Every year, we hold a Book Fair here in Barr Beacon School. It’s not only great fun for the students but it also promotes reading for pleasure and helps our school analyse pupils’ reading preferences. For 4 days in November students in year 7, 8 and 9 had a chance to browse our Scholastic shelves during their English lessons. Year 10 and 11 browsed before and after school. Pupils showed great interest in new releases, discounted books and especially stationery! We had over £200 worth of online orders and over £600 was spent by the school on books for Free School Meals students in Y7 and 8. With the total of £807.45, we have beaten last year’s sales! Many thanks to all the pupils and staff that attended. Happy Reading!

Last academic year, we encouraged students to take part in our Summer Reading Challenge over the summer holidays. They had to submit reviews of the books they read for a chance to win a Kindle reader. We were pleased to see that we had many entries and reviews were creative, thoughtful, and beautifully written. We randomly chose a pupil from those who took part, and the winner is N. Hancock 8M1!

Congratulations! We hope you will enjoy the books we uploaded to your Kindle so you can start reading right away! 

Come and join the Barr Beacon students for this year’s school production of ‘High School Musical’. This exciting musical will be performed in the main school hall on Wednesday 13^th and Thursday 14^th December 2023, 6.30pm to 7.30pm. 

Tickets can be purchased through Weduc priced at £3 per ticket. 

We look forward to seeing you for this celebration of the wonderful talent here at Barr Beacon School. 

Barr Beacon School German Christmas Markets Trip – Parents meeting powerpoint

On Tuesday 21^st November Year 11 pupils took part in Next Steps Day. Year 11 pupils could choose to either attend a subject emersion workshop at James Watt or Sutton Coldfield College in an area of study that interests them, or sample different A-Level and BTEC courses that are offered by Barr Beacon School Sixth Form. This is an important experience to support our pupils in making the right choices after they finish Year 11 this summer. 

Our pupils threw themselves into the workshops and taster sessions at both BMET colleges and Barr Beacon Sixth Form.

Gurleen who attended Barr Beacon Sixth Form experience said “Attending the taster sessions really helped me to confirm my desire to study A -Levels in Psychology and Maths. It has also made me think hard about whether I want to do A-Levels in History or Biology.”

Kai who attended James Watt College said “I’m really glad I got the chance to go to James Watt College. An Engineering qualification is definitely what I want to do after Year 11.”

Macario who attended Sutton Coldfield college said “Going to Sutton College helped me to gain an in-depth insight into what my future may look like”.

Staff at the colleges were full of praise for our Year 11 pupils and the way they conducted themselves.

We were proud to host our first ‘We are Barr Beacon Day’ on Thursday 23^rd November. The theme of the day was our Beacon Value of ‘Equal to Everyone’ which is integral to our beliefs as a school community. Our Beacon Values run like a stick of rock through everything we do. This meant that on Thursday we celebrated the diversity within our school with all Year 7 pupils, learning about the diversity within our school, the culture, heritage and beliefs that are within our student body. Year 7s also took part in a drumming and dancing workshop and performed to their year group at the end of the day. Their confidence and committment was absolutely inspiring and we were very proud of them.

Year 9 and 10 pupils also heard from ex-athlete Daniel Caines and they were inspired by this talk: the key message being “You start whereever you start, but where you finish is up to you.” The empowering message really hit home with our pupils, many already reporting that they wanted to recommit to sports and hobbies that they may have left in the past. Daniel spoke about “dotting the Is and crossing the Ts” and helped pupils understand that the route to success is a pure and dedicated committment to what you are doing. It’s too easy to pass off ‘failure’ as not being good at something, instead of accepting the amount of hard work that is really required to succeed. 

The award winning Real Direction team also came to workshop with pupils about the impact that choices can make and to help pupils think about the consequences of their decisions.

Overall the day was a resounding success and we would like to thank all speakers, presenters and staff for providing pupils with a wonderful experience.

Once again, our Sixth Form students took the lead on fundraising for Children in Need.

They arranged events that took place during breaktime.  These included a doughnut sale (they sold 400!) and a Beat the Teacher penalty shootout competition.  Thank you to everyone who supported our fundraising efforts.  Thank you also to Mr Dawes and Ms Busby for being goalkeepers!

Well done to our Sixth Form Ambassadors for their effort and determination to make a difference to the lives of others.

A team of our Year 13 students visited the Great Hall of the University of Birmingham to take part in the annual Lord Mayor’s Sixth Form Mega Quiz. The event supports local charities and gives students the chance to compete in a fun challenge against other local Sixth Forms. The very tricky questions this year fell into the categories of Geography, English Language, Physics, Mathematics, Business and Music, with a slightly easier round introduced this year on Social Media. Students had a enjoyable day out and ranked a very respectable 7^th place in their House grouping.