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FROM THE HEADMISTRESS (Cont'd)
This year saw the ICT Department’s first cohort of girls complete their ICT GCSE, with one pupil awarded a top three place for the whole country! A new introduction to ICT lessons was the Department’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). This was used enthusiastically by both staff and pupils and is rapidly becoming a model for not only other departments but also other GDST schools. It has enabled pupils to access resources from home as well as to complete homework tasks and examinations online. Once again, a group of Year 10 pupils embarked on the task of designing a commercial website as part of their studies. Their creation (www.scrummymummiesportsmouth.co.uk) included a chat room and a page where visitors could rate their favourite restaurants and children’s recipes. Our team of Year 10 pupils achieved a very creditable fourth at the IBM-sponsored Blue Fusion competition at Hursley.
In the Mathematics Department girls were entered for the United Kingdom Mathematical Challenge. Abeda Az-Zara and Catherine Maclennan both scored highly and were in the top 400 students who sat the paper. They were invited into the next round (Olympiad) in which they achieved Merits. In the Lower Sixth, Kim Luetchford, Louise Osgood, Rosie Peters and Tamsin Reid scored 100% in Core Maths C1 paper and Louise scored 100% in her Core Maths C2 paper. Congratulations to them. Year 7 enjoyed a day out to Fort Nelson tackling mathematical problems within the fort.
The Modern Languages Department again completed successful exchanges with Caen in France and Duisburg in Germany. Girls gain enormously from this type of experience and we would like to thank all the staff and families who make these exchanges possible. A new venture was the Lower Sixth trip to Paris. Once the idea had been suggested the girls were determined it would happen and the result was a very enjoyable four days in the French capital after the AS examinations in June. Girls achieved the usual good results in public examinations, with some going on to read a variety of language or language linked courses at university. One or two languages at AS or A2 increasingly offer girls exciting opportunities in the job market.
The year started with a tanned Music Department, freshly returned from their summer tour to Spain’s Costa Dorada. Eighty girls took part in a wide variety of performances and, in a new venture, recorded a professional CD upon their return. We were also delighted that the success of Nelson - the hero!, our home grown musical, continued with girls performing live on BBC Radio Solent on the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar and being invited to HMS Victory to witness Her Majesty the Queen light the commemorative beacon. Keen to build on our Silver Artsmark status it was wonderful to see our ‘arts’ departments combine forces for the musical Honk! - a truly memorable production that was enjoyed by both the performers and audience. Original composition is beginning to flourish with the department producing its first CD of world premiers and girls again taking part in the BBC Young Composers Competition. Public concerts continued to provide an opportunity for both individuals and ensembles to shine with particular mention going to our fine soloists in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no.4 - Felicity Main, Catherine Lawlor and Francesca Brown. Many girls achieved wonderful results in their graded examinations with special mention of Sarah Kinsey (grade 8 distinction violin) and Felicity Main (grade 8 recorder). Girls also enjoyed a wide range of opportunities to attend professional concerts ranging from Mary Poppins, to the London Symphony Orchestra in rehearsal, to Aled Jones and the BBC Concert Orchestra in a live recording for Radio 2.
The PSHCE Department (Personal, Social, Health and Citizenship Education) continued to prepare students for the responsibilities and experiences of life, by providing a wide-ranging programme. Visiting speakers from Barnardo’s, the University of Portsmouth, the Independent Schools’ Careers Organisation, the local Rape Crisis Centre and Connexions added much to the programme by talks on various topics. All the Year 9 girls gained an insight into the workplace on Take our daughters to work day and Year 8s enjoyed a challenging and thought-provoking workshop on Homelessness led by Paul Evelyn from Barnardo’s. Some Year 10 volunteers gave their views on teenage drinking to a researcher for Channel 4 to assist with the production of a teaching video. In the summer term Year 10s took the Morrisby psychometric careers test, followed at the beginning of Year 11 by individual interviews with careers advisers (from the Independent Schools’ Careers Organisation and Connexions). Careers evenings were well supported and members of the Sixth Form benefited from practice interviews prior to their university application. Visits to the University of Portsmouth Radiography, Sports Science and Languages Departments were arranged for the Sixth Form; they also had a campus tour of Sussex University and visited Gunwharf Quays where Mr Tim Goodhead from the University of Portsmouth’s Environment, Design and Management Department explained the jobs involved in the site’s development and maintenance. Senior girls again benefited from the excellent Minerva network presentations, this year on Memory Skills, Communication and Budgeting.
A new venture was the Year 8 activities holiday at Easter. Forty nine girls and six staff enjoyed an action-packed four days at the PGL Centre at Osmington Bay in Dorset. This was so successful that it is to be repeated this coming Easter.
This year has probably been the busiest ever in the life of sport at PHS. Under the leadership of our Director of Sport, Mrs Divilly, the Physical Education Department has seen many ‘firsts’—the new Sports Hall in the Bannell Centre; shared use of the University’s sports facilities, including the astroturf pitch and four new floodlit netball/tennis courts at their Langstone Campus; preparation for the introduction of AS level PE; additions to the curriculum in the form of trampolining, basketball, football, athletics, plus inter-house tennis, hockey and swimming; the new Cheerleaders’ Club; the addition of Leadership in Sport Awards and, very excitingly, our first-ever Senior School Sports Day, (The Inter-House Athletics Championships). These initiatives have added considerable breadth to the curriculum and have opened up a great number of sporting opportunities for everyone. It is the PE Department’s primary aim to promote positive attitudes, interest in physical activity and encourage lifelong involvement. Enthusiasm for competitive sport continues and we have increased the number of ‘B’ team matches so more girls may experience match play. We have also introduced inter-year team training matches for additional match experience. Our netball teams continue to achieve excellent results, particularly at U16 and U13 levels where this year we won the South East Hampshire Division 1 League competitions. The U12 team were runners–up and the U15s and U14s came 3rd. The U12s are to be congratulated on losing only one of their 14 matches this season; the U16s maintained their outstanding reputation, losing only to Bohunt (whom they beat later in the season). They qualified for the second successive year for the regional round of the English Schools’ competition, and just missed reaching the semi-finals. The 1st and U15s played superbly in the Trust Netball Rallies: the 1st team lost 7-8 to Sheffield High in the quarter-finals and the U15s narrowly missed reaching the quarter-finals in their tournament.
This was our second year of hockey and weekly after school practices at HMS Temeraire are paying off. The teams are going from strength to strength and our U15 team excelled themselves by losing only one of their four games at the 2006 Trust Rally. The U14s came a creditable 3rd in the South East Hampshire indoor tournament. Football is growing steadily: it is now part of the PE curriculum and Miss Askquith-Ellis has taken on Mrs Marriott’s lunchtime club with the same enthusiasm, inspiring the U13s to win 4 of their 5 matches in the SE Hants 5-a-side tournament and the U16s to achieve a 50-50 record of wins/losses in their matches. Badminton Club is extremely well supported and at the end of the Spring Term we played a match against Churcher’s College with an all-age group team of 5 pairs. It was enormous fun and we emerged victorious (just!). Next season we are hoping to arrange a series of matches for different age groups. Tennis and rounders are as popular as ever, but the poor weather in the first half of term wreaked havoc with the fixture list and almost half of our rounders matches were cancelled due to rain. The senior tennis team won the Brighton match and achieved a notable win over St Swithun’s in the first round of the Aberdare Cup, only to be beaten by a very strong Barton Peveril side in the second round. The U15s drew with Brighton. Locally our teams did very well: the U13VI won the South East Hampshire league and the Year 8/9 team won the Portsmouth Area Schools’ Doubles Competition.
For the first time we entered the Portsmouth Schools’ Swimming Gala and we were victorious. Our Senior Team were Runners-up at the Trust Swimming Gala and the U14s came 4th. We would like to thank Gemma Spofforth, our international backstroker and School Swimming Captain, for her inspiration and encouragement over the last seven years at PHS and to wish her all the very best as she takes up her Swimming Scholarship at the University of Florida. We will be watching your progress with great interest Gemma, and supporting you from afar!
Finally—July 3rd 2006 saw probably the most exciting sports event in the history of PHS—our inaugural Inter-House Athletics Championships, wonderfully organised by Mrs Divilly and Ms Egan at HMS Temeraire. It was a truly memorable event with everyone in Years 7 to 10, some returning Year 11s and Lower Sixth (AND the staff) fully involved, either as an athlete, track or field official, or spectator. It was one of the hottest days on record, but luckily the spectator stand afforded some shade and the atmosphere was amazing. Miss Hulse was place judge and Mr Campbell was the official commentator, sounding as if he had worked for the BBC for years. The spectators started shouting their encouragement the second that Mr Brammall fired the starting gun for the opening event, the 100m hurdles, in which Charlotte Waldon-Day showed how it should be done by flying down the track and winning by about 30m! Spectators did not let up on their shouting until after the final event of the day, the ‘fun’ sack relay race!
We would like to thank Charlotte Waldon-Day and her family for presenting the School with the Waldon-Day Inter-House Athletics Cup, as well as Emily-Leighton- Smith and her family who have given us the Senior Victrix Cup, for the senior girl who achieves the greatest number of points overall in the competition—fittingly won for the first time by Charlotte Waldon-Day.
We could not maintain such a full and varied programme of sports events without the enthusiasm of the girls and the help and support of their parents. Thank you everyone, for another great year of sport at PHS!
This year has been a productive year for the Religion and Philosophy Department. Mrs Griffiths left temporarily on maternity leave and in January baby Sophie arrived. Mrs Kate Murray arrived from Plymouth to fill in during Mrs Griffith’s absence. There have been trips to London and Oxford for the A level and AS students, to listen to some well known contemporary philosophers, a cross curricular trip with the History Department enabling some Year 9 girls to listen to the experiences of a Holocaust survivor and several visitors to the Department leading sessions on such things as Thinking Skills and Medical Ethics. The department has continued to grow with record numbers taking the Philosophy and Ethics option both at GCSE and A level. Year 11 produced the best GCSE results yet for the Department this summer when 10 girls, performing at the highest level nationally, were awarded Board Prizes for achieving amongst the top marks in the country in their GCSE Religious Studies examination.
The Science Department has had another extremely busy and successful year. The excellent A Level results were a tribute to the strong scientific ability and diligence of the girls and we are delighted to see them carrying on their passion for science in their choices of university course. Cambridge continued to raise the stakes for entry for medicine so we were delighted that Hannah Massey gained a distinction in AEA Biology as well as merit in Chemistry to secure her place at Christ’s College. A wide variety of special activities were also enjoyed, including Year 7 visiting INTECH, Year 8 at Portsmouth Outdoor Centre for marine fieldwork and the Sixth Form enjoying scorching weather on their field trip to Wales. Science week saw Year 9 celebrating Einstein’s birthday, a scary display of Pops and Bangs from Mrs Coombes and a party for the enthusiastic members of Year 7 ScienceClub. The opening of the newly landscaped science garden was celebrated with a fireworks party and fireworks designed by Year 8. Girls with a particular interest in science participated in challenging activities including a masterclass on ‘light’, a chemistry summer camp at Imperial College, the Salter’s festival of Chemistry and a visit to the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
The last year was an exciting year in the Social Sciences Department. Politics students visited St John’s College Politics Society and were able to listen to David Laws, Vincent Cable, and Lord Tebbit. They visited the House of Lords and The House of Commons and were struck by the poor attendance of MPs in the Commons. There were sixteen in the chamber during a fascinating debate in which MPs were discussing a new law designed to speed up how MPs make laws. By contrast, the high quality of debate in The Lords and its professionalism was a surprise to the students. The magnificent decoration of the chamber was breathtaking. They also toured Whitehall and looked at Number 10 Downing Street, The Foreign Office and other government departments. Our Economists trekked to Cadbury World at Bournville on the coldest day in February and were treated not just to chocolate, but a fascinating lecture on chocolate branding and marketing. Global issues such as Fair Trade chocolate and international competition were also discussed.
The department also supported the Barnardo’s Enterprise Schemes in school this year. The Lower Sixth productions included the glamorous and girly Voice magazine and The School Calendar which were both extremely popular and well received. The Year 9 and 10 Masked Ball, which when one takes into consideration the preparation and fund raising that went towards it, was a magnum opus for the pupils involved. The Ball was a most splendid occasion with a live band as well as a disc jockey, beautiful decorations and stunning masks and costumes. The girls raised £1400 for Barnardo’s this year and they deserve high praise for all their hard work, initiative and enterprise.
There is hardly space available to include details of the many events associated with the different year groups, houses and other groups of girls, but we must not forget the Year 9 Bonding Day at Thorney Island when they tackled, amongst other activities, a full size assault course. A Year 10 team entered the Army Challenge day demonstrating their ability to solve a variety of problems with a real sense of fun. In addition, the Sixth Form Bonding day at Fairthorne Manor where many new friendships were forged whilst climbing walls, building rafts and conquering the assault course. Charity Week and the Fashion Show were again highlights of the Sixth Form calendar.
We are extremely grateful to the Senior School PSA who works so hard to support the School and our families in so many ways. Their enthusiasm and loyalty is deeply appreciated. We enjoyed a fabulous Christmas Fair and Quiz and Curry night as well as raising valuable funds through the sale of bulbs and wrapping paper.
As the school year came to a close we said farewell to a number of staff, all of them greatly committed and valued members of the School community. Ms Geraldine Kearney who worked tirelessly as our School Administrator; Mr Andrew Collins our Senior School Caretaker, who had been involved with so many School events —plays, fashion shows, charity events to name but a few; Mrs Amanda Hoyle who, after sixteen years at PHS, decided to be a full time mother after the birth of her third child. We also said goodbye to Mrs Gill Byrne after 18 years at Dovercourt. She started as a supply teacher before becoming a Year 4 Teacher and the English Co-ordinator. We have greatly valued her hard work and commitment and her efficiency in the smooth running of the library. Mrs Pat Kelly also left us, taking early retirement after having spent many years in the school as a Teaching Assistant.
I am very sorry to report that Mrs Chris Sinclair, our Speech and Drama teacher, for over twenty five years, died in March after a relatively short, yet brave battle with cancer. She will be remembered for her warmth and enthusiasm for Drama—producing more than twenty plays for the School. She was much loved and admired by all her pupils.
The School would like to extend a big thank you to Allison Howarth who, after a period of ill-health towards the end of the year, decided to resign from her position as Head of the Junior Department. Allison worked tirelessly to help realise the wonderful addition of the new Nursery Department and her love for the girls and their families was evident in all that she did. We send her our very best wishes for the future.
It was with sadness that the School waved goodbye to Miss Peg Hulse, who gave over seven years of dedicated service to Portsmouth High School, during which she showed a deep and personal concern for the welfare of the girls and the success of the School. We wish her every happiness as Head of Dr Challoner’s High School for Girls, Buckinghamshire.
To all our staff and girls who have moved on to new opportunities and exciting times, we wish you every success and ask only one thing of you—do keep in touch! As we near the celebrations of our 125th birthday, we are reminded of our long history and our old girls, past parents, staff and friends of the School. Do remember that your association with Portsmouth High School is lifelong and may you continue to enjoy links with the School for many years to come. I am looking forward to all the achievements and events over the next twelve months; do make sure you are able to join us for some of them.
Mrs Jenny Clough
November 2006 |