CSG December 2022 newsletter

This term has seen the school flourish and open its doors to the community with the full range of Open Days both in the Main School and Sixth Form. We have enjoyed the opportunity to showcase the work of the school and it has been wonderful to meet so many new families. The autumn term is always a busy and productive term and I would like to thank everyone for working so hard, collaboratively and in harmony, towards excellence at every level. I am delighted to share that, as a testament to this hard work, Camden School for Girls ranks in the Top 10 state comprehensive schools in London and is number 12 amongst state comprehensives nationally in the Parent Power 2023 league tables. Warm congratulations to everyone!

Year 8 Pandora's Box competition

THe Camden School for Girls Classics Department ran the annual Year 8 Pandora's Box competition and the results are in!

This year, students across the year group created and crafted impressive boxes, decorating them beautifully, and constructing terrifying interiors to represent the evils inside. Students carried out their own research, using Greek writing and incorporating Greekinspired decoration.

Year

Congratulations to the overall winner, Bella in 8C!

Winners in each class are as follows:

8C – winner Bella, runner up Martha

8M – winner Leonie, runner up Sara

8R – winner Indigo, runner up Kidist

8T – winner Keira, runner up Nina

An enormous well done to every Year 8 student for your love of Classics.

The Classics Department

Year 7 have been really enjoying using the workshops at DT Makers Lunch Club to create beautiful wooden crafts

Camden School for Girls

7 DT Makers Lunch Club.

Ms Ronayne

Pink Week & Pink Day

Our annual Pink Week took place during the last week before October half term culminating on Friday 21st October 2022 with Pink Day raising an impressive £3,765 for Breast Cancer UK The week featured busking, performances, bake sales, the traditional Cantelowes conga, pink outfits, the pink police and of course, the huge Pink Day Catwalk.

This amount is the result of an outstanding commitment from the Head Prefect team and all our students and staff.

The catwalk was an extraordinary success with the whole school getting involved from Year 7 to Year 13. This is a cause that is very dear to us and it has become part of our school tradition to raise money each year. Thank you to everyone for your support.

Ms Derrar

Year 10 Computer Science Speaker

Our Year 10 Computer Science students had a visit from Richard Shein from a Tech startup company Wayve who build self-driving cars. Richard, a product manager for Wayve, went through how the company is building the technology with the use of AI to get self-driving cars on London roads by 2027 - 2030.

Richard told us about the many different roles in tech including ones where you do not even need to know how to program. These include but are not limited to: ● Design

Software Engineer ● Data Scientist ● Product Manager ● ML/AI Researcher

Our computer science class got a great insight into what a career in the field can be like and Richard broke down the myth that working in computing is just sitting in front of a screen, that it can be a really sociable work environment and that most people working in Tech startups command a six-figure salary. Some of us were inspired to take up the role of a product manager.

and Kitty - Year 10

Temi

Year 13 Photography with Cian Oba Smith

What an absolute pleasure it was to welcome Cian Oba Smith back to the Photography Department this term. Cian was a student at CSG from 2010 to 2012 before heading off to study a degree in the subject at UWE. He discussed with the Year 13 students one of the many projects he undertook during his degree, an assignment photographing a small Islamic community in Iceland, a project that revealed itself when the undergraduate students were asked to write up a wish list of places they would like to photograph, Cian wrote down Iceland, they were then asked by the tutor to make the 'dream' a reality!

After graduation he assisted several photographers in London including Zed Nelson. Over the past decade he has pursued personal projects (Concrete Horsemen, Shanzhai, Andover and Six Acres to name a few) that have led him to advertising campaigns and more recently as stills photographer for Netflix commissioned films. Students asked pertinent questions regarding how to approach strangers for meaningful portraits? How to make a career out of the subject? And is university still a viable route into industry?

Cian currently has work on display at The Taylor Wessing Portrait Awards, that has been selected from his personal project captured in London on the impact of knife crime. It was wonderfully engaging to see and hear all that Cian has achieved and I have no doubt he has inspired the Year 13s that photography is an exciting career path to pursue.

Ms Miller

Year 8 trip to The Woman in Black

On Thursday 1 December Ms Trench and Ms Smith took a group of Year 8 students to see the play of Susan Hill's gothic novel The Woman in Black, which they have been studying, at the Fortune Theatre in the West End. Kitty 8R wrote this review:

'The Woman in Black was really good because in some scenes it was intense and scary so I really enjoyed the play. My favourite bit was the Woman in Black standing behind Arthur, and the door scenes were really scary too'

Violet in Year 12 has drawn a brilliant, witty comic strip/storyboard of Act 1 of Shakespeare's comedy 'Twelfth Night' in the style of Charles M Schulz's 'Peanuts' strip featuring Charlie Brown. As Countess Olivia says, it's "most wonderful!"

Violet's Peanuts-style comic strip of Twelfth Night!

Ms Trench

Year 9 and Year 10 STEM workshop

Some year 9 and 10 students took part in a STEM activity called Stixx Shelters. We had to make rods using sheets of newspaper and the stixx machine, a rolling device which created rods sturdy enough for us to build out shelters from. The activity was timed so it was a competition to see how with design skills and mathematics we could create a structure that could fit all six team members inside. By the end of the session, we had all of our team members crammed in. Our team created a square based prism with a built-in, hinged door. Our only problem was one team member who was meant to leave was having so much fun she decided to stay, so we had to squeeze in 7 teenagers!!! At the end of the session Jeremy gave us a careers talk on engineering and explained how despite having a tiny population in comparison to China, the UK is still the go to for design and engineering because of our creative education and longstanding history of design and innovation. It was a really fun experience and we all learnt a lot about careers as well as the importance of skills such as teamwork and collaboration.

Year 11 Debating

Molly, Taeefa and Rafaela from our sixth form debate club had a chance to put their debate skills to the test in the English Speaking Union's Schools' Mace Competition. The proposition was that digital manipulation in advertising should be banned. The team argued for the proposition, arguing that fast food and cosmetics were industries that have the capacity to be harmful to consumers and this is amplified by photo editing. False advertising is also especially damaging in the midst of a cost of living crisis. It was a lively and fun debate.

The team's debate skills were highly praised by the judges, who remarked that it was a very 'close run thing' but unfortunately the opposition team won the debate on the day. The debate club will be using the judges' feedback to help prepare for their next debate competition in February.

Ms Wroe Debating & Head of History

Sukie 9T, Lotte 9T and Eireann 9M

Sixth Form Masterclasses

The Sixth Form Masterclasses this term covered a fantastic range of subjects from The Tower of Babel, Freedom of Thought – and how to defend it, particle physics, forensic psychiatry with Richard Taylor, jazz music and dance, Rethinking Economics with Alfredo Saad-Filho, using Mathematics in Healthcare Planning with Christina Pagel, Timbuktu and the Empire of Mali with Gus Casely-Hayford and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem with Alex Dias.

Main School Speakers

Also this term Main School students enjoyed a host of different speakers on a Thursday lunchtime from a range of different speakers including with Joanne Davis about being an academic and a writer, Ted Kravitz about a career in journalism, Isabel Ron Pedrique about digital product design, Katia Roberts about coding and app design and Ethan Ilzetzki about the economics profession. Students really enjoyed these sessions and asked our speakers some thought provoking questions.

Year 7 Docklands trip

In November Year 7 geographers broadened their horizons and their mapwork skills when they travelled to Docklands in East London. They used grids to conduct a treasure hunt in West India Quay, and historic maps to spot the bomb damage from the Blitz. We experienced almost every sort of weather, but none of it quite so wet as we had feared.

Mr Evans

CASCA Jumble Sale

n Saturday 12 November the annual Camden School for Girls Jumble Sale took place and the event was bigger and better than ever. As always, we received an impressive amount of jumble, thanks to the generosity of parents, students, staff and friends, and everyone went away feeling they had some real bargains in their bags. The Jumble Sale was formidably organized and led by Mary Kavanagh who, together with the support and hard work of an incredibly industrious team of parents and friends raised a record £12,000 for the school this year.

Alumni Christmas Drinks

n Thursday 8 December a group of alumni and friends of Camden School for Girls joined us for Christmas Drinks and the opening of our new art gallery space curated by History of Art teacher David Aronsohn The newly restored stained-glass windows by the artist Henry Holiday were illuminated in their new site outside the staff room which is a fitting place given that the allegorical figures also pay tribute to past teachers of the school. The Camden School for Girl’s Art collection is inspired by the School Prints series, published in the 1940s. In the School Prints series, artists were commissioned to create original lithographs which could be sold cheaply to subscribing schools to enable children to enjoy real works of art. Many of the artist’s work in the new art gallery space is made by people connected to the school or pioneering women artists.

Camden School for Girls

December 2022 Newsletter

The staff at CSG would like to wish all our students and families a relaxing Christmas break! Please do remember the first day back is Wednesday 4 January 2023.

January

Important dates for your diary

Tuesday 3 January 2023 INSET day – school closed to students

Wednesday 4 January 2023 First day of Spring Term

Until 10 January 2023

Thursday 12 January

Year 13 Mock Exams

Year 7 Parents Evening 5pm – 7pm

Thursday 26 January Year 8 Parents Evening 5pm – 7pm

Monday 30 January Year 12 Higher Education Conference

Friday 3 February

February

Wednesday 8 February

Band’s Night 7pm – 9pm

Parent - Governor Meeting 5.30pm – 6.30pm

Thursday 9 February Year 9 Parents Evening 5pm – 7pm

Monday 13 – Friday 17 February Half term

Christmas Card Artwork

Congratulations and many thanks to the eight students whose artwork you will see on the Camden School for Girls Christmas card this year. We hope that these fabulous pieces bring all parents, carers, friends and supporters of the school some winter cheer and remind you of our students' exceptional creativity, imagination and skill. Many thanks to our talented art teachers who enabled them to produce work of such high quality.

Camden School for Girls

Support the school

Camden School for Girls has faced significant and ongoing cuts to its funding. As a voluntary aided school, we rely on your support to keep the high-quality provision at the school. If you wish to support the school we now have a very easy to use CAFdonate page available here .

We would like to thank all families for their ongoing support of the school and wish you a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!