At the start of the academic year we welcomed Hannah Taulbut as a Year 3 teacher and Andrew James joined the Modern Foreign Languages Department in January, both at the very beginning of their teaching careers. We were also delighted to be joined by Mr Ben Barnes-Thomas, ICT Technician; Mrs Lorraine Divilly, Director of Sport; Mrs Lisa Hedges, Lunchtime Nursery Supervisor; Mrs Karen Hughes, Senior School Assistant Cook; Ms Helen McCaffery, Nursery Teacher; Mr Peter Norwood, Junior School Cook Supervisor and Mr Lyndon Wall, the Junior School Director of Music. During the year we appointed Mrs Tanya Coleman, our new School Business Manager. She is already known to many of the School community and we are benefiting enormously from her expertise and professional approach in the many facets of her role. Another new key member of the support staff is Mr Sean Varndell, our Site and Facilities Supervisor and we welcome him and his family to their new home in Kent Road. Ms Victoria O’Sullivan has now been appointed as full-time Marketing Manager and she has been busy overhauling our publications and bringing her expertise into so many areas of school life. I would like to extend a warm welcome to all our new staff and hope that they will be very happy with us.

Here follow the highlights of 2005-6 and I hope they give you a flavour of life at Portsmouth High School.

During the year the Art Department has been involved in a number of new initiatives. In February the Art and the Drama departments enjoyed a joint study trip to New York and in June members of Year 9 visited London for an arts residential trip. Much of the year has been involved with a DfES funded Independent-State School Partnership known as Building Bridges. In November 2005, Portsmouth High School and The City of Portsmouth Girls’ School were awarded £30,000 for a two year collaborative art project. Twenty Year 7 girls came together to work with the illustrator Jacqui Mair on the theme of daily routines. They produced etchings, graphic novels, large scale drawings and—having also worked with Jonathan Ward, an artist bookmaker —created their own artist’s books. In the Summer Term Year 10 pupils, led by the photographer Bridgid Dolby, used the theme of identity and the relationship that each girl has with Portsmouth as the basis for their work. We are looking forward to updating you on the progress of this project and of our first exhibition at Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth.

The Classics Department had another year of pleasing academic success, both in public examinations and in the Cambridge Latin Tests, taken by Years 8 and 9 at the end of each book of the Cambridge Latin Course. Years 8 and 9 also enjoyed trips to the Roman baths in Bath, Bignor Villa and Fishbourne Palace to support their study of Roman Britain. An exciting new venture this year was the launch of our Greek Club. Interested members of Years 10 and 11 meet together each week to learn a little of the language and culture of ancient Greece.

Having started the year in a portacabin, the Design and Technology Department was delighted to be able to move into a shiny new building. In the Autumn Term AS students started a project on how to show off the new facilities on Open Day. Sarah Donovan and Georgina Bourne produced life-sized hardboard ‘students’ who stood around ‘discussing’ the advantages of the new building, an excellent solution. The joint DT and ICT Year 9 Technology Day involved designing poop scoops; the DT half under the supervision of Southampton Institute and the ICT half led by IBM. The Spring Term began with the ‘big move’ still underway and GCSE pupils finally started making their projects. The new laser cutter arrived in March, which was great fun for all and Lunch Club restarted. In May we saw the grand opening of the Bannell Centre and the delights of batch produced key fobs on the laser cutter for all the VIPs. At the end of the academic year we were still setting up elements of the department, but the new facilities were in full use by September.

The Drama Department travelled to New York in February with senior girls; taking in the theatres, art galleries, sights and shopping in the Big Apple. They also visited Scarborough for the Student Drama Festival, a week long extravaganza of workshops and performances, with the Lower Sixth. Girls throughout the school have been active in lunchtime clubs as well as curricular presentations of performance work. Our productions were The Tempest, with Year 11, for the Shakespeare Schools’ Festival at the Minerva, Chichester Festival Theatre and our main school play, Honk!, a musical co-produced with the Music Department, both of which were very enthusiastically received. Our theatre visits have been many and varied, visiting theatres in London, Stratford-upon-Avon, Guildford, Southampton, Portsmouth and Chichester, and providing experiences for each year group. Our Lower Sixth group created a remarkable piece for their Devised Drama AS unit, entitled Dream Twister, which attracted audiences from outside the school. Our first drama scholar, Bathsheba Piepe, made her mark during the year through leadership and example, and has been a real asset to the department.

The English Department has had a busy and varied year, welcoming three student teachers who all successfully completed their practice in the department with Katie Farnhill, a former PHS Head Girl, achieving a distinction. Other new perspectives included a very successful day of talks to Year 9 by author Linda Newbery and our customary Year 10 visit to the Guildhall to hear and discuss modern poetry with poets such as John Agard, Simon Armitage and Gillian Clarke. We also launched a short story competition, the winners of which are featured in the new school magazine (which we think is the best ever—thanks to Miss Hainsworth’s vision and management). The Lower Sixth were inspired by their visit to see Hamlet in September and produced some stunning coursework assignments as a result. The Lower Sixth also fielded a public speaking team for the annual Youth Speaks competition and Kate Snell was nominated best chair in her heat. The AEA continues to stretch our ablest Sixth Formers and we were delighted that all three passed (one with merit, two with distinction) of whom Connie Cha achieved her distinction a year early.

In the Geography Department the year has been dominated by their move to new accommodation in the Bannell Centre. They have two classrooms, equipped with interactive whiteboards and computers and are thrilled to be teaching in such lovely new surroundings. Fieldwork continues to be a vital part of the department’s teaching. The fieldwork programme allows one day out of School for each year group. Year 7 visited the Spinnaker Tower and Gunwharf Quays. From the tower they were able to truly appreciate the original site of Old Portsmouth and get an overview of the whole city. Year 8 went to the New Forest to study its unique environment and consider the modern day pressures upon it, whilst Year 9 visited Hengistbury Head, an area under threat from coastal erosion and the impact of large numbers of visitors. GCSE fieldwork included trips to a residential area in Southsea, the village of Hambledon, the Central Business District of Portsmouth and a visit to the stunning South Dorset Heritage Coastline. Sixth Form girls undertook a further study of the Central Business District and carried out a stream analysis on the River Meon. Clare Barkley and Helen Bartlett chose to attend a residential course at the Field Studies Council centre in North Wales where they studied upland glaciation, sand dune ecology, coastal processes and soils. Both have now taken up places to study Geography at University, inspired I am sure by their fieldwork experiences at PHS which included a trip to Iceland in 2004!

In April the History Department took over forty girls from Year 9 to Year 11 to visit World War I battlefield sites in Belgium and France. The visit enhanced their studies of the War and also provided them with a great deal of emotional food for thought. Excellent guides provided the girls with additional information to supplement what they had already learned in school. Many girls were visibly affected, especially on visits to the many British, French and German cemeteries in the area. Earlier in the year, fifteen Year 9 girls attended a combined visit with the Religion and Philosophy Department to a Holocaust memorial day held at Admiral Lord Nelson School. Again, the girls gained a great deal from the day and had their studies in two subjects considerably enhanced. Girls from both the Upper and Lower Sixth attended a series of lectures in London on their respective A level units. These lectures gave them additional valuable insights into their topics of study.

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