Everton Players Matthew Pennington and Calum Dyson paid a visit Hope Academy this week and met with pupils from our Everton School Supporters’ Club.

The Blues duo met a group of pupils at Hope Academy to discuss the importance of healthy eating, before rolling their sleeves up to get involved in a Food Technology lesson.

To read more click:  http://www.evertonfc.com/news/2016/05/04/young-duo-go-back-to-school

Careers Fair

On Thursday 4th February we opened our doors for our first ever careers fair at Hope Academy. This event was attended by year groups 9 to 13 plus a very successful turn out after school by both pupils and parents.

Our stallholders ranged from Universities such as Edgehill, Liverpool Hope and Manchester Metropolitan to Apprenticeship schemes from St Helens Chamber and Waterside. We also had various businesses such as Lloyds banking, IBM and Hill Dickinson to name a few plus the British Army and various MerseySTEM ambassadors such as NSG and AstraZeneca. There really was something for everyone and the place generated a real buzz from pupils throughout the day.

The feedback we have received from both pupils and providers was excellent!

“The behaviour from students at Hope is the best we have ever seen” St Helens Chamber

“An outstanding careers fair to help year 9 pupils progress with their lifetime skills” Angel Siddeley Year 9

“Pupils were very polite and pleasant and very interested in this organisation” J Holcroft Skills for Health

“Overall a great event! All the students behaved impeccably” O2

“A great opportunity to start thinking about apprenticeships and degrees. This has helped me to decide what I want to do when I grow up and will help year 10s prepare for their GCSEs and A Levels. All of the universities and companies were extremely helpful” Laura Pendlebury Year 10

“Great day! We thoroughly enjoyed it!” NCS Northwest

Miss Davies

Volunteering & Enterprise Coordinator

Sporting Success – Year 11 Rugby Team

Congratulations to the Year 11 rugby team who won final of the North West Champion Schools Cup by beating St. Peter's from Wigan 22-10 on Saturday at the Select Security Stadium, Widnes. Tries came from team captain Ben Legge, Ryan Littler, Michael Wynn and Eddie McLorie. From an outstanding team effort, once again Tayler Brown was chosen as the Man of the Match by the RFL for persistent hard work in both attack and defence. The team will now progress to represent the North West in the National Schools competition and will play Castleford Academy away in the coming weeks. Well done to all the lads and thank you to all the supporters who attended the game to make it a special evening.

Sporting Success – Year 11 Table Tennis Team

Congratulations to our Year 11 Table Tennis team who took part in a competition with other St Helens school s on Wednesday and ran out eventual winners. They will now represent us in the Merseyside finals. The team consisted of Connor Whitehead, Daniel Cartwright, Luke Lapersonne and Michael Potter. Well done and good luck in the final.

Christmas Market – Monday 14 December 6.00pm-8.30pm

We will be holding our annual Christmas Markets on Monday 14 December. Stalls are £10.00 per stall and can be booked by e-mail HopeChristmasMarket@sthelens.org.uk or contact Dr Michelle Goodwin on 01744 671930. A Christmas evening of live music, craft stalls and traditional food and drink plus much more; come along and join us for an evening of festive fun.
Hope

Feather Boy

Hope Academy’s production of ‘Feather Boy’ is on the 8th, 9th and 10th of December. Tickets are on sale at Student Services and in the Library every Break and lunch time. Tickets are £5.00, £8.00 for 2 or £12.00 for a family ticket.

The Rotary Club – Young Chef

Two weeks ago The Rotary Club contacted Miss Sargent, Technology Teacher, as another school had dropped out of the second round of the young chef competition. She offered this opportunity to our students who jumped at the chance. All the contestants from other schools had been preparing for the competition since before the summer holidays, Freya Sheppard, Year 9, only had 2 weeks to prepare. When another student withdrew the day before the competition, Grace Cooper-Surtees from Year 8, pulled on her apron and had less than 24 hours to prepare. Both students made Miss Sargent very proud to be their teacher and received a number of comments about how smart they looked in their uniforms.

Miss Sargent commented “Staff might see 2 very tired students including Aolani in Year 9, who came along to support our students”. As you can see by the pictures Grace was even too tired to take off her apron.

Saturday Performing Arts at the Summer Fair

Hope Academy’s first Summer Fair gave our Saturday morning “Performing Arts” students the opportunity to show off their many talents to a wider audience. Their performances of music dance and drama were well received by all who came to listen.

The show started with the guitars performing a medley of tunes including Peter Gunn and Smoke on the Water followed by the talented solo guitar and vocalist Ethan Cullen. Ethan is a pupil of Hope Academy and regularly performs at our end of term concerts. He treated the receptive audience to the Oasis song “Don’t look back in anger”.

The next piece was by Connie Wilson on flute. Connie is a new student to Hope Academy after beginning her Saturday morning tuition while still in St Peters Primary. Her confident playing has recently resulted in her passing the grade three examination of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.

The show continued with the young actors expressively performing their silent movie with pupils taking turns to play the damsel in distress, the evil villain and the hero.

The senior vocal group then took to the stage and sang Ella Henderson’s “Yours”. It was an emotional performance with contrasts between vocal solos and beautiful harmonies on the chorus.

The show finished with an entertaining “Cotton Eyed Joe” dance performance involving everybody. The audience clapped along while the students combined group moves with each pupil taking a short solo to show off their own “moves”.

Hopefully this will be the first of regular performances at Academy events. If you would like to join the Saturday morning sessions please come along for a free trial and maybe you will be performing at our next show.

Year 10 Trip to France/Belgium – July 2015

During the final days of last term Miss Brophy, Miss Bibi, Mr Carroll and I took 38 Year 10 students to Belgium and France for a week. We left Hope Academy at 9.pm Friday evening and travelled overnight to Dover via coach. After a long trip we visited Tyne Cot Commonwealth Cemetery and continued on to Hill 62 to visit the remains of original World War One trenches. Shortly afterwards arriving at Ypres for our hostel. Over the next few days we visited German military cemeteries and various museums in the Flanders area.

We then travelled on to Paris via the Somme battlefields where we laid a wreath at Thiepval memorial to over 70000 soldiers with no known grave. Our students were very respectful and a credit to our school. We had some time in Paris and visited a skyscraper for a view of Paris better that the Eiffel Tower! We also visited Notre Dame, the Funecular Railway and Sacred Heart Cathedral along with some free time to explore near the attractions. We finished with a day at Parc Asterix theme park with various rides to enjoy before the long journey home.

It was a fantastic trip and our students represented Hope Academy brilliantly and I firmly believe it was enjoyed by all. Next year in July we are looking to take students in the current Year 10 to Berlin as part of their studies. More details to follow so watch this space!

The Rotary Young Chef Competition 2015

Six of our talented students entered the competition hosted by the Rotary Club at Hope Academy on Wednesday 17th June.

The aim of the competition is to encourage young people to

• Learn how to cook a healthy meal
• Develop food presentation skills
• Consider food hygiene issues
• Develop organisational and planning skills
• Develop an ability to cope in a demanding situation. 

The competition was and is open to students between the ages of 11-17.

The task is to prepare in two hours a three course healthy meal for two people costing less than £15.

All students who entered receive a medal and certificate.

1st, 2nd, 3rd receive a trophy and 1st and 2nd go through to the next round.  1st Laura Pendlebury With an exceptional cheese soufflé

2nd Andrew Pickstone Produced perfectly delicate flavours throughout

3rd Ruth McCaul-Lowe A perfectly flavoured lime tart

St Helens Schools' Rounders Tournament

The U13 and U15 girls rounders teams represented Hope Academy at the St Helens Schools' rounders tournament on Wednesday 10th June. 

The U13 played in two sections with the winners of each section playing a final. Hope were clear winners of their section and faced a strong team from Cowley who were also clear winners of their section. The final was a closely fought game but Cowleys left handed hitters proved to be too strong and eventually won by 6 rounder’s to 3. There were some superb performances on the day, Freya Millener was top scorer, Lucy Heaton made a number of important catches and Della Pook was excellent with both the bat and on 2nd base. 

I am very pleased to announce that the U15 team went one better and were deserving winners of their tournament. They played their competition as a round robin and the stats read played 4 won 4! The girls improved every game they played and tactically outwitted teams who often had better hitters. The U15 team now go on to the Merseyside finals on 3rd July at Wavertree Sports Centre. Congratulations to all, a brilliant day for Hope Academy.

Quad Kids

Teams from year 7 and 8 competed at the St Helens Schools’ Quad Kids event. Each competitor in this event has to compete in 100m, 800m, long jump and a throw. The points scores from each event are then added together to make a team total. We had a number of outstanding performances from individuals in several events. Freya Milliner was first in the vortex howler the long jump and was also top three in the 100m. Our year 7 boys team were also 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the 800m. Overall results were year 7 5th place and year 8 6th. Congratulations to all competitors.

Merseyside Schools’ Athletics

Gemma Kinsley competed at The Merseyside Schools’ Athletics Championships at Bebington Sports Centre on Saturday 13th June. 

She competed in both the shot and javelin. The English Schools’ standard for shot is 11m and Gemma threw 10.81m. Although she didn’t make the standard for English schools this is still a fabulous achievement. Gemma was hoping to achieve the standard in javelin and she threw 7m and therefore will compete in the English Schools’ Championships at Gateshead in the Javelin. Gemma is delighted as she hasn't trained much because of the GCSE exams and her leg is still troubling her. Gemma has now been a double (shot and Javelin) Merseyside champion since year 7, this is a tremendous achievement. 

Well done Gemma!

Congratulations to the Year 11 football team who won the St. Helens Schools Cup Final with a fantastic performance beating Haydock 5-1.