28th April 2017
Dear Parents and Guardians,
Welcome back after the Easter holiday. I hope you all enjoyed a rest at some point over the
three-week period. The Summer Term has started in the most bizarre weather. We all know
that April is renowned for its showers, but sleet and snow were not quite what we expected with
May almost here and beautiful flowers being threatened by overnight frosts! Thank you to all of
our Senior School students who conducted themselves so well on the various Easter trips and
camps, and also to staff for giving of their time generously in leading and supporting the trips.
And so to the first week of term, which has been incredibly productive for our community.
School examinations began on Monday for Year 10 (after much comprehensive Easter revision,
I am sure) and sporting-wise, our U14 boys competed in the U14 National Hockey Finals at
Lee Valley Stadium in London, which Mr Willcock is delighted to report on under Senior School
Sport at the end of this newsletter. Our Preparatory School pupils supported ‘Phil the Bag’
magnificently, so thank you to all of those who took the time to find and bring in unwanted items
of clothing for charity. We had an excellent response, so we now wait to find out how much
money was raised, and for which charity. We hosted an enjoyable and successful House Media
Studies Mastermind on Tuesday, which you can read more about under Senior School Student
News. Our Year 12 students attended a very informative and helpful UCAS Higher Education
Convention at Loughborough University on Wednesday and the U11 boys competed in a
Midlands Regional Hockey Final at Cannock Hockey Club. All our sporting news will be
presented in Assembly on Tuesday and the usual report will appear in the newsletter next week.
Thank you to the very many parents who have loyally supported their sons and daughters at the
fixtures this week; it is very much appreciated by the students and staff. I look forward to
chatting to some of you on the touchline this weekend.
Years 7 and 8 took part in the UKMT Mathematics Challenge on Thursday, acquitting themselves
splendidly and, on Friday, it was the turn of the U12 boys’ hockey team, who competed at the
Midlands Hockey Finals, again at Cannock Hockey Club, reaching the semi-finals. Our CCF
RAF cadets are about to embark upon Leadership Training until Sunday at RAF Wittering,
while older members of the Contingent will join with several Old Ratcliffians for the CCF’s
Centennial Dinner which promises to be a most convivial evening. There is plenty of sport taking
place this weekend and we wish our students well in their fixtures.
I have been away for two days this week as part of an ISI inspection team, which was most
insightful, helping me to understand, first-hand, how the new inspection framework for
independent schools works. The new model specifically focuses on two pupil outcomes;
academic achievement and personal development. The integrated inspection process is a day
shorter than previous formats but is equally rigorous.
I will be sharing my experiences with colleagues in due course as we begin preparation for our
next inspection which will focus on compliance matters such as safeguarding and health and
safety only, with the full educational quality inspection to follow three afters later.
Next Wednesday, after lessons, we will be holding our annual “Square Races” for students in
Years 7 to 13. Parents are most welcome to attend what is one of the most popular of our Senior
School House competitions. Details may be found below, in a letter from Mr Sharpe.
Please may I also draw to your attention a letter (below Mr Sharpe’s letter) from Miss Spencer,
appealing to parents to assist with our Year 11 students’ mock interviews on Thursday 11th May.
We would be most grateful for any help you can give for these interviews.
Best wishes for the week ahead and thank you for taking the time to read the Easter mailshot
and my weekly newsletters. I do hope you enjoy reading all about the many wonderful
achievements of your talented sons and daughters. I certainly do!
Yours sincerely,
Mr J. P. Reddin,
Headmaster.
Dear Parents
Senior School Square Races, Wednesday 3rd May, 4.30 – 5.20 pm
The Square Races are an annual and very popular part of our House Competition. There are six
separate races for boys and girls in Years 7 to 13. Each race is a 4 x 1 lap relay race around the
outside of the Senior School building, with each lap being around 400m.
In addition to the 96 runners, there is always enthusiastic support from students and staff.
Parents are most welcome to watch any or all of the races. The start/finish line is on the
South Terrace, next to the 1st XI cricket pitch.
In the interests of the safety of runners, traffic flow past the Old Library and Church will be
interrupted at times during the hour or so that it takes to hold this event. Members of staff will
be on duty to control the traffic; please follow their instructions. On this date in particular,
I would also ask you to use only the designated areas for parking and for picking up
passengers.
Thank you for your co-operation in helping us to organise a safe and enjoyable event.
Yours sincerely,
Graham Sharpe,
Assistant Head.
CALLING ALL PARENTS!
Dear Parents,
During Year 11, our students, as part of their career block, take part in a mock interview
conducted by a professional person. The aim being to furnish them with interview skills and
build upon their confidence and prepare them for going forward.
The process is highly dependent upon volunteers, as there are 87 Year 11 students that require
interviewing. Some Old Ratcliffians and Senior Leadership Team staff have kindly offered their
time to support this process but, unfortunately, we are in need of some more assistance.
The interviews will take place on Thursday 11th May at the start of break and during period 3
(11.00am – 12.15pm). If you are able to offer assistance, please contact Miss Tiffany Spencer:
[email protected].
All resources for the day will be disseminated by Miss Spencer along with a crib sheet with
questions and a feedback form for each student.
Thank you in anticipation. It is an extremely positive experience for the Year 11 students,
and one which they have been preparing for during the last few weeks.
Kind Regards,
Miss Tiffany Spencer,
Teacher of Economics & Business, Head of PSHCE & Careers
PARENTS’ ASSOCIATION NEWS
Tickets are on sale now at Prep Reception for the PA Fashion Show on Wednesday 17th May
7.30-10.30pm (see the poster below). Help the PA raise funds whilst watching colleagues,
parents and students modelling ladies’ high street fashion. Buy your favourite brands at fantastic
value (prices 30% to 50% off the in-store RRP and even greater reductions on selected items).
Enjoy a glass of wine (or two). Bring a friend (or two .…) A fun night guaranteed!
Monday 8th May: Coffee Morning in the Refectory, 8.30-10.00am. Meet up for a coffee and chat
after 'Drop Off'. All welcome.
Tuesday 9th May: PA Meeting, 7.30pm. If you fancy getting involved, please come along.
The next uniform sale date will be Tuesday 23rd May in the Prep School, 3.30-5.30pm. Let us
have any excess Prep and Senior uniform and sports kit to sell on your behalf. Guidelines on the
website.
If you are happy to help, we have events coming up over the coming Summer Term. We will
need some volunteers to serve refreshments at the drama plays and Sports Days, so please do
get in touch and we can put you on the volunteer list. Thank you.
Jenny Howling, PA Chair
[email protected] www.ratcliffeparents.co.uk
STUDENT NEWS
Senior School
Senior School Achievement Awards, Monday 24th April
Merit Badge
Year 7
Harley Walker
Year 9
Cindy Lee
Merit Shield
Aimee Cleminson
Outstanding Reward
Voucher 1
Year 13
Olivia Latham
Congratulations to …
Sarah Curnick, Year 11, on gaining her Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award.
Congratulations to our Head Boy, Luke Gyesi-Appiah, who reached the National Finals of the
‘Poetry by Heart’ competition, 2017. Luke enjoyed an all-expenses paid weekend at the British
Library, competing against 40 other students from all over the country in this prestigious event.
Luke, accompanied by Ms Davis, had a fantastic weekend, meeting famous poets and actor,
Freddie Fox, who recited his own poem and a favourite Shakespearean sonnet. Apart from
competing, Luke visited the British Library’s treasure collection, and was treated to a formal
‘winners’ dinner’ on Saturday evening, staying at the London School of Economics student
residences overnight.
Funded by the Department for Education, ‘Poetry by Heart’ is a national schools’ poetry
recitation competition, for students in Years 10-13, now in its fifth year. Students have to recite
from memory a pre-1914 and post 1914 poem, and are judged on use of voice, performance,
understanding and accuracy. It may sound easy… but it is not!
Having won the school House competition, Luke’s recitations were uploaded to You Tube for the
‘Poetry by Heart’ judges as part of the County round. He chose to recite: ‘The destruction of
Sennacherib’ by Lord Byron and ‘Harlem shadows’ by Claude McKay.
You can view Luke’s original entries here: https://youtu.be/1mDdmgkY5U8
https://youtu.be/T2YL0rKZ2QM
Luke won the county round and represented Leicestershire in the regional finals. Competition
was very tough as the standard of recitals was outstanding. Although Luke did not win the
regional round, the judges entered him into the finals as ‘the wild card’! So, up against 8 other
National competitors, Luke ‘did us proud’! Watched by Mr and Mrs Gyesi-Appiah, little sister,
Ewurama and Ms Davis, Luke gave a fantastic performance in front of the judges; professional
poets: Patience Agbabi, Jean Sprackland, Jacob Sam-La Rose, Glyn Maxwell and Daljit Nagra.
Luke may not have won the National Final, but to be in the last 9 in the country was a fantastic
achievement for Luke, the English Department - who organised the competition - and for
Ratcliffe College. The icing on the cake was when Luke and Ms Davis received a ‘goody bag’ of
poetry books and the School has won a year’s subscription to the online Oxford English
Dictionary!
Well done Luke, we are so proud of you!
Ms Davis
Easter Trips
Reports
The Year 8 girls had a wonderful time at Condover Hall. Enjoying activities such as High Ropes,
leap of faith, laser quest, aerial walk and much more. The netball was played in fantastic spirit
and enjoyed by all, the A team only losing one game all weekend; which happened to be in the
final against Cross Keys who are a netball club, coming runners up. Player of the Weekend was
awarded to Amy Mason. The B team had a great weekend with some fantastic results and
finished 3rd in the Plate competition. Player of the Weekend was Brooke England. All girls were
a credit to the School and played some excellent netball.
Miss Stafford
CCF Easter Camp
On 1st April, 18 cadets and 5 staff made the journey up the M6 to a small military camp at Helton near
Lancaster. Once the cadets had been settled in to their billets, they were briefed on the activities of the
week. The cadets were split into three groups to alternate the daily activities. Over the week, all cadets
took part in some very challenging single track mountain biking.
Grisdale Forrest had some particularly challenging sections, which at times required the bikes to be
pushed. At Whinlatter, there were some very long uphill sections, but the reward was fantastic views of
the Lake District. Most cadets carried out outdoor rock climbing at a place called Hutton roof.
This provided a variety of challenges for all abilities. Due to one wet day, one group went to the Kendal
indoor climbing wall. There was also hill walking in the glorious sunshine, showing off the best of the
Lake District. The last day was probably the most exciting day. Everybody travelled up to Keswick and
made use of the Kong Adventure facilities. Here, they took part in indoor climbing, indoor caving and
indoor ice climbing. The ice climbing was probably the highlight of the day. Climbing up a sheer wall of ice
with crampons and ice axe. All the cadets took this challenge in their stride and did exceptionally well for
beginners; the instructor was extremely impressed with the whole group. The final evening after all the
equipment had been packed away, everybody had a night out 10-pin bowling. Throughout the week,
the cadets did extremely well, developing new skills and gaining confidence in themselves and also their
fellow cadets. Many conquered fears such as claustrophobia in the caving system, fear of heights with the
rock climbing and further developing their riding skills.
Lt Col M Balmbra
Years 10 and 11 History Trip
The first weekend of the Easter holidays saw nineteen Year 10 and Year 11 students, accompanied by
Mr Cantrill and Mrs Lodder, leave for a packed historical weekend in London. Our first stop was the
Churchill War Rooms. This subterranean museum was outstanding in providing a view of London during
the Blitz in 1940 as well as a timeline of one of Britain’s most fascinating characters, Winston Churchill.
With the experience of Londoner’s in the Second World War fresh in our students’ minds, we then
travelled south of the river Thames to the Imperial War Museum. This museum covered the many and
varied aspects of warfare from the First World War up to and including the Cold War and modern
terrorism. This was especially useful for the students studying the new GCSE course. A busy Saturday
finished with a fascinating and rather disturbing Jack the Ripper walking tour. Our guide was excellent
and provided a visceral description of the horror of the murders as well as the hideous conditions of the
poor living in Whitechapel in 1888.
Having had a lie in on Sunday morning, we started out on our trip to the Tower of London. This is a
magnificent tourist attraction and this was reflected by the long queues when we arrived! Students saw a
selection of English monarchs’ suits of armour, various styles of fighting, the place where the Princes in
the Tower were killed (allegedly) and the Crown Jewels. Our final stop of an entertaining weekend was to
Covent Garden in the lovely, warm summer sun where students did some shopping and relaxed before
our trip back home.
The students got a great deal from the weekend and they were a real credit to Ratcliffe College.
Mr Cantrill
Photographs from the Montpellier French Language Trip
Salamanca Homestay, 2nd – 8th April 2017
On 2nd April, a group of 10 students from Years 10, 12 and 13 and two staff (Mrs Beddoes and
myself) met at Ratcliffe to embark on another trip to Salamanca. We travelled from Stansted to
Madrid by aeroplane and arrived at our final destination, Salamanca, in the evening, after a long
coach journey. The students were then met by their host families and taken to what would be
their homes for the following 6 days. All students attended Spanish lessons in the mornings,
from 9am until 1pm, except on Wednesday, when we visited the World Heritage City of Toledo,
South of Madrid. The activities programmed for the afternoons ranged from cookery to an
improvised bike ride by the river under glorious Spanish sunshine. Students also had the chance
to sample some of the culinary delicacies of Spain in the tapas trail and in the farewell dinner in
the evening before our return.
All in all, I would say it was a very useful trip, which gave the students the chance to immerse
themselves in the Spanish culture and find out about the region we were staying in, as well as
improving their language skills. It was very rewarding to see students coming back with
renewed interest for the language after having experienced a little taste of Spain.
Miss Casas-Ojeda
Year 12 Gold Duke of Edinburgh Practice Expedition, Brecon Beacons, 19th to 22nd April
Our Year 12 participants had already completed a training weekend in the Peak District in either October
or March.
On 19th April at 7.30am, 23 participants left school to travel to the Brecon Beacons in South Wales. It was
a four-day expedition, 2 days of which were particularly challenging, allowing the participants to practise
the skills that they had already learnt. It was the first time that most of them had ventured out into
‘wild county’ without close supervision, and they were away from the leaders for several hours at a time.
In addition, they camped at basic farm camp sites for two of the three nights with no facilities other than a
water tap and toilet – similar to what they will use on their assessed expedition. We were lucky with the
weather, as we had pleasant temperatures for walking with plenty of high cloud for most of the time
(although some were cold at night) and the only rain was overnight when we were all asleep in our
tents. All four groups navigated well and honed their skills over the course of the trip. They were a
pleasure to spend an expedition with and are all now ready to proceed to assessment during activities
week at the end of the Summer Term.
Mrs Cole
‘Media Mastermind’
Tuesday 25th April 2017
Hosted by the Media Studies Department
It was an exciting battle of wits and brain-busting quizzing in the annual Media Mastermind
event. Students from Years 9-13 competed for their Houses in two rounds: the first a fiendish set
of questions based on the students’ choice of film and the second, a general knowledge round.
There were some highly accomplished performances on a range of films, some high-brow, such
as Robyn Hendry’s (Year 13) choice of Akira and others less so (although Alessio Misso, Year 10,
certainly does know The Inbetweeners Movie). In the end, it was a victory for De Lisle with
Charlie Nicholson (Year 13) placing first, thanks to his encyclopaedic knowledge of The Martian,
and Tilly Wheeler (Year 13) placing third thanks to her obvious love for StepBrothers. Well done
also to Christian Waters (Year 13) of Emery who, for the second year running, came joint first
place and Robyn Hendry who came second for Leetham.
All in all, great fun was had; congratulations to all the competitors!
Results
1st place: Christian Waters (Year 13; Emery); Charlie Nicholson (Year 13; De Lisle)
2nd place: Robyn Hendry (Year 13; Leetham)
3rd place: Tilly Wheeler (Year 13; De Lisle)
Overall House placing:
1st place:
De Lisle
nd
2 place:
Emery
3rd place:
Leetham
Charlie Nicholson (Year 13) being put through his paces answering questions about Ridley Scott’s,
The Martian
Preparatory School
Awards Presented on 27th April:
YEAR 6
Finnley Gray
Zoe Howling
Jerry Simon
Charlie Smith
Oscar Webster
YEAR 5
Francesca Best
YEAR 4
Imogen Barker
Arabella Hampson
Tom Lander-Belfie
Harry Martin
Florance Newham
Megha Thakrar
Joshua Smellie
YEAR 3
Harry Corby
Leo Gabriel
Autumn Hampson
Sophia Hull
Amélie Wilson-Knight
Continued overleaf
Merit Badge
Super Shield
Merit Shield
Merit Shield
Merit Badge
Merit Shield
Merit Badge
Super Shield
Merit Badge
Super Shield
Merit Shield
Merit Shield
Second Certificate of Merit
Super Shield
Merit Shield
Merit Shield
Merit Shield
Super Shield
YEAR 2
Lucie Mason
Luke Mowinski
Deeya Tailor
YEAR 1
Maahi Patel
Tyler Rutherford
Faith Seidu
Merit Shield
Merit Badge
Merit Shield
Merit Shield
Merit Badge
Merit Badge
Emily Ball, Year 6 – was awarded a trophy from Asfordby Adventurers Football Club for Most
Improved Player 2016/17.
Emily Woodley, Year 3 – was awarded her Stage 7 Learn to Swim Award.
Isabella Cottingham, Year 1 – was awarded her Proficiency Certificate and Badge for passing the
Horsemanship Test at the St Leonard’s Riding School.
Jameela Dornan, Year 1 – was awarded her Certificate and Badge for achieving Level 8
Proficiency Award from British Gymnastics.
Lower Prep School Royal Banquet, 30th March
SPORT
Senior School
Congratulations to the Boys’ U14 Hockey Team who represented the School in the National
Hockey Finals on Tuesday down at the Lee Valley National Stadium in London. Reaching the
National Finals meant that the boys were in the top 8 schools in the country at U14 level, and this
was highlighted by the standard of hockey on the day.
The boys represented the School fantastically well, eventually finishing 3rd in their group after
playing 3 very competitive matches, meaning they just missed out on progressing to the final
games to compete for the title.
I would like to say a massive thank you to the staff and parents who made the journey to London
to offer their support. I know myself, Mr Taylor and the boys really appreciated it.
Well done, boys once again; you have been brilliant all season and it has been another
memorable one.
Mr Willcock
Congratulations to Jack Nightingale, Year 12, who was selected to play in a Leicestershire
Academy cricket match on Wednesday.
Forthcoming Sporting Fixtures
Date
Opposition
Start
Team
Venue Meet
Saturday
29th April
King
VIII
Henry 11.00am
1st Team, U14, U13 Cricket
Away
9.15am
Saturday
29th April
King
VIII
Henry 11.00AM 2ND, U15, U12 Cricket
Home
10.15am
Saturday
29th April
Foremarke
Hall
2.00pm
U12,U13,U13/U12
Rounder’s
Home
1.15pm
Saturday
29th April
Worksop
1.45pm
1st, 2nd Girls’ Tennis
Home
1.15pm
Saturday
29th April
Worksop
1.45pm
U15A & B Tennis
Away
12.00pm
Thursday
4th May
XL Club
1.00pm
1ST XI Cricket
Home
11.30am
Thursday
4th May
QE
2.00pm
2nd Cricket
Home
1.30pm