You are warmly invited to attend our annual Art & Design exhibition showcasing work from our 2018 A-level Art & Design, Graphics and Photography cohorts.

Thursday 12 July 2018, 3:30-6:00, Art Department. Hope to see you there!

As Northumberland County Council have changed their policy for the provision of Post 16 Transport, we are currently reviewing our own policy.

Full details of the changes, eligibility and application for free Post 16 travel can be found via the NCC website http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/Education/Schools/School-transport-1/Transport.aspx

For those students who King Edward’s is deemed not their local school, we do hope to provide some assistance with transport. If you have any queries, please contact Susan Brown in our Post 16 Office on 01670 501520

At King Edward’s we want to give our students not only the best education, but the best experience. As part of that, and in response to student feedback, we’re delighted to confirm that a new and exclusive to Sixth Form cafe will open in September 2018!

Our vision is to create a bespoke space from an existing classroom that will provide somewhere to relax and socialise. It will sell high quality food and drinks, such as tea by local supplier Ringtons, coffee served by a barista we aim to employ, hot chocolate, cold drinks, and snacks such as croissants and pastries.

A deli counter will supply freshly made to order sandwiches, paninis, jacket potatoes and salad boxes, along with traybakes, muffins, fruit, and biscuits.

Initially, the space, whose name will be decided by students and revealed during Bridging Week, will be open from 8am until 1.30pm each school day. We’ll also make sure we listen to student suggestions and act on them to improve it.

What should it be called? Click here to register your vote*

We want students to have the best of everything, and we’re always working to make our best better. We know that to help students be at their best we need to provide the best facilities. We’re really proud to have worked with students to be able to bring this space to life ready for the new school year, and we can’t wait to see it when it’s finished.

*Vote open for 24 hours from 9am on 3 July

Today saw the beginning of a weeks worth of STEM enrichment across the whole school, with Sixth Form at its heart. Mr Short, our STEM Coordinator has worked tirelessly to secure the Institute of Civil Engineers Bridge building event to be held in school across the entire week! We certainly feel very proud, as the last time we saw this event was at one of the Independent Schools we visited.

Throughout the week the Design Technology students in Year 12 who have an interest and passion for Engineering, will be working with a qualified Civil Engineer to build the suspension bridge. Today they have been trained with the equipment and taken on the problem solving and logistics of the whole operation! Peter, a Director the The Three Rivers Learning Trust and member of ICE is passionate and enthusiastic about supporting and developing STEM opportunities across the Trust.

The Year 12 students, one of whom is studying Bridge Design as part of his Extended Project Qualification, are thrilled at the prospect of getting hands on practical Engineering experience  – almost work experience but in a different format. The students will be mentoring over 80 Year 10 Design Technology students over the course of the week and finishing on Friday with a Girls in STEM event, where we will host Year 8s from our local Middle Schools.

This really is an exclusive experience for the students to develop their problem solving and logistical skills. To work side by side with a Civil Engineer for a whole week, as well as mentoring others will be invaluable for their communication and team work skills. Check out our Social Media feeds for updates on their progress and success.

It’s no secret that education budgets are under increasing pressure in the current climate, and many schools and colleges, including some in the local area, are being forced to offer less subjects in Sixth Form than they would ordinarily like to.

One subject area that is being squeezed nationwide is the Arts, so we’re all the more proud that within Sixth Form at KEVI, we’re able to offer a broad curriculum, with Art and Humanities subjects equally as prominent as Sciences and Maths.

Within our Arts provision, we not only offer the traditional A Levels of Art and Music, but also more vocational options, such as Art Graphics, Design Technology, Music Technology and Media Studies, all of which provide students with a range of transferable skills that can be applied to many, many careers, such as critical thinking, teamwork, research skills, and creativity; there’s also evidence that literacy improves through studying subjects like these.

Combined with the huge range of additional opportunities on offer within Sixth Form at KEVI, such as Debate Club, Youth Parliament, Peer Mentoring and School Council, students studying the vocational arts are well equipped to develop quickly into young leaders, more than capable of taking their burgeoning careers in any direction they wish.

And because we’re affiliated with the National Citizen Service, they can also gain valuable volunteering experience to help them stand out from the crowd.

As well as being intellectually stimulating, these subjects are becoming ever more relevant to 21st century life and because many projects within such courses are self-directed, students quickly become highly motivated, analytical and independent. Students develop themselves into critics and themselves become resilient in order to grow and learn from critique and feedback. Students are able to develop a wide portfolio of practical skills and experience using different tools and software, such as making and editing visual and sound-based media, for which the range of career path options is vast.

We remain committed to providing the broadest curriculum possible to our students. Why not come and see for yourself? Arrange a visit by contacting Susan Brown, our Post-16 Office Manager, on 01670 501 520.

Our full list of Arts and Humanities-based Sixth Form subjects is as follows:

• Art, Craft and Design
• Art and Design: Graphic Communications
• Art and Design: Photography
• Design Technology
• History
• Geography
• Media Studies
• Music
• Music Technology
• Psychology
• Religious Studies
• Sociology
• Theatre and Drama Studies
• Extended Project Qualification

There is no doubt that education has changed a great deal over the last several years, so much so that parents and carers, as well as students themselves, tell us they can feel overwhelmed by the choices available.

One thing we’ve seen is the option to start specialising at a younger age, with many schools becoming colleges or academies dedicated to certain subject areas. And while we maintain a passion and support for a varied range of subject areas, underpinned by comprehensive student support, the option to narrow your focus is no less available as part of Sixth Form at King Edward’s, where our approach has helped us stay in Northumberland’s top three for five years running, both for achievement and progress. We currently rank number one.

One subject area we champion is STEM, or Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths, and we’re proud of the broad range of courses we offer, supported by a varied range of additional opportunities, such as our Pre-Med Society, for those wishing to pursue a career in medicine, and our Dissection Club. We even have our own Space Agency, KEVISA, with its own observatory.

Even in the Lower School, our STEM provision helped 30 of our students to become STEM champions earlier this year, when they took part in a STEM innovation challenge to build a wind turbine, in which they experienced working with virtual reality technology, electronics, robots and more, ultimately winning the prize for most efficient design on the day. Find out more on our website at kevi.the3rivers.net/kevi-stem-champions/.

Our job in Sixth Form is to support you to reach your goals, whatever they may be, and as part of that you’ll receive guidance from a committed team of Year Leaders, Mentors, and an Office Manager dedicated to Post-16 provision. We also offer additional support programmes for students applying to Oxford or Cambridge, or competitive and specialist courses such as medicine and veterinary medicine. Currently two of our alumni are prominent and active members of the CDI – Cambridge University’s Development institute, a charity where engineering is placed at the heart of improving the quality of life of people in poorer countries and we have supported our former students with their Summer placements.

Our students achieve consistently high exam results that allow them to progress on into their chosen next steps. 83% of our students go on to university, with more than a third of them attending institutions within the prestigious Russell Group, and a further five per cent go on to Higher Apprenticeships and other School Leaver programmes. This number is increasing as the breadth of quality HE alternatives is increasing.

Why not arrange a visit to find out more by contacting Susan Brown, our Post-16 Office Manager, on 01670 501 520

Our full list of STEM A Levels is as follows:

Biology
Chemistry
Computer Science
Core Maths*
Design Technology
Economics
Food Science and Nutrition*
Further Maths
IT*
Maths
Music Technology
PE: Sport & Physical Activity*
Physics
Psychology
Sociology

*Level 3 equivalent courses

Published mock exam timetable for new Year 13

The Senior Students; Layla, Tom, Jena and Christie hosted the annual Celebration Evening on Thursday.

The evening is a well-established tradition in Sixth Form that the evening is run by the Senior Students for their peers. Of course the evening couldn’t have happened without the unfailing support of the ever-present Miss O’Neill, Susan and Fiona. They have guided the Senior Students through the whole process to ensure an enjoyable and successful evening had by all. 

The Year 13 Celebration Evening is an evening of reflection, a coming together of the Sixth Form community to take pride in the achievements and accomplishments of one another and of Sixth Form itself. Of course, as the evening was hosted by the students, there was the odd humorous comment thrown in for good measure!

 The tradition of prize giving within King Edward’s in a long one, many of the trophies that are awarded have a long and esteemed history. Some of the awards have been donated by former students and staff, who are proud of their association with the school and want that legacy to continue. Other awards are proudly supported by The Foundation Governors, The Edwardians and Pirimal. Other awards given out on the evening are subject prizes. Each subject in Sixth Form select three nominees for attainment and three nominees for progress, with the overall winner announced out of the three.

Overall, the evening was a huge success and there was an enormous sense of pride in the room. The evening really lived up to its name and was a real celebration on the endeavours of the year group.

14 May 2018 is significant, not only because it marks the start of the exam season for our Year 11, 12 and 13 students, it is also the first day of Mental Health Awareness Week. This year, the focus or theme is Stress. In this article, our Head Girl, Claudia reflects on a recent session that Sixth Form were invited to as part of the Enrichment and Personal Development Programme.

“Sixth Form had our second Stress Management session with a GP and Educational psychologist, and it was genuinely fascinating to see how similar many of us are in what we stress about, why we stress and how we cope.

Firstly we tried to come up with definitions for Stress and for Challenge, and compared the two, and whether or not they are linked. We concluded that they weren’t, because challenge is something we can overcome, and we know can be delayed to an extent, whereas stress can’t be.

Following from this we linked our coping mechanisms for stress, and it was interesting to observe the similarities and differences in how we all dealt with stress, and what we could learn from others and apply to ourselves. After we’d shared our ways to cope with stress, they were broadly categorised, into Emotion-focused coping, commonly involving distractions: running, sleeping, baking, reading and gaming. Problem-focused coping, which involved writing our problems down, making to do lists and breaking up our stress and potential solutions into smaller, more manageable chunks, this I would definitely recommend. There was also Relation-focused coping, speaking about problems with friends, going out and socialising. We were recommended the 3 minute meditations which can be found online, and lots of stress coping apps like Fast Calm, Smiling Mind and Head Space.

After realising how similar our problems and stresses were, the groups linked together feelings, behaviour, stress and actions, which was a great way to analyse the chain of thoughts behind stress, and realising that more action needs to be taken when feeling stressed, even if it’s something small like going for a walk or writing down a rant, just get the feelings off your chest to remove the burden, and try to make much more manageable and realistic aims for yourself, and know that exam results aren’t the be all and end all, put your mental health first.”

Contributor: Claudia, Head Girl

If you have any concerns or want to talk, you should seek help by asking a GP or the school counselling service for advice. You could also book an appointment with Beth, our Sixth Form Chaplain.

The King Edward VI School have also produced a booklet for parents: Mental Health and Well Being in Teenagers – a Parent Guide. This can be accessed via this link.

Other Support::

Talking Matters accept self referrals if you feel as though you need some external support or therapy. You can contact them via 0300 30 30 700 or www.tmnorthumberland.org.uk/talking-matters-northumberland-e-referral-form/

• www.youngminds.org.uk
• www.nspcc.org.uk
• www.familylives.org.uk
• www.parenting.co.uk