Welcome to the latest edition of the BSW Blog. We hope this finds you well and we wish you a very happy Chinese New Year 2021! It has certainly been another unusual term, with most of our students completing their school work and activities remotely and many of our staff delivering fantastic online lessons as we again find ourselves in lock down.
January and February are always challenging months for us all and we know that this period apart will have been tough for pupils, parents and carers and staff. Monday 8 February saw the publication of the UK’s biggest study into the impact of COVID-19 on young people’s education and wellbeing. Bohunt Education Trust schools took part in the study, led by research organisation, ImpactEd, which comprised 62,000 young people across the country. Sky News visited Bohunt School in Worthing to pre-record interviews with students and BET’s Director of Education, Philip Avery. We hope you can take some time to look at this report and we’re proud to have been a part of such an important study. Please click here to read more.
Despite many of our students and staff being apart for these last weeks we nonetheless have plenty to celebrate and we are delighted to provide a roundup of some great achievements, news and updates.
Chinese New Year is always a big event at BSW and while it is a shame we cannot all celebrate together, Ms Nai provided a brilliant virtual assembly for our students, explaining the significance of the Lunar New Year and 2021 being the Year of the Ox.
This year has seen the first cross trust Chinese New Year competition. Students from BSW, Liphook, TPS and Wokingham have taken part in a variety of challenges linked to Mandarin language and Chinese culture. Over 30 submissions were received across the trust and the first round of voting was done by students. Trust Leadership will have the final vote and the winners will be notified after half term. Entries have included: singing, dancing, drawing a dragon, ink painting, cooking, Chinese poem with music, model building of Mount Everest, digital model of Chinese city, a talk show, kung fu and playing music.
Our amazing LRC (Learning Resource Centre) is a wonderful library where our students can indulge their love of books and reading. The LRC team not only offer an incredible variety of books and magazines, but also run various activities and events which pupils love to engage with. During the lock down period Mrs Harmer has been delivering books to our students using the ‘Book Bus’, taking the joy of reading on the road and straight to our pupils’ front doors!
We’re really excited to see the first issue of the new library newsletter and below we have shared an excerpt. You can read the full newsletter here.
LGBT+ History Month gives us an opportunity to shine a spotlight and celebrate books written by a range of diverse and inclusive authors, including those who identify as lesbian, gay bisexual or transgender. Why does it matter? It would be a pretty dull reading experience if every book’s main character was exactly like the reader. Reading is the chance to explore other worlds and walk in a different pair of shoes, and to understand people from a deeper perspective. The LGBT community still struggle today for equality and acceptance, and we would like to draw your attention to the following books below, and to encourage you to read and celebrate these stories:
While many of our students are completing online lessons at home our school has been open throughout the term to some of our students, including those whose parents and carers are key workers. It has been great to see how brilliantly these pupils have got on with their studies and with one another during this unusual time at school. On the Wednesday 10th February Mr Whitehead treated these students to a pizza lunch to bring some much needed joy on a cold and grey February day. A big thank you to Mr Staples and Mrs Parsons for putting on the spread.
Following on from earlier this year when BET outdoor education social media undertook a transformation, BET launched an innovative DofE Training Website. You can read more here.
BoB is back! After a little while away we’re so excited that BoB has returned with their amazing round up for the wonderful and wacky things our students and staff have been getting up to in lock down. Keep an eye on your inbox for the latest edition!
A core part of our school’s ethos is around building the Game Changers of tomorrow. As well as the amazing things our students achieve every day in school, we are often astounded by the incredible things our students achieve independently. Felicity Poole in Year 10 has been running a total of 42km across 4 days to raise money for a new roof for Worthing Rugby clubhouse. Felicity has raised over £290 so far and has battles some cold weather and sore feet! Well done Felicity!
We are delighted to inform you we made contact with a secondary school in western France in December 2020. 20 students from Bohunt Worthing have been paired with 20 students from “le collège Notre Dame de Bourgenay” in Les Sables d’olonne. It’s a pen pal scheme where each student has already sent a message to their pen pal and students are now working on sending a video presenting their town in the language they are learning! Worthing has been twinned with Les sables d’Olonne since 1998
Each year, Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January) is given a theme. This year we were asked to ‘be the light in the darkness’ as we commemorate both the Holocaust and subsequent genocides throughout history. While we were unable to have our usual whole school assembly, students nonetheless engaged with a series of lessons supplied by our History department in which they explored some of the causes of the Holocaust and listened to testimonies by those who survived the Nazi atrocities. Students were also asked to reflect on how we can find light amidst the darkness in today’s world and to contribute a photo that captures the theme.
Throughout this term staff at BSW have been running a Covid-19 testing centre in the dance studio, offering tests to both students and staff in order to create a safer school environment and to contribute to the wider effort to combat the pandemic. Staff volunteers have completed training in order to put this testing facility together and it has been remarkable to see how quickly this has been put together. Testing has been carried out regularly throughout the term and we are very proud of our staff who have helped to make this happen.
We are delighted to showcase the first ever BSW Student Voice newsletter. Our Students’ views on what matters most at school are so important to the staff at BSW. This newsletter showcases all the great ways our students voice their opinions and how we as staff listen to those opinions and aim to make their time in school and learning from home as positive and enjoyable as possible. We hope you enjoy reading this newsletter!
The word Game-changer is a common phrase we hear in the press; Bohunt Worthing recognises and rewards Game-changers and students who show characteristics of a Game-changer at school. These include the following:
Staff nominate two students twice a half-term who have shown these Game-changer characteristics. This leads to the most nominated Key Stage 3 student and Key Stage 4 being recognised as the schools’ Game-changers of the term. At the very end of last term Maddie Booker and Malavika Yatheendra Mohan won the Game-changers cup with the highest number of nominations.
Recently nominated students include Y7 students Dulcie Balmer for being supportive and a leader within in PE and Harvey Metcalfe for being selfless and helpful during Keyworker School, both pictured below in front of one of the Game Changers displays around school, which show different Game-changers from around the world representing all subjects taught at Bohunt.
Departments have also been highlighting famous Game Changers within their field and students explored some of these figures during our Game Changer Week in February.
Community news
We were delighted to hear that our friends at Turning Tides won the Sussex Business Community Award earlier this week. You can read the full article in Sussex Business Times, here, they feature on page 40.
We have published our term dates for the next academic year 2021 / 2022, you can find them here.
| Wednesday 3 March 2021 4 – 7pm | Y8 Parents’ Evening |
| Wednesday 17 March 2021 | ERA Day |
| Thursday 18 March 2021 4 – 7pm | Y9 Parents’ Evening |
| Wednesday 24 March 2021 6.30 – 8pm | CANCELLED: Y11 Prepare to Perform |
| Thursday 1 April | Last day of term |
Have a wonderful half term break and give yourselves some time away from the screen!
