We would like to say a huge CONGRATULATIONS to all of our Year 11 pupils and Year 13 students.
However your grades have turned out, we just wanted to acknowledge that you should be proud of what you have achieved.
No exam can ever assess everything you have learned, and you have certainly learned to be resilient. No other year group in history has had to cope with so much uncertainty, including last minute changes and U-turns, and you deserve every success in your futures.
If you can’t take the student to the hoodie, take the hoodie to the student!
It has been our pleasure, over the last two days, visiting our Year 13 students at home and delivering their hoodies. It has been great seeing them again – we have missed them! We are very proud of how they have managed their time during lockdown – many of them have part-time jobs and have been working long hours. The next stop is Results Day – we wish them all the very best of luck!
With the summer holidays approaching, it is a good time for pupils to start exploring their future career options at home. There is an extraordinary amount of resources out there to support you and your child as you navigate their future options, and it can often be overwhelming. We have therefore put together a selection of some of the best resources for you to explore.
Although we would usually be organising big careers events in school such as fairs; assemblies; trips and work experience, these are unfortunately on hold for the safety of your child. However, careers provision is adapting and there are now a wide range of virtual services on offer.
On Friday 10th July, all pupils and were sent a personalised letter with their allocated arrival time and venue. It is imperative that they follow these instructions so we can manage social distancing.
If anyone would prefer to receive results via post, they must provide Mrs S Edwards (Exams Officer) with a stamped addressed envelope. If someone other than the pupil is collecting results, they must provide a permission letter signed by the pupil and must have with them some form of identification on Results Day. They will still need to attend at the time and venue mentioned in the letter.
Year 11 pupils from other schools who want to join our Sixth Form:
If we have made you a conditional offer and you meet our entry requirements and wish to take up your place, you will need to come into school between 1pm and 3pm on Thursday 20th August 2020. You must bring with you a copy of your GCSE results and either your birth certificate or passport (original documents only please as we are not able to accept copies). We cannot guarantee you will be able to take all the subjects you have chosen. This is dependent on group sizes.
Our Careers Team, Mr Altree and Miss Killick, will be available to support pupils with their next steps on Results Day, should they need any help or advice. If anyone needs any advice before, or after Results Day, please email gkillick@barrbeacconschool.co.uk or caltree@barrbeaconschool.co.uk and they will respond to any emails at their first available opportunity. If you need more urgent advice, you can contact the Black Country Careers Hub through their self-referral service: https://www.blackcountryskillsfactory.co.uk/schools/individualsupport-and-guidance/
How did we decide on grades?
All schools across the country have followed the process laid out by the government for awarding Centre Assessment Grades.
We are very confident we have assessed you with a high degree of accuracy. We undertook a lengthy, rigorous process with every Year 11 teacher participating in a series of meetings. Every grade was decided by whole teams, not individual teachers.
During these grading meetings, we used all available forms of evidence for every single grade, including mock exams, classwork, homework, coursework, prior attainment (how you had performed in previous years) as well as current effort. All grade decisions were rooted in evidence to eliminate any potential bias.
Over a period of several weeks, every grade was discussed multiple times, as part of a rigorous quality assurance process. Only when we were confident that we had graded everyone accurately did we send the grades to the exam boards.
The government announced on Monday 17th August that these grades we submitted (Centre Assessed Grades) will stand, for both A levels and GCSEs.
What you need to know about BTEC subjects
Year 11 pupils will NOT receive their BTEC grades on results day. Pearson, who run BTEC, changed the way they are calculating grades to make the system fairer. They only announced this late on Wednesday 19th August. You can read their statement HERE
Tuesday 14 July from 10am to 4pm
Big Bang Digital 2020 – science, engineering and Covid-19 is a free online event for young people 11+ to attend short, inspiring sessions looking at all aspects of STEM in a pandemic.
It’s the perfect opportunity for students to see STEM careers in action, hear inspiring stories from incredible people (including a Nobel Prize winner), ask questions in live Q&A sessions, add their voice to online polls and complete activities throughout the day.
Big Bang Digital can be included as part of home learning or streamed in school and is a secure environment with safeguarding measures in place.
Line-up at a glance:
To check out the full programme visit: www.digitalbigbang.co.uk
Joshua Anderson – Deputy Head Boy
Do no harm
On 9th July, Year 12 students had a webinar with a 96-year-old survivor of the Holocaust, Iby Knill. Joshua Anderson, Deputy Head Boy, reflects on this and his visit to a former concentration camp earlier in the year.
After visiting Bergen-Belsen on the 12th February and witnessing the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime, my eyes have been forever opened by the extremely powerful testimony of Iby Knill. Despite the horrific trauma she has faced, she has an extremely positive resolve towards all aspects of life, including holding no resentment to those at Auschwitz-Birkenau. After being liberated, she spent time working in the home office where she was the only woman out of 50 men.
After living an extremely normal life up until the 1930s, she noticed a major turning point in 1935 from the introduction of the Nuremberg laws into society. As a young person at the time, she was shocked and confused as to why she was being made to wear a Star of David on her coat and being marked out from the rest of society. Her life was completely turned upside down when a family friend called Lucy was taken away to be used sexually by German soldiers in Russia. This appalled me as I was horrified to hear about how inhumane the Nazi regime was as they took an innocent teenage girl away from her home and forced her into a situation no one should ever have to experience.
After hearing the news, Knill escaped to Hungary as an illegal immigrant up until 1942, when an insider leaked the location of 148 Jewish men and women. The Nazis reacted swiftly and imprisoned her along with everyone else hidden within the network. They were sent to Auschwitz where one of the most upsetting comments I’ve ever heard appeared in one of her poems; Knill wrote: “only the strong and healthy will remain”. I felt extremely guilty when I read this and realised how lucky and privileged we are to have hot meals every single day, to never have to worry about if the water we’re drinking is clean or where we will sleep at night. In April 1944, Knill was sent on a death march towards Bergen-Belsen concentration camp until the march was intercepted by allied forces and her life as a prisoner due to her religion was over.
After the meeting concluded, she said many powerful and extremely relevant things. She discussed how she has always lived by her father’s motto ‘Do no harm’ and on differences in class, gender, race and religion, she stated that “all differences should be valued and respected”. This remains relevant in today’s society with all the unjust actions that are being taken towards Muslims in concentration camps in China, who are also being persecuted because of their religion. She urged that as humans, we need to learn from the mistakes of the holocaust. Knill also mentioned the fact that “under the skin, we’re all the same”; we all need to understand and appreciate what has been shown to us by the BLM movement (our Head Girl Henna wrote an amazing piece on this which can be read HERE).
I believe as a school, events like these are key to promoting global issues and as Deputy Head Boy, I was proud at the number of non-historians who turned up to hear the inspirational survivor talk about her experiences.
I would like to thank Mrs Selby for organising this important event but, most importantly, I’d like to thank Iby Knill for helping us to keep the memory alive and aiding us in remembering the 6 million Jews who sadly lost their lives.
Some useful websites can be found here if you’d like to hear more about Iby Knill or learn more about the holocaust.
Nikita in Year 9 has won a top prize in the Sky Academy Studios #keepconnected film-making competition. More than 500 films were entered by students across the UK. Nikita’s film, ‘Untold Story’ was selected as one of six overall winners and the winner of their Secondary School category.
The idea behind the competition was for children to bring their lockdown stories to life using technology they could access at home.
Here are the thoughts of Ian France, Commissioning Editor at Sky Kids:
Every year, Barr Beacon School hosts the annual ‘Dance Spectacular’ to celebrate the hard work and success of our students from Years 7 – 11. Due to the current circumstances, our students have been working extremely hard at home to ensure our show can still go ahead virtually. Thank you for watching and we hope you enjoy it.
“White rabbits”
“Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit”
“Pinch punch first day of the month”
Whatever you may say when you wake up to a new page on the calendar, let me ask why we may say these things? (Let’s leave aside their sometimes very strange origins: https://metro.co.uk/2018/10/01/why-do-we-say-white-rabbits-and-pinch-punch-on-the-first-day-of-the-month-7993616/)
I can put my hands up to admit that I am one of those people who like to say these ‘good luck’ mantras to just be on the ‘safe side’. But this left me to ponder why should we depend on these few words to help determine how these next 31, 30, 28 (or 29 in a leap year) days will go?
My own personal ethos (and that of Barr Beacon) fully agrees that hard work will always pay off no matter how long it takes. Success is not determined by luck. Only we can decide how we want to mould our futures, whether it is a long-term goal like wanting to pursue a certain vocation or a short-term goal like simply getting through a whole month and keeping yourself organised.
A new month can commemorate a sense of change in ourselves like setting new goals to achieve. Perhaps we could take up a new skill, talk to a new face in one of our classes or even try something that we had always wanted to do but never had the chance to, such as staring a blog? (N.B. I’m talking autobiographically here!)
It is also a great time to look back on the last month and not forget what we have learned and how the world is changing. Both the Black Lives Matter movement (see the previous blog) and Pride Month has shown us that our world is striving closer towards equality that the people of these communities have always deserved. Starting a new month isn’t about moving on to the next ‘trending’ discourse but a chance to tackle these problems further until there is nothing to tackle. Remember to educate, sign petitions and donate to both communities as we need change.
Now, a new month doesn’t always mean a new you and new goals. You shouldn’t ever feel limited to a date beginning the 1st to push you into a state of fresh starts. It could be in the middle of the month, in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day and you may feel in a little bit of a slump, but this doesn’t mean you have to wait another 15 days to start all over again. You can hit the refresh button whenever you like and the sooner you do, the closer you can get to reach this month’s goals you may have abandoned on the second square of the calendar.
But a new month is always a great place to reset and go. And go with passion, determination and never giving up.
For this new month of July which we’re all about to embark on, I hope we can all embody all of these qualities and when we hit the 31st I cannot wait to see all the amazing things we have achieved and that we can carry on with in the future.
Although we may not need it, as hard work will be the backbone of our successes, for this month and many more months to come… good luck!
For more information on the Black Lives Matter movement please read our previous blog post.
Here’s a page to petitions for LGBTQ+ rights: https://www.change.org/t/lgbt-rights-3
Here are some links to LGBTQ+ charities and communities which you can use to educate and donate if you can:
All Out: https://allout.org/en/what-all-out
London Gaymers: https://www.londongaymers.co.uk/
Switchboard: https://switchboard.lgbt/
Stonewall: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/
Pictured below are my rabbits Pippin and Luna wishing us all ‘good luck’ for this July!
Barr Beacon School
Old Hall Lane
Aldridge, Walsall
West Midlands
WS9 0RF
T: 0121 366 6600
postbox@barrbeaconschool.co.uk
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Friday: 8:00 am - 3:30 pm
