This week, Manchester United Foundation Officer, Adele Howarth took some of our Year 10 students to the Growth Company Skills Centre to take part in a ‘One Day Painting and Decorating Workshop’.

The group were able to learn several techniques to painting within the trade and were also able to create their own painted piece, with some of the group deciding to paint pieces just in time for Mother’s Day!

“I’ve had a lot of fun with what I’ve done today. The freedom of not being in school and being able to achieve what we have was amazing, something different rather than writing in lessons.”

Year 10 student, Liam Hemmings

How absolutely amazing do our new Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 football kits look? Especially when they are expertly showcased by our mean and moody professional models, Callum Farnie and Sylvester Kisula!

We are extremely grateful to have received sponsorship from a host of generous and supportive local businesses, eager to help our football teams succeed.

Huge thanks to our sponsors:

Moore Security Solutions, Tel 01706 412302

Ian McNicholas Carpets, Tel 07870 543977

ServiceCal

Optima Dev

Our Manchester United Foundation Hub Officer, Adele Howarth, has worked tirelessly for months sourcing these sponsors and raising money to enable us to purchase these desperately needed new kits. Our student teams are absolutely over the moon with them. We’re sure our teams will look even better now when they hit the pitch for their next match…and get that all important winners picture!

Thank you Adele, we are really grateful.

Just before February half-term we launched a competition to students from all Year Groups to create an inspiring and informative poster about an acclaimed Scientist.

The posters had to showcase how the chosen scientist has contributed to the scientific community, with a minimum of 100 words and illustrations to support this.

Mr Jones and our Science staff have had a tough time decided on winners from all of the wonderful entries we received but we finally narrowed it down to these brilliant submissions…

Year 11, Mika Eaton
Year 10, Aleena Zahra
Year 9, Hayden Thorpe
Year 8, Kate Jones
Year 7, Tayla Brodiak

We are celebrating National Careers Week (6-11 March) across all subjects this week here at Co-op Academy Swinton and our focus is ‘Careers across the Curriculum’.

English

Today our Year 11 English students were looking at the careers of Emma Watson and Stephen Fry and how their work and backgrounds link to English. The students then wrote about their own ambitions and wrote speeches, in practise for their forthcoming exams. The speeches outlined their ambitions for the next ten years. The excellent extracts here are from Joleen Diamond, Harrison Little, Olivia Mundy and Naomi Adewoyin.

On the last day of term a group of our Year 9 and 10 girls took part in a Beauty Workshop, organised by Manchester United Foundation Hub Officer, Adele Howarth.

Helen Quayle, CEO of Whitefield based company Laser HQ, visited our academy to deliver an inspirational talk to our group about starting her business from scratch and building to the successful operation she has today with four branches. The girls found the afternoon very inspiring and maintained continuous engagement throughout the entire workshop.

Helen has achieved so much and in October 2022 won the 2022 ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year’ award at The Enterprise Vision Awards. These annual awards recognise and celebrate outstanding ‘female entrepreneurship’ in the North West. The award, sponsored by The University of Central Lancashire, applauded Helen for starting and building her businesses from nothing, hitting a £1m turnover and leading the way with key campaigns to raise awareness of health issues for women so, as you can imagine she was a great inspiration to our students.

I’ve learnt how to be passionate about my work because Helen has showed us from where she started and how much she was able to build herself up. She taught me that it’s not just about laser hair removal but about her clients status. Her company welcomes her clients and makes them welcome and comfortable as much as possible. She is a very confident woman and proved to us that women don’t need men. If I was to look up to someone as an influencer, I would choose Helen because she answered so many questions that I needed to be answered.

Swesn, Year 9 student