We love keeping in touch with former students and they love to keep in touch with us.

Jack Evans graduated from Barr Beacon in 2015 after completing his A levels here and now works as a Senior Parliamentary Aide in the Houses of Parliament. His top tip for succeeding in education is to “try your best, one day at a time. In the end, the results will be worth it.”  For the world of work, he recommends that you “always remember that you are your own person and strive to be the best version of yourself.”

There are more alumni profiles in our most recent newsletter.

Advice for all early years providers, schools and further education providers.

The government is closely monitoring the spread of the Coronavirus and is taking action at home and abroad.

The overall risk of Coronavirus to the UK remains moderate. However, we understand that people may be concerned where there are children, students or staff returning from or visiting China.

Public Health England and the Foreign Office have issued advice for anyone travelling to the area. This can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/china

Advice for parents/guardians

You should not be unduly worried about the possibility of your children catching the Coronavirus.

There is no reason why your children should not continue to attend their early years, school or further education setting as normal.

We recognise that some families or children may be planning to travel to China during the forthcoming half-term period. If so, please refer to the FCO’s latest travel advice via the link above.

What action you can take?

A UK wide campaign has been launched to provide clear advice on how to slow the spread of Coronavirus.

Please help to support the campaign which promotes basic hygiene practices, such as regularly washing hands and always sneezing into a tissue, to stem the spread of viruses.

A group of pupils experienced a live orchestral performance by the world-renowned City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) at Symphony Hall in Birmingham.

After opening with a thunderous rendition of Alan Silvestri’s theme from The Avengers films, the orchestra played pieces by Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Pärt and more.

This is what some of the pupils said:

Sami: “I liked the heavenly sounding one. The piece Tchaikovsky wrote for a bet with his friend.”

Mercedes: “I really liked it but I’m not sure why. It was a new experience.”
Nicole: “It was really interesting watching them and seeing how they played their instruments.”

We are delighted to announce that the National Citizenship Service has awarded us with Gold status because so many of our students signed up. As well as a plaque, we received a certificate from the Prime Minister.

The National Citizen Service is open to all 16 and 17-year-olds in England. It helps young people build skills for work and life, while they take on new challenges and meet new friends. They have a short time away from home and take part in a team project that will help their community.

Self-quizzing is a powerful strategy to get knowledge stuck in your long-term memory.  And it’s so simple to do! We use self-quizzing in lessons as well as setting it for homework. 

Watch our video to see a step-by-step guide of how to do it. 

• The sheet used in the video (European capital cities) – HERE
• Knowledge you have written down in your exercise book  
• Knowledge organisers you have been given by your teachers 
• The knowledge pages at the back of your planner, including: multiplication tables, commonly misspelt words, maths formulae, types of triangles, angles equations, parts of speech and world maps.

This is a selection of some of the Maths department’s favourite websites to help aid independent work and revision completed at home:

Maths Watch – https://vle.mathswatch.co.uk/vle/

Log onto the system using your unique login and password, once on the system to access questions click on ‘my progress’ at the top of the screen then click on the bar next to the topic you want to work on, if you have trouble with this pop and see your maths teacher. 

Maths Genie – http://www.mathsgenie.co.uk/gcse.html

The GCSE revision tab is particularly useful and has revision notes and model answers with questions along with questions for you to attempt and then also the solutions for these questions.

BBC Bitesize – https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/examspecs/z9p3mnb

This is the new version of BBC Bitesize which has been updated with the resources for the new specification, it has guided run through on techniques, video clips, activities and tests to complete. This covers all topics on the new GCSE specification.

Mr Barton Maths – http://www.mrbartonmaths.com/gcse.htm

This website gives you a while variety of resources from past exam papers (remember these are the old specification papers) to “walking and talking notes”, it also has revision notes on the majority of topics and includes a lot more, it is well worth a look around to see what is available!

Corbett Maths

This has questions and practice papers to access on the website along with videos on how to complete some of the practice papers. There is also a “5 a day section” which allows you to practice 5 different questions from 5 different topics for every day of the year. 

On Maths – http://onmaths.com/

Please remember the predicted paper is only what they think – there is no guarantee that these questions or topics will come up. The computer only awards marks for fully correct answers and not working out and the marks down the side may change for the real exams as they are only rough guides!

Don’t forget you also have access to maths workout numbers 1 to 8 on the system which can be accessed through the start menu -> maths then clicking on them, they are split into sections as follows :

1. Number work
2. Number work
3. Shape and space work
4. Shape and space work
5. Data handling work
6. Data handling work
7. Algebra work
8. Algebra work

Barr Beacon School pupils are celebrating an impressive set of GCSE results where there has been a fivefold increase in the number of pupils achieving a grade 9, the government’s new gold standard. 

Some of the high achievers who collected a string of 8 and 9 grades included 

R. Ghag with three grade 8s and five grade 9s. 

D. Kaler with four grade 8s and one grade 9

The results are a culmination of the hard work and focused revision of pupils during their careers at Barr Beacon School. We can’t wait to welcome back our hard-working pupils as sixth form students in September. It’s immensely satisfying to celebrate not only the pupils with the top grades but also those who have made the most progress in their time with us, and for many this success will only continue into the sixth form.

We are excited to announce that we have discovered a time capsule, which was buried on the school site in 1996.  

The contents of the capsule reveal what the curriculum was like in 1996. Items inside the treasure trove include photographs, textbooks and a floppy disk, which today’s students could barely recognise.

Our Senior Team was chosen to open the capsule. You can watch this, live as it happened, on this video:

We knew there was a time capsule buried on our site, but it was not until we received a photograph from a former teacher that we had any idea where it was located.  This could not come at a better time, with our anniversary celebrations right around the corner: Our school is sixty years old this year and we are having a special evening to commemorate this on Friday 12^th July. 

We are looking forward to having former pupils and teachers back on site.  Our initial allocation of five hundred tickets sold out rapidly but we have released some more because we know demand is still high.

Stay tuned to our website: Barr Beacon’s Senior Team will shortly be launching a competition to decide what to put in a new time capsule to represent 2019.

And if you recognise any of the students in the original photo (from 1996) – or maybe you are one of them yourself! – please get in touch so you can help us learn more about the time capsule.