Last week, St Bart’s were very pleased to welcome to the school Mr Corey Sopher, Lecturer at UCL Centre for Holocaust Education. As previously reported in BartholoNews, St Bart’s have recently been awarded Beacon School status after a successful application to the flagship UCL programme, aimed at supporting to schools to committed to enhancing teaching and learning about the Holocaust. Mr Sopher’s visit was the first part of an ongoing programme of continuous professional development and consultancy provided by UCL, with the aim of supporting St Bart’s to become a hub of teaching excellence.

Mr Sopher met with a working group of St Bart’s teachers and support staff from a range of departments. The group first heard from Mr Owen, Sixth Form Leader and Beacon Programme Lead, about the rationale, need and ambition of the programme. Mr Owen spoke about the growing issue of Holocaust denial, distortion and trivialisation and the need to ask ‘what are schools doing to help tackle this trend?’ We then heard from Mr Sopher who shared some of the principles and priorities behind the project. He then delivered a powerful and affecting session which employed some of the approaches that teachers might adopt in their own lessons. Amongst other things, he highlighted for teachers how this challenging but important content might be received by learners. It was an intense but hugely valuable experience. Teachers left the session with renewed confidence and conviction about the importance of sharing knowledge of the holocaust with students.

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The KS3 Awards Evening took place last week to recognise the effort and determination shown by our current Year 10 students throughout their first three years at St Bart’s.  It was amazing to see so many students rewarded for their commitment to both subjects and their houses, as well as recognise those who have achieved their Gold Awards.Deputy Head Student, Avni Prashar, was there to help celebrate and made an inspirational presentation to the Year 10 students. Staff and House Heads, alongside Vice Chair of Governors, Campbell Smith, and Foundation Governor, Trevor Emberlin, awarded prizes. There was fantastic support among the students as they enthusiastically applauded every prize winner.

The final presentation celebrated those students from each House who received the most nominations. The winners were:

Curnock – Annabelle Prowse

Davis – Isla Clare

Evers – Casper Nolan

Patterson – Tabitha Cook

Following on from our recent article on the St Bart’s international secondary school partnership link with the Ulafu Secondary School in Kenya, the student committee have now had the opportunity to participate in a zoom meeting with their peers in Kenya. The students all introduced themselves, and Vedha (Year 9) told Mr Kennedy Oloo and his students more about St Bart’s, including the importance of our house system and our uniform.

The committee then had the opportunity to ask Ulafu students a few questions. We learnt from Femix that Ulafu Secondary School has 600 students, that his favourite subject was Geography, that he was most proud of his school’s academic record, that they also had lots of clubs on offer (including Music, Science and Environment) and that he wished the school had a scouting club. We also learnt that Femix loved football and was a Manchester City supporter, which pleased Miss Ostinelli!

The committee also discovered that the Ulafu Secondary School motto was ‘Knowledge is Power’ and we shared with Mr Oloo that our own school motto, Ad Lucem, means ‘Towards the Light’.

Finally, the committee had a chance to understand further which objectives the Ulafu Secondary School would like to work in partnership towards. The laptops that we have already provided have proven to be very valuable and so we discussed providing further IT support for the library and more laptops for the school. We also spoke of long distance students having to walk to and from Ulafu Secondary School, and whether we could support with transport, and about providing tools for the school’s kitchen garden. Finally, Ulafu Secondary School told us about the challenge of gender equality and the need to encourage and facilitate students, particularly girls, staying in education for longer. The committee will now spend some time planning how we might be able to further these objectives and they look forward to another call with our partner school soon.