Yesterday we were delighted to open our doors to the latest cohort of Year 6 and Year 5 students considering St Bart’s as their chosen secondary school. The event is a wonderful showcase of all the school’s achievements. We had a fantastic turn out from our local primary schools and it was great to see prospective students and their families discovering all the exciting opportunities on offer at St Bart’s.

Dr Fitter, Headteacher, gave two talks in the school hall during the evening and our student tour guides were once again on hand to show visitors around the building and the many subject hubs, including badge making with English, treasuring hunting with Maths, scratch game coding with Computer Science, mono printing with Art, the ‘Tower Block Head Challenge’ with 3D Design, explaining ‘Big Questions’ with Religious Studies, taking part in huge number of sports or a murder mystery with Drama – to name just some of the array of activities happening throughout the evening.

A particular highlight was the PE department welcoming special guests Toby Garbett, retired Olympic Rower and Tri athlete and Becky Wilde, Paris 2024 Olympics Bronze Medallist in the Women’s Double Skull. Toby and Becky were joined by our KS4 Living for Sport course students to encourage our young visitors to get involved with some fitness and team building skills. We are so grateful for their time and for inspiring our students.

Guests also enjoyed refreshments in the canteen and were entertained by our talented School Orchestra playing in the Hub.

We hope everyone who came had a positive experience and left us feeling excited about the step up to secondary school. The evening would simply not be possible without the hard work of all our staff and the support of the current students who played several roles on the night and made visitors so welcome. We thank them for being great ambassadors for the school.

At the end of last term a group of over 40 Year 10 students were invited to attend an afternoon in the Modern Foreign Languages faculty, learning about the benefits of language learning beyond GCSE level as well as its value in the workplace.

The faculty organised some international food and inspirational guest speakers, including current Year 12 languages students, former St Bart’s students and speakers from industry and Bristol University. One former student, Victoria, had previously worked in a library in Rio de Janeiro with a view of Sugar Loaf mountain, and having recently gained her Doctorate from Cambridge University, she is now working at Bristol University. We also heard from a friend of Mrs Hedley-Smith who used his languages travelling the world as an international DJ and also works for the Warner Bros theme park in Madrid.  Our former Head Boy, Joel, returned to talk about his course at Exeter University. Heis about to embark on his year abroad in Germany, teaching English as a second language.

Other fun activities included the Languages Olympiad challenge in Esperanto and a quiz on how useful languages are, where they are spoken and could the talented linguists “guess the language being spoken?!”

Students also had the opportunity to try out a new language: Polish, Urdu, Italian or Chinese – to show that it is never too late to start learning a new one! The students were very positive about the afternoon, as is shown by some of the comments given on the feedback forms:

“It was really fun and I will recommend it to younger years who will have the opportunity to do this”

“Me divertí mucho!!” ( I had a great time!)

“I thought it was really useful. We learnt about what A Level lessons look like and were able to talk to former students and hear about what they do now.”

St Bart’s students were excited and pleased to once again see their German Exchange partners in June. The 24 students from our partner school, the Otto-Hahn Gymnasium in Monheim, stayed for a week with English families.

As well as going on trips to Oxford and London, the German Exchange students spent a day in school and went on a joint trip to Bath with their English partners. Their visit in June completed the return leg of the Exchange – our students went to Monheim in January.  Dates for the 2025 German Exchange will be announced soon – if you are studying German in Year 8 and above, keep an eye out for the email in the first few weeks of September!

As the rest of the country took to the polls, St Bart’s had its very own Mock Election, allowing students to have their say.

All of the parties that were running in Newbury were represented in our election (apart from the Freedom Alliance Party) with one candidate and someone to endorse them. The candidates were as follows: Ethan for the Conservatives, Arthur for the Greens, Amos for Labour, Harry for the Liberal Democrats, Freddie for Reform and Elis for UKIP.

All the candidates took part in the hustings, answering some tough questions from the crowd, such as questions about the economy, immigration and the environment. Following this they all gave a speech in each year group’s assembly where they all performed confidently and passionately (a few candidates in particular!). A sense of what the party stood for and how they would lead was effectively communicated, and it was really exciting for us to be able to experience this, as it will be another few years before some of us will be able to vote.

Finally, the day arrived. On 3 July, St Bart’s took to the polls! The polling station was set up in Patterson break out space and was as close as we could get (apart from needing voter ID) to the real thing. Casting my vote felt really important and I’m so grateful we got this opportunity. A massive thanks to Mrs Lane for organising this!

The results came in on Friday 5 July…

• The Green Party won the mock election by a landslide of just under a hundred, coming in at 177 votes.
• Then Labour and the Liberal Democrats were tied in second with 77 votes.
• UKIP came third with 75 votes.
• Reform got 41 votes.
• And in last place were the Conservatives with 29 votes.

It was really interesting where our student body placed their votes and how this compared to the rest of the UK. Hopefully this will become a St Bart’s tradition every time we have a general election. Turnout is so low among 18-24 year olds, and so I think it’s really important to show politics as relevant as early as we can. Hopefully the Mock Election will show people the numerous benefits of participating in politics.

Jemima Kerr (12P1)