SPRING 2017
The
Rutherford Review
Headlines As you would expect this has been a very busy term with many varied and exciting extracurricular opportunities. Thank you to all students and staff for all their hard work and also thank you for the incredible support we get from parents. Our Year 11 Students have been focused on their Pre Public Exams (PPE), especially in Maths and English, to ensure they are very well prepared for the new GCSE courses. They are the first cohort to go through nationally and staff are working hard to ensure they have every opportunity to succeed. An advantage of having been a secondary school for over seven years is that as each cohort goes through, they benefit from the teachers’ experience and delivery of these courses. Our present Year 7 students, when they come to take the new GCSEs, will have experienced staff who have taught the new specification for 4 years. There are a wide variety of opportunities for young people that enhance the curriculum. However, these are coming under threat from the continued cuts in national funding for education; this is a real threat to all schools as budgets shrink year on year. This means that many schools have cut or will be looking to cut many of these opportunities. The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) are campaigning vigorously to the Government about this and the recruitment crisis in teaching. As a school we have been very fortunate to recruit well and have a robust financial team but each year it is becoming harder and harder as budgets shrink and good quality teachers become rarer. We are now close to finishing the £1.5 million refurbishment of the roof and windows around the school to ensure we all stay warm and dry! This is a significant investment from the Government but unfortunately this is one of the few areas that money is available for. This newsletter celebrates successes, our partnerships within the community, a number of different trips and visits and is a snapshot of life at Mark Rutherford. With exams approaching it is still important for students to have a balance of preparation and revision but also relaxation and continuing to take part in activities that they enjoy. Have a relaxing and enjoyable Easter.
Mr Richard Millard, Headteacher
What a royally windy day! On the day of Storm Doris, six students, Mr Little and Ms Seaby travelled to the Royal Society in London. The Royal Society was formed in 1660 and overlooks Buckingham Palace and The Mall. Some of its more famous fellows include Sir Isaac Newton, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Travel was difficult due to the storm and we had to revert to contingency plans due to the trains not running. However, we arrived just in time to give our presentation to an eager crowd of students and Fellows of the Royal Society. After an amazing lunch we explained the details of our experiments to many VIPs and had the chance to see what other schools had been investigating. Despite the weather, the students had an awesome day and presented details of the experiments that they designed, carried out and wrote up; in the most famous and historic location in all of Science – a once in a lifetime opportunity!
Cambodia trip fundraising In the summer of 2018, thirty four students will be going to Cambodia for one month on a trip of a lifetime. They will be carrying out three weeks of volunteer work (manual labour) as well as completing a 5 day jungle trek. In order to go, each student needs to raise £3710 – that’s just over £126,000 altogether. The students have been raising money individually for the trip through various activities including cake sales, Christmas tree collections and selling old clothes. On 24th February, we held our first big group event; a pizza and quiz evening. It was a great evening and raised just over £1200. Thank you to everyone that came along and supported us. We hope to see you at our next event.
Coding competition winners In January, the British Computer Society Coding Competition Winners 2016 were awarded a FUZE programmable computer and workstation by representatives from BCS and Cranfield University at the Computing at School Hub Meeting, which took place here at Mark Rutherford. Each school that came either first, second or third in the Year 7 and Year 8 category received a FUZE for their coding clubs. The FUZE was specifically designed to make learning to code as easy and as accessible as possible. All students at our Markietex Coding Club and our High Tech Teens Girl’s Coding Club will be able to have a go at coding with it.
Youth speaks up… The Mark Rutherford Public speaking team once again competed in the district level semi-final of the Rotary Club’s prestigious Youth Speaks competition. It is the sixth year in succession that a team from the School has qualified for this stage of the nationally respected event. The trio of Lydia Geronikolos, Lina Dubbins and Matty Darby were competing for the first time as a team in the event. Their selected topic was “Why 16-year-olds should be allowed the vote” with the speaker Lydia delivering the main speech supported by Lina as Chair and Matty who gave the vote of thanks. They narrowly missed out on a place in the District Final where they had hoped to defend the title won by another team from Mark Rutherford last year. The team’s participation in the event at Leighton Buzzard was acknowledged with certificates at the end of the competition.
www.markrutherford.beds.sch.uk
@Mark_Rutherford
Mark Rutherford School