Category: School: Kingdown School, Warminster

Monday 30th June 2008

Members of WeLo at Kingdown School have raised £84 for the Joshua Foundation by holding a sponsored silence. Top fundraider (£31) was Todd Smith.

Monday 30th June 2008

The Kingdown School Idol Competition takes place in the main hall at Kingdown School, Woodcock Road, Warminster, on Thursday 10th July 2008. Tickets will be on sale at the Pupil Reception Desk: £3 for adults, £2 for children and concessions.

The following Kingdown students will be representing their individual houses and key stages ~

Twickenham:
Oliver Smith, Sophie Arnold, Matthew Graham.

Lords:
Emma Reade, Asiya Kaplankiran, Natalie Williams.

Wembley:
Sophie Harvey, Ben Griffiths, Sammy Burns.

Millennium:
Poppy Nichol, Rachele Spano, Gemma Pickin.

Wimbledon:
Jak Collins, Ione McDonald, Daniel Lowe.

Performances will be accompanied by five backing bands and musicians from Kingdown. There will also be performances by Kingdown Choir.

A winner will be selected from each key stage and an overall winner will be announced. The judging panel includes professionals from the world of television, media and music.

Money raised at this event will be donated to the Starlight charity.

Monday 30th June 2008

Friday 20th June 2008 is a date which will be long remembered by Kingdown School Sixth Form. At the Summer Ball, 83 guests were entertained superbly by the hosts at Cumberwell Park who provided an excellent three-course meal and a superb venue overlooking their golf course just outside Bradford On Avon.

The evening, organised by Leanne Hughes, Matt Hodder and Becky Wilson got off to a great start with a Bucks Fizz reception and formal photographs by David Wiltshire Photography from Warminster. Ben Woodward, close-up magician, provided inexplicable tricks and sleight-of-hand. It was easy to see why he is so popular on the Dubai hotel circuit, with the young royals and with the rock and roll aristocracy. Check out his CV on www.gekkoentertainments.com

From the warm welcome provided by Matt Hodder (master of ceremonies) and Mrs Whitehead-Whiting, to Mrs Brown’s toast to the Sixth Form the evening buzzed with excitement.

The highlight of the evening came from a delightfully tongue-in-cheek review of the Sixth Form given by Mr Locke and Mr Murray who this year delivered a joint after-dinner speech. Their advice on how to be a good undergraduate may he forgotten by those seriously planning to go to university in the near future but their good wishes will be treasured always.

Never had an evening moved so quickly. As the sounds of DJ Tiff faded away at midnight, a myriad of ladies in colourful dresses and tuxedoed gentlemen withdrew into the darkness trailing balloons and laughter. And so the 15th Sixth Form Summer Ball came to a happy conclusion.

Photographs taken by David Wiltshire Photography can be purchased from his studio at George Street in Warminster.

From Kingdown Week, the official weekly newsletter of Kingdown Community School, No.13/2008, week beginning 21 April 2008:

“OUTSTANDING”

This is the conclusion of the Ofsted inspector at their recent visit to Kingdown. It is the top grade and only given to 5% of schools.

“All members of the school community do everything in their power to provide each and every student with the right learning experiences that lift aspirations, build confidence and bring tremendous enjoyment to learning and enable students to make outstanding progress.”

“The school is outstanding”

“Students and parents speak highly of the school”

“The head teacher provides outstanding leadership”

“The school works with utmost persistence to keep students at school and designs tailor-made provision where necessary to engage youngsters”

“Students’ behaviour in lessons is excellent”

“Teaching and learning are outstanding”

“The school’s specialist status as a sports and vocational college . . . . has been highly instrumental in extending the breadth of educational opportunities”

“The school is successfully nurturing and developing older students to act as role models to younger ones”

“The excellent educational provision of the main school extends into the outstanding sixth form”

“Students’ contribution to the lives and well being of younger students, through the vertical tutor group and house system, is valued and very significant”

“Sixth form students are indeed heroes as the school intends”

LETTER FROM H.M. INSPECTOR TO ALL STUDENTS
14 March 2008

Dear Students

Inspection of Warminster Kingdown, Warminster, BA12 9DR.

Thank you for your welcome when I visited the school recently with another inspector. We much appreciated the conversations we had with you. I write to let you know of our findings.

Your school is outstanding. It enables you to achieve increasingly well in your academic work. It also enables you to develop extremely well into confident, considerate young people, ready to take your places in society and to make outstanding contributions to it and your own future lives. It is clear that you enjoy school greatly. Your behaviour in lessons is excellent. Whilst less than perfect behaviour does occasionally occur, you feel that the school deals with this very well.

The range of learning experiences that the school provides, in Years 7 to 11 and in the sixth form, is outstanding. Most lessons are good and some are excellent. It is because of these lessons and other activities that your learning in all aspects of development is of such high quality. You are extremely well cared for. Those of you who join the school other than in Year 7, and particularly those from armed forces families, are welcomed warmly and supported to make good progress. You are given excellent guidance about your work and how to reach your targets. You value greatly the way that the vertical tutor group and house system enable you to mix with, learn from and support students of different ages.

Your head teacher provides excellent leadership and the school is extremely well led and managed. Staff and governors do everything in their power to provide you with the best possible chances to succeed at school and in the future. The school building is a pleasant place to work in even though some parts of it are showing signs of age. Leaders constantly strive to improve the school, often in very creative ways. We agree with them about the key actions for the future and highlight the need to work further on improving the literacy skills for some of you. You should do all that you can for yourselves to keep developing these skills, by reading for pleasure and taking care to do your best writing in every subject, for example. Teachers generally have excellent skills in questioning you about how well you understand your work, and to deepen your thinking. This is not so in all cases and so we have asked the school to develop these teaching skills so that they are always as good as the existing best.

We wish you all the very best for the future.

Wiola Hola,
Her Majesty’s Inspector.

From Kingdown Week, the official weekly newsletter of Kingdown Communuity School, Warminster, issue No.11/2008, week beginning 25 March 2008:

Kingdown welcomed Mrs. Matlaka Nong, Headteacher and Shimane Moatshe, Link teacher from the Erasmus Monareng School, Gauteng, Jonnasberg, South Africa. The visit was the second phase of Kingdown’s involvement in the British Council/Youth Sport trust initiative “Dreams and Teams”.

Mrs. Brown and Mr. Dudley travelled to South Africa last October and visited Erasmus Monareng School and Mrs. Nong and Mr. Moatshe arrived for the return visit. The initiative aims to develop leaderships and global awareness in both schools. Mr. Moatshe asked if Kingdown was a University as the facilities were so good and only Universities in South Africa have such facilities. Both South African colleagues were involved in the life of Kingdown school for three days, where they met students, teachers, school council members and the governing body.

Kingdown will be sending four Post 16 students out to South Africa next February to further develop links and run a primary school sports festival for Erasmus Monareng’s feeder primary schools.

From Kingdown Week, No.27/2007, the official weekly newsletter of Kingdown School, Warminster, Wiltshire, week beginning 17th September 2007:

Congratulations!
Two Kingdown students were among the top ten students in the country with sensational overall marks.

Alexandra Black was congratulated by AQA for being amongst the group of candidates who scored the top five marks in Science in the country. This is an exceptional result. Alex is taking a gap year before going to Bath University to study sport.

Farieha Altaf, at only 13 years of age, was amongst the highest scoring candidates in the country. Out of 2,713 entries, Farieha was amongst the top ten who achieved the highest overall marks in Urdu.

Saturday 24th July 2004

Over 20 students from Kingdown Community College, Warminster, are going to China in August 2004 as part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. Not only is it the first time China has been chosen as a destination in the scheme, it will be the first time anyone has involved bicycles.

The students, who are aged 17 to 19, won’t be cycling there and back though! They will go by plane, via Paris, and of the two weeks in China, five days will be dedicated to cycling and camping under canvas.

They will be accompanied by three members of staff, namely Sarah Jackson, Annette Storm and Nick Trimby. The cost of the jaunt has been met largely by home-grown fundraising such as cake stalls and bingo nights at the school.

To gain experience, each student has had to spend two out of three organised weekends cycling and camping but not quite so far away. Tilshead and the New Forest have been the closer-to-home places they have been to.

All the students are looking forward to the real thing though. It will turn out to be the longest distance any of them will have travelled and the trip is sure to instill memories that will last a lifetime.

Our photo shows some of the students who are going to China for a cycling sojourn. They are pictured outside the main entrance to Kingdown Community College, prior to cycling to Tilshead for a camping weekend to gain experience in preparation for the real thing in the summer. Among the two-wheelers are Sarah Jackson and Annette Storm (adult leaders), Emma Palmer, Poppy Shingleton, Alex Boxley, Robert Stacey, Thierry Davies, Jack Woods, Jamie Robbins, Simone Giles and Danielle Giles.

Report and Photograph by Danny Howell.