promotion to Lance Corporal from Cadet in the Army Cadet Force.

Student Leadership Accreditation

We celebrated our Sixth Formers who have qualified for Student Leadership Accreditation (SLA) awards. This is an innovative way of formally recognising students’ leadership skills, encompassing all activities students are engaged in whether it’s in the classroom, across the school, or in the wider community.

To gain this qualification, students in the sixth form produce a portfolio to demonstrate their leadership skills and they also, crucially, include evidence of meeting very exacting criteria. The portfolios are peer and then externally moderated before the award is made.

Students can submit a portfolio for a Bronze, Silver or Gold Award and all our students have been successful in achieving the level they chose to complete.

The SLA is added as a qualification on UCAS applications and is an impressive part of any apprenticeship or job application, because it is evidence based.

We are always incredibly impressed by the range of activities our students are involved in, but especially this year, as our award winners managed to produce exceptional portfolios during the lockdown period. The moderators commented on the outstanding level of perseverance and determination shown in order to achieve this.

Music

• Over 50 students gained their Music grades. We were delighted to hear how impressed the examiner was with the level of performance and confidence from all Wakefield Girls. 

• The House Music Celebration, which celebrated a variety of wonderful live soloists, as well as Alero Boyo who had recorded her performance as she was away on the D of E training.   Amanda Spalding from Wakefield Music Hub adjudicated and picked Lucy Simmons’ cello performance and Alex Lee’s unaccompanied vocal performance as her favourites and so they won the trophies for this year.  Well done to everyone who participated and congratulations to Lucy and Alex.

• First place rankings and distinctions at The Rothwell Showcase Concert for the Foundation Youth Brass Band and Senior Orchestra plus a commended award for the Training Orchestra. The string quartet (Leina, Lucy, Alice and Jae) won their class with commended and the String Ensemble won their class with distinction. Leina Tordoff won her solo class and played in the final and also in the showcase concert, as did the string quartet.  There were notable performances from Hema Nair and Kaitlin Fernandez in the solo and duet string classes also.

Organiser, Glenys Hayward said – Thank you so much for coming to play at our Rothwell Showcase Concert.  It truly was a wonderful evening of music and I am extremely grateful to all the performers, accompanists and supporters who came and made it such a success.

Sport

Some fabulous achievements in Sport last term were celebrated.

Individual achievements:

• • Imogen Wolf on her selection as part of the Yorkshire Cycling squad to compete in the Youth tour of Scotland.
  • Suzie Brooke who qualified to run in the English Schools Cross Country Championships. As part of the West Yorkshire team they finished 2nd overall and Suzie finished 96th out of 278 runners.
  • Iona onher second place in the Yorkshire Ladies County Golf Association Girls 9 hole stableford competition at Wike Ridge in Leeds yesterday, just 1 point from victory!
  • Lucy Crook who has been umpiring for England Hockey on two occasions
  • Lily Mae Wood on winning bronze in the doubles and mixed doubles in the U15 Silver Badminton Middlesex Tournament 
  • Molly Robinson who has qualified to compete in both the U16 & U18 National Tennis Championships to be played in the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton. 

• Alana Glennan who was awarded the England U12 Youth Netball Premier League player of the season for her club Leeds Athletic Netball Club. In addition to this, she has also achieved her first tennis federation junior world ranking and at the weekend she became the U16 doubles national champ and made the semi finals of the U18 singles

• Isobel McAndrew who secured 1st Place in the North East Open 2022 in February and has attained enough points to move to advanced novice level. 

Teams

• The U13 and U15 Indoor Cricket Squad were victorious in the Yorkshire round of the Lady Taverners Competition. Great team rotation, trust and communication ensured that the U15a now join the U13s in representing Yorkshire in the North round next term, to be held at Bolton on Thursday 28th April. 

• Our team of amazing netballers who reached the U14 English schools national finals.

• After a long absence from competition due to COVID, the equestrian team are delighted to be back out competing and have had individual and successes in Dressage and Showjumping. Tilly Smith and Isobel Wood finished 1st and second respectively in dressage. Congratulations to Florence Smith, Grace Hunt & Holly Biggin-Wilcox who finished first in the NSEA Equestrian Team Show. Florence and Grace also finished 2nd and 5th respectively in their individual events.

Competitions & Challenges

• STEM – congratulations to year 9 students Annabelle, Isra, Freya, Aimee, Saarah, Arianna and Eiliyah and Amelie and Eleanora in year 8 in the First Lego League Challenge. This was a global STEM competition that develops key skills for future careers, including coding, design and research.

• Chess – the annual chess tournament was completed during EDGE and there was a close-fought match for top position. The whole series came down to a final game between Neha Vemula and Faith Mbuya. After a tense battle, Faith was victorious and was crowned the Wakefield Girls’ Chess champion for 2022.

• Art – Hannah Sutton represented the school in the regional finals for the national Articulation competition at the National Gallery in London. After a fantastic round Hannah won the regional final and made it through to the grand finals against very tough competition. 

• We are also blessed with many passionate students for creative arts and we were very impressed with Maya’s work. Maya who is in Year 12 put together the crest designs for our Houses. Well done, Maya and thank you.

• Maths – Year 7 and 8, along with junior section students, took part in a Times Tables Rockstars inter-house competition last week. Lee emerged as the overall winner, averaging 1198 correct answers per student over the five days.  Mackie were runners up, averaging 839 correct answers per student.  There were some fantastic individual performances with 10 students from across both sections each answering over 5000 questions correctly over the five days but a standout individual winner (with twice the score of 2nd place) was Amelia Martin (Mackie Y8) who answered 33 039 questions correctly (at an average speed of just under 2 per second!).

• Reading – a fabulous well done to our Year 7 readers who raised £218 for the charity Read for Good by participating in the annual Readathon sponsored read

Houses

As the year progresses, the difference in the points is closing in and each house still has every chance of raising the House Trophy at the end of the year and celebrating their win. 

Come on teams! The points so far are:

• Lee – 11 079
• Blakey – 11 899
• Mackie – 11 933
• Clayton – 12 304