'Learning Matters' has been a new feature of Friday News this year, and we would love your feedback on what you feel has been useful and what you'd like to know more about. You may have queries. Please email any thoughts you have to learning@csg.school

Next year, we plan to expand our communications with parents on the most appropriate learning strategies for different year groups. This will include online Google Meet presentations. We look forward to discussing learning further with you.

Maths Student of the Week

Jannah 7C - Jannah always shows her working out meticulously and uses this to learn methods to solve increasingly difficult problems. She always tries her best in everything she does.

Well Done!

REMEMBER    REMEMBER    REMEMBER

ANONYMOUS ART AUCTION ENDS ON SUNDAY AT 4PM

Set your alarms for Sunday afternoon........

Make sure you get your bids in, and grab yourselves an amazing artwork, which may be worth a pretty penny. The details of the artists will be revealed after the auction ends.

Winners artworks will be posted out on Monday. Or you will be able to collect from Reception if you prefer.

Link to auction

Link to artist details

Year 10’s Trip to University College London

13 year 10 students were invited to University College London to conclude the UCL Horizons Course: a maths programme run by student ambassadors and staff for secondary school pupils across the country, in order to develop our maths skills.
During the course, we completed various study skills tasks and maths problems. Fortunately for us, we were only a bus ride away from the broad campus in Bloomsbury in which we were given an in depth tour guided by our assigned student ambassadors, allowing us to see the libraries, faculties and the recent protests taking place within the campus. We gained insight into university life, were lectured on how to choose a particular course to study, and how to pay for university.
Finally, we dove into an interesting and fun Data Detectives activity on different penguin species in the Antarctic run by Dr Alexander Watson from the Department of Statistical Science. The data was displayed using Box Plots, Scatter graph, Bar Charts and Histograms and we used it to make observations and predictions about which penguin species -Gentoo, Chinstrap or Adelie the data was referring to.  The day culminated in us all receiving certificates for completing the programme.

Thank you to Ms Man for organising the trip and to Miss Ghorbannejad.

Year 10 Trip to Barcelona

A week after half term, our Spanish department and Year 10 students had a fantastic time in Barcelona. We marvelled at Gaudí's architecture, explored the city, and enjoyed typical food while practicing lots of Spanish with the locals.

The trip was a great success, with many enriching cultural activities. Our students were wonderful, they made the most of every activity and fully immersed themselves in the language and culture. Thank you to everyone involved!

"The trip to Barcelona was super cool. We’ve all be looking forward to it from the beginning of the year. The four days consisted of visiting the best parts of Barcelona like the Sagrada Familia and the Museo Picasso. We indulged in tapas and overall had a great time.
Thank you again to Ms García, Ms Mañas and Ms Maggs!"

Gracias,

Ms García

Assembly Speaker - 20 May
Fiona Millar - journalist, writer, campaigner

Last week’s assembly was led by journalist and campaigner Fiona Millar. She discussed her career path from education at Camden School for Girls into journalism and working at Downing Street for six years under Tony Blair, as well as her opinions on contemporary politics, education and a subject she has devoted much of her time to - the effects of having children on women’s careers and how this gender inequality can be addressed.

Fiona attended Camden School for Girls, and after returning for Founder’s Day recently, said she was glad to see the spirit of the school’s founder Frances Mary Buss still alive in the school. After leaving UCL with a degree in economics and economic history, Fiona took a graduate course in journalism, which later led to a job at the Daily Express and then a variety of other newspapers as a freelancer.

Now a regular contributor to the Guardian, Fiona also spoke in detail about her writing and campaigning around education, which she argued has fallen down the list of priorities for our government. She highlighted the intense unfairness of the current education system, which, in her view, entrenches wealth inequality. She also pointed out an often overlooked fact - the system of exams we have requires a 30% failure rate at GCSE. Each year, grade boundaries are moved around to ensure that 30% of grades receive below the pass grade of 4. She went on to describe her idea for a baccalaureate system where various creative, vocational, and academic components can be incorporated into a broader qualification available for everyone, and the abolition of examination at 16 - which she described as a relic of a time when people were able to leave education at that point. 

She also pointed out that the education system expects people to be developing at the same rate and in a linear manner. People develop differently, they live different lives and yet they have to take high stakes exams at the same moment which have a large effect on what they can do next. She also questioned if this even resembles the world of work at all when most people nowadays have non-linear careers with diverse skill sets. She suggested that perhaps, in this regard, Frances Mary Buss’ original school is fundamentally similar to the one today. Despite modernisation across the rest of the world, schooling is still stuck in Victorian times. 

Another focus for Fiona as a journalist is working mothers - she stressed the fact that many women feel pressured to go into flexible or part-time work after having children and the continued 14% gender pay gap. This led her to write “The Secret World of the Working Mother”, which looked at the challenges faced both at home and in the workplace by a variety of women.

She spoke about the upcoming election and had a particularly interesting view on Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives’ plan to bring back national service or national voluntary service. She said that this could have actually been an effective plan, allowing people with less privilege to access different opportunities, but was poorly publicised.

Overall, we took from the assembly a new perspective on education, politics, and the gender pay gap, which still persists significantly due to childbirth and the vast effect it has on women's career progression. 

Joe & Alex
Sixth Form Senior Prefects

The Yoto Carnegie Book Awards 2024

This term, the majority of 7M has been working on the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing. This involved reading different books from the shortlist of 8 and voting on which ones they enjoyed the most.

The class voted to nominate ‘The Boy Lost in the Maze’ by Joseph Coelho as their ultimate winner. This title is about a boy who is trying to find his father, and makes connections with the classical story of Theseus and the minotaur.

Other popular books turned out to be ‘Away with Words’ by Sophie Cameron, which follows a girl and her selectively mute friend, and ‘Crossing the Line’ by Tia Fisher which is about a boy reacting to the breakdown of his family unit.

Many of 7M said they enjoyed the experience, the concepts and the range of styles of writing but found it difficult to compare them as the stories were all so different. It also introduced them to new authors and genres which they continue to enjoy.

Congratulations to the class for all their hard work.

The Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing was announced on Thursday 20 June and was awarded to The Boy Lost in the Maze by Joseph Coelho.

The winning book voted for by the students from shadowing groups across the UK was Crossing the Line.

To read more about the winners and the other books

Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing

Reviews written by 7M