During December a group of our Year 9s began the first steps of their involvement in the Reach Project, the careers programme from Co-op Academies Trust.

They visited their local employer business partner, Link Contracting in Wigan to learn all about the business. They took part in lots of work related tasks and enjoyed sessions to develop their employability skills.

Thank you so much to the staff at Link Contracting. Our students had a brilliant time and found the visit very valuable.

Reach is a unique Trust led career program that brings local businesses and academies together to address social mobility, develop key employability skills and prepare students for the world of work. It’s specially designed for Year 9 students, who are at a crucial time in planning their future.

Find out more about the programme: https://www.coopacademies.co.uk/stories/reach-our-locally-focussed-careers-programme/

Last week some of our Year 7 boys attended the Cliff Football Ground to participate in a Football Festival hosted by Manchester United Foundation. The boys participated in a ‘shooting’ and ‘free kick’ competition as well as three matches against other schools. The boys had an absolutely fantastic morning and performed amazingly. We are thrilled to announce that at the end of the day the boys returned home as CHAMPIONS of the festival!

Matin Etehadpoor scored the most ‘top bins’ of the day bagging four in a short space of time for the team…well done boys! Mason Sharp, Marcus Moyo, Matin Etehadpoor, Shea Byrne, Bradley Taylor-Parkin, Zayon Salmon and Sabastian Gill.

Just when we thought our sports success this term couldn’t get any better our Year 7 and 8 Panathlon students have ‘bowled us over’ with their performance at the Salford XTEND Multi Skills Event hosted at at Irlam and Cadishead High School.

The Salford wide event involved indoor sports activities including bowling, cricket, football, basketball, curling, darts and throwing activities. Our students excelled across all the activities and their amazing efforts saw them beat the other eight participating Salford High Schools to be crowned ‘Panathlon Champions 2022’!

Our student Panathlon Team on the day and pictured above were; Bradley Taylor Parkin, Colby Avison, Thomas Woodcock, Amelia Carruth, Georgia Mai Bertram, Holly Cummings and Neveah Aldridge.

What an amazing performance everyone…well done!

Last week a group of our Year 8 Students who are members of Manchester United Foundation Hub Officer, Adele Howarth’s ‘Social Action Lesson’ took a morning trip down to Clifton Primary School to make Christmas cards with some of their Year 5 pupils.

The girls had to come up with the activity to help benefit the community and wanted the younger pupils have the opportunity to make Christmas cards and then later in the month deliver them to elderly people in a local care home.

For the past two weeks we have been honoured to welcome Year 11 Senior Prefect Naomi Bande into every one of our Year Group assemblies to deliver a speech prepared by herself as part of her English coursework titled ‘There is barely any racism in the UK’.

Black History Month ran throughout October, with this years’ theme of ‘Time for Change, Action not Words’.

Black History Month is not just a month to celebrate the continued achievements and contributions of black people to the UK and around the world. It’s also a time for continued action to tackle racism, reclaim black history and ensure black history is represented and celebrated all year round.

Naomi’s assembly took place later than planned due to our Mock Exams sessions but we were wowed by the maturity and powerful content of her speech. Naomi spoke passionately to our students about her personal experiences of racism and the positive steps she feels have been put in place to address inequality in our academy.

An excellent and thought-provoking speech Naomi, well done. We are all so proud of you.