Y9 Virtual Progress Evening has been postponed this evening until Thursday 23rd March 2023. Details will be sent to parents in due course.
Detentions and Extra Curricular have also been cancelled for this evening.
Valentine’s Day Sweet Sale: Sixth Form Charity Event
Charity Managers Amber and Thomas led on this year’s sweet sale for Valentine’s Day.
We raised £95.50 which will be shared between our chosen charities this year: Freedom From Torture and Precious Dreams.
Thank you to everyone who supported this event.
Thank you and well done to our Year 13 ambassadors for organising the delivery of sweets on the day.
Ski Trip: what a week!
Our pupils have had an amazing time skiing on the slopes in New Hampshire followed by exploring New York… more exploring than they had planned for.
A selection of photographs from their trip can be found below.
The enthusiasm and resilience that our pupils showed over the week exemplified what it really means to be a Barr Beacon pupil. We would like to say a massive thank you to our dedicated staff who dealt with the very unusual circumstances they were faced with. They have ensured that all pupils were not only kept safe but also took the opportunity to embrace their additional time in New York and give them the opportunity to explore some incredible places.
World Book Day
This year for World Book Day we had a series of events and competitions happening across school.
Pupils were invited to complete a poster celebrating reading and during PSHE pupils watched ‘Authors Live’ with Sue Cheung and reflected on how reading can encourage us to be ourselves (one of our Beacon Values!) In English lessons pupils also competed in a series of quizzes and took part in our Book Review competition. See some of our amazing entries below.
To celebrate World Book Day, we also launched the Barr Beacon Reading Challenge Card. Pupils will be receiving these over the next week in their English lessons and we look forward to seeing pupils displaying their Reading Champion badges on their blazers.
![Talent-Competition[68]](https://barrbeaconschool.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/freshizer/92b259119daa6be0e7685ea596676750_Talent-Competition68-scaled-1440-c-90.jpg)
Matrix Academy Trust Talent Competition
Do you have a special talent you wish to showcase at our next big live event.
You will have the chance to perform on stage in front of a live audience in Birmingham at Millennium Point in their state-of-the-art theatre on Thursday 20th April 2022. Whether it be singing, dancing, juggling, stand-up comedy or anything and everything in between, we want to see all your wonderful talents.
How to enter:
- Have one of your performing arts teachers record your performance (or film it yourself and email to your teacher).
- A snippet of your performance can be submitted, please do not worry about submitting a performance in its entirety.
- Your teacher will be able to submit your performance video to the Matrix judging panel.
- Finalists will have the opportunity to perform at our next big trust event and some school events this year.
- Solo entries and group entries are welcome.
- Submit your entry by 4pm on Wednesday 15th March.
Once in a lifetime?
Students from four Matrix schools visited Tokyo to learn about Japanese culture – and themselves
As a travel destination, Japan remains impossibly out of reach in many people’s minds, despite us here – in the UK – being surrounded by Japanese culture. You can find sushi in your local supermarket; you can watch anime on Netflix; you can find t-shirts featuring famous prints by the artist Hokusai in high street clothing stores like New Look and Primark. Many of the most well known international brands are Japanese in origin: Sony, Toyota, Panasonic, Casio, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nintendo.
And yet, only around 300,000 people from the UK visit Japan each year. This may sound like a lot, but compare this with the 4,300,000 annual UK visitors to Spain.
Whenever we asked teenagers across our schools which country they have most wanted to visit, most had picked Japan. When we asked them why, they listed some of their favourite cultural artefacts: books, films, games. Some cited Japanese history; a fascination with samurai or geisha. But when pushed to think about their answers (as teachers, we never just settle for the first thing that comes to mind!) some of our young people have also talked about imagining it to feel different to what they are used to.
Read more: https://matrixacademytrust.co.uk/japan/
Year 9 Pupils at Birmingham University’s Big Physics Quiz
Twelve of our Year 9 pupils competed in the splendour of Birmingham’s Great Hall against schools from across the length and breadth of the West Midlands. Our teams did us proud winning some rounds and all three of our 4 person teams came comfortably within the top 10. The visit also included a tour of the university and highly engaging physics lecture from Professors of the Physics department at Birmingham. One of our pupils commented that they could “really see myself studying here if I work hard enough” and all agreed it offered a brilliant insight into what life and learning at a top Russell Group university could be like.
Languages Workshop
Year 11 pupils took part in a languages workshop with a Freelance Translator, Jae Marple. Jae is able to choose which work he takes on and has tailored his career to his passion, translating for the Football industry. Most recently, Jae has been translating articles for the FIFA World Cup in Qatar and the FIFA Women’s U19 World Cup in India. He has been fortunate enough to create transcriptions of press conferences and interviews with famous managers and players, including Arsène Wenger and Patrick Vieira for the Invincible documentary. Jae speaks many languages, but specialises in Spanish and French. He set our year 11 French pupils a challenge, to translate an article he had to complete himself for the World Cup. Pupils enjoyed translating real life material and dived into the challenge of decoding unfamiliar phrases and words, using their knowledge of the football industry.
Safer Internet Day
Tuesday 7th February 2023
Safer Internet Day is held every February in over 170 different countries. The goal of Safer Internet Day is to call on people across the world to work together to make the internet a safer and better place for all, but especially for young people. In the UK, the UK Safer Internet Centre run a campaign especially for the day which aims to start a national conversation about using technology safely and positively.
Last year over half of children and young people in the UK heard about the campaign, but it also involves and influences government, charities, police forces and tech companies including social media and gaming platforms.
This Safer Internet Day asks everyone to make space for conversations about life online, especially with young people.
That’s why this year, the theme for Safer Internet Day is:
Want to talk about it? Making space for conversations about life online
To help raise further awareness of the importance of keeping safe online, pupils in all year groups have written their own pledges about how they will keep safe online.
So, this Safer Internet Day we are challenging everyone to talk about it.
Talk to your friends. Talk to the adults you know and trust.
Most importantly, tell them if something is worrying you. It’s never too late to share an online problem and get help and support that can make things better.
Happy Safer Internet Day everyone!
Holocaust Memorial Day
Written by Deputy Head Students Dilraaj K and Mazin E
Ordinary people
The theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is ordinary people. Ordinary people were involved in all aspects of the Holocaust. For example, ordinary people were victims, witnesses, bystanders, and rescuers. Ordinary people have choices for their actions. Think about how ordinary people like us can play a more significant part in challenging prejudice and discrimination today. By speaking out against discrimination and antisemitism, we are staying true to our Barr Beacon values- ‘Never discriminate’ and have ‘Consideration for others and the environment.’
What was the Holocaust?
The Holocaust was the systematic murder of black people, homosexuals, Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma & Sinti Gypsies by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War.
The Nazi’s programme of anti-Jewish persecution began as soon as Hitler came into power in 1933. This programme of targeted mass murder was a central part of the Nazis’ ideology to try and create a supreme ‘Aryan race’ and to destroy any ‘inferior races’.
At first, they used anti-Semitic laws to make life difficult for Jews to continue with their everyday lives. They outlawed marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Germans and removed all civil and political rights of the Jews. Furthermore, restrictions alongside brutal propaganda encouraged a culture of segregation and hostility. This process of victimisation was intended to isolate Jewish people from the wider population.
Why and how we remember?
On 27th January 2023, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Death Camp in 1945, we remembered the 11 million victims of the Holocaust.
A group of year 13 students were privileged to bear witness to the testimony of Holocaust survivor, Ruth Posner BEM, and took part in a webchat organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. Ruth Posner was a child at the time of the Holocaust and shared her experiences of how her family were evicted from their home in Warsaw, Poland, after the Germans had invaded and were moved to live in a Ghetto in Warsaw. She eventually escaped the Ghetto with her aunt and assumed a false identity and was hidden by a Catholic family. She was eventually arrested, not for being Jewish but for being a Polish-Catholic and, towards the end of the war, she was put on a train by the Germans with her aunt and transported to Essen in Germany where she hid on a farm until the end of the war.
Ruth’s message was one of hope that, even through the darkest of times, people can overcome adversity and it is the responsibility of ordinary people to speak out against prejudice and discrimination.
“Change isn’t happening fast enough for man. You must make it happen faster. When you see injustice happening, stand up!” Walter Kasel (survivor)
Links for further reading:
https://www.hmd.org.uk/what-is-holocaust-memorial-day/this-years-theme/
https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/bosnia/
Latest News
Popular Pages
Contact Info
Barr Beacon School
Old Hall Lane
Aldridge, Walsall
West Midlands
WS9 0RF
T: 0121 366 6600
postbox@barrbeaconschool.co.uk
Monday - Thursday: 8:00 am - 4:00 pm
Friday: 8:00 am - 3:30 pm
