Farewell, Miss Trevor!

It was with a heavy heart that staff and students said farewell to Miss Jill Trevor who retired at the end of the summer term as Deputy Head of the Junior School.

After eight years of faithful service to the Junior School, Miss Trevor was known by hundreds of students and families. Mr Peters, Head of the Junior School commented “As a newly-appointed Head Teacher in 2016, I was exceptionally grateful for Miss Trevor's wisdom and clarity of thought, and with her expert input, there is no doubt that the School has gone from strength to strength. Jill, you will be a tough act to follow and will be sorely missed. Thank you for all your hard work, compassion and humour.”

We hope Miss Trevor will remain a familiar face at School and will come and visit us regularly.

Anthology of

Throughout the summer term, Mr Wood and students in the Senior School worked together on a range of audio recordings for the Anthology of Theatre. Mr Wood was thrilled with the work he received and the recordings were shared on our School social media channels.

Well done to everyone who sent in a recording!

Anthony Horowitz shares his latest story online

Anthony Horowitz has published the first chapters of his latest book ‘Where Seagulls Dare’ for young people to read and review online. He invited Wolverhampton Grammar School and other local schools to take part. Well done to everyone who submitted their reviews for Anthony to read. Anthony was particularly impressed by Ella Hay’s review, which will be appearing on his website. Hopefully Ella’s review below inspires you to read Anthony’s new book:

"I think that this book is very good so far and would recommend it to other readers aged 7-13.

One of the features I like a lot about this book is the humour; I read a lot of crime solving books like this and they're all usually so focused on the storyline that they don’t think about breaking it up with any humour, which is why I think this book is so unique.

Another thing I think is very good is the way characters and the settings are described. Even from the first line you know where it’s set, when it’s set, and what type of book it might be. As soon as one of the characters, Tim Diamond, is introduced you know what type of character he's going to be - the sort of character who makes you laugh, a lot! I also really like the way the book makes you sit on the edge of your seat.

There is some very good punctuation. I really like the language Anthony uses and how he takes real life objects and places them to give the story a sense of reality. Another great language feature is the different sentence lengths, they're effective.

This isn’t usually the type of book I would pick up from looking at the name or the cover, but reading this extract has made me want to read more of Anthony’s books in the future.

In conclusion, I think this is an amazing book that all children who like mystery books should get to experience.”

By Ella Hay (Year 7)

Interested in reading ‘Where Seagulls Dare’ ? Visit Anthony’s website to discover more: www.anthonyhorowitz.com/news/ story/where-seagulls-dare-diamondbrothers-read-the-first-chapter-now

Students and staff were deeply affected by the murder of George Floyd who died after being arrested by police outside a shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota in America. The tragedy of George Floyd is not unique. There are many who have passed before and after him. The relatively recent shooting of Jacob Blake is another indefensible example.

These tragedies have ignited a social movement and we want to use this opportunity to share with you what Wolverhampton Grammar School has done, and plans to do to ensure all our community is heard, and represented, not just in our curriculum, but also in every aspect of School life.

One of the things that makes Wolverhampton Grammar School so special, is the diversity of our community. Over half of our students identify as BAME. It is essential that our School represents everyone – and we hope, when you read our School publications (like editions of The Independent) and see our website and social media presence that you agree.

That said, we can and should do better. We too have identified a number of actions that we must undertake in order to ensure that every single member of our student, staff and alumni community feels valued and represented by our School. This is a summary of some of those actions, please tell us if you think we could do something else, better or differently:

Immediate support for our staff

• Just after George Floyd’s death, Kathy Crewe-Read and Carrie Bennett met with staff who identify as BAME to talk about the Black Lives Matter movement and what we could do as a school. That collective then wrote to all BAME staff to reassure them that past and present discrimination of any individual, has no place within our School. We asked anyone who felt they had been affected in any way, to be confident in raising their concern with us. We also reminded all staff of the confidential and free Employee Assistance Programme and 24/7 Health Assured counselling service.

• We then held an open forum for any member of staff to talk about how School could do better. Teachers and support staff from a range of ages, ethnic and cultural backgrounds were represented.

• All staff are clear of the expectations of them and all staff have undertaken additional unconscious bias training in

September, ready for the beginning of term. Our induction process for all new staff will also be reviewed.

• We have also taken the advice of Mr Fowler, a member of staff at our School who was a Government adviser on community education and then became the national lead on community cohesion. He has worked in some of the most racially diverse and deprived areas of the country and alongside a range of influential practitioners and social leaders. He continues to guide and advise us to ensure this momentum of change continues.

Immediate support for our students

• Mrs Finn (whom many of you will know) convened a special Student Parliament session to discuss Black Lives Matter and the students shared many ideas for reform, which have been taken forward – thank you.

• A number of staff and students have participated in Black Lives Matter marches. As a School we fully supported (and still support) your right to do this.

• During lockdown we launched #WGSTogether as a tool to share resources, activities and different voices to the whole of our school community. #WGSTogether came from a “wellbeing” perspective, but was also used to share resources such as TED talks to a younger generation that may not be aware of a global social action community – set up to spread ideas. Talks shared included “How to speak so that people want to listen” and “10 ways to have a better conversation” spoken by men and women from a range of ethnicities. This work will continue.

• Our induction process for new students in September made it clear the standards that we expect at School: from kindness, to behaviour and understanding of our School community and that our differences makes us stronger.

• Pastoral care remains at the centre and forefront of everything we do. If you are ever worried about anything, or want to discuss a concern – you must talk to a member of staff.

• Students can also raise concerns (or, in the case of the Junior School, “worries”) using an online tool on our Student Portal.

• We are about to launch a number of new initiatives across School including a diversity group for children and staff of all backgrounds and experiences to come together. Contact Carrie Bennett email cab@wgs-sch.net if you would like to be involved in this group.

For all our community

We have compiled an immediate and longer term set of actions which will encompass Key Stage 2, 3 and 4. They are also committed to in our School Development Plan which outlines to all staff and Directors the priorities for the School going forward. They include:

• A review and expansion of not just the History syllabus, but also Government and Politics, English Language and

Literature, Music, Art, Business, Religious Studies and Theology; Economics and Psychology syllabus and schemes of work to ensure it represented our communities and experiences – both past and present. This work is ongoing, but changes have already been made.

• Academic areas such as the sciences, sport and humanities will ensure their subject and lesson references include people of all colour and experience.

• The School’s Exams Officer is currently contacting all exam boards used by School to lobby for change in exam syllabi and the National Curriculum.

• Assemblies in both the Junior and Senior Schools already discuss a whole range of topical issues from injustice, race to inequality, discrimination etc. We also use assemblies to celebrate individuals from all cultures and backgrounds. Senior assemblies also now include: student vs teacher debates and motions already covered include; Feminism has failed women; Colonialism and the Commonwealth; Genocide; the Queen’s English and Transgender athletes and their right to compete.

• End of term Assemblies, Founder’s Day and Prizegiving now include world music, as well as readings and speakers from different faiths including Sikh and Muslim (who make up the majority of our BAME community). Every Founder’s Day for the last five years has included readings from the Sikh scriptures or Qur’an.

• Our PSHE curriculum already includes exploration of self and identity; communities; democracy; relationships etc. We have already recognised that PSHE needs to be at the forefront of our students’ experience at School. The PSHE co-ordinator is now developing a programme of activities for tutors to reinforce messages around radicalisation; types of bullying; mental health; reliability of (and discrimination in) the media; peer pressure. This is just a snapshot of what our PSHE and tutor time curriculum covers – but has particular resonance in terms of equality.

A number of our former students have also contacted School directly with ideas for further reform of the national curriculum and daily school life. We need to keep these conversations and ideas coming. Did you see Sathnam Sanghera (OW 1995) who returned to School during lockdown with Channel 4 News? He used our School to help raise the issue of why so many NHS and care staff practitioners from BAME communities were contracting and, in many cases, dying from COVID-19. You may also know that Dr Kapil Vij (OW 2009) reached out to us in March to request help with donations of personal protective equipment (PPE) for fellow frontline workers – many of them again, from BAME communities. We donated 233 safety glasses and goggles to New Cross A&E and GP practices across the City.

As educators, we promise to stand with everyone in our community in the move towards change.

Have more ideas for change?

The BBC received nearly 135,000 entries for this year’s writing competition. Only 5000 of these were sent to the Reading Agency for the second round of judging. Well done to the following students for making it to this stage of the competition:

Arjun Sanghera

Emma Halford

James Hobeika

Lily Hemmings

Emmeline Redford

The move to Big School

Well done to all Year 7 students who have taken their first, important steps to Senior School.

Around half of Year 7 children are completely new to Wolverhampton Grammar School (around half move up from the Junior School’s Year 6). Joining a new school and year group is daunting enough without all the additional pressure that lockdown and the return to education brought.

Nigel Crust, Head of Year 7, has been incredibly impressed by the year group and their enthusiasm for school life. All

Virtual Teatime Concert

Students from the Senior School and Sixth Form took part in the first virtual teatime concert during the summer term. Well done to Charlotte Anderson, Ben Dunn, Adya Rao, Alberto Rescigno, Dharam Sangha, Edward Williams, Favour Apata, Summer Bloor, Natalie Saunders, Mayashan Sharmadekker, William Maguire, Beth Seager, Mia Seager, Harry Wade, Zakaria Adnan and Hannah Dzvengwe for recording your pieces at home.

Wiggly worms help us celebrate Book Week

Our latest Book Week took a surprising turn with the help of some wiggly worms!

Book weeks help us use even more creative tools like competitions and activities to help inspire reading during lockdown. Activities ranged from creating a Mr Gum inspired worm farm to watching a virtual author event with Chris Bradford.

My daughter has had a fantastic start to school, she has been happy to share with us and we have been looking forward to hearing all about her day at WGS.

students attended an iPad induction over the summer and then began their term with a comprehensive, three-day induction covering everything from “being brave” to timetables, the student portal, OneNote, meeting friends and homework before launching into lessons from Monday 7th September.

A warm welcome to all our new students and families and thank you for all your messages about induction.

House Piano Competition

Lockdown didn’t stop extra and co-curricular activities taking place and the Junior School House Piano competition was no exception!

The quality of entries in Year 3 was so impressive, that we had to pick one child per house, not just one entrant for the whole year group. We also had to pick a school learner and a home learner in Year 6, again because the quality was spectacular.

Congratulations to:

Year 3

Marco Liang

Harry Pang

Aarin Patel

Emma Halford

Year 4

Amrik Bratch

Year 5

Isaaq Dingwall

Year 6 (now Year 7 students)

Ashvini Samanta

Joy Shi

Well done to everyone who entered and congratulations to Marco Liang who is the first Year 3 to win the overall competition!