The end of the autumn term saw the end of a very special era at Testbourne, with the retirement of our Deputy Head, Dick Stevens.
Dick joined the then Whitchurch County Secondary School on 1st September 1970 ~ a mere 36¼ years ago ~ straight from teacher training. It was a great day for the school when Mr. Stevens was “allocated”here by the Hampshire Education Committee as a young man with a “pleasant and direct”personality, easy to talk to, and of a “smart and neat appearance with a small beard”. Dick has devoted a professional lifetime to the school as a fount of geographical knowledge, as Head of Falcon House , Deputy Head, as Acting Head when the then Head, Mr. Pankhurst, left in the mid 90s ~ and as so much more.
We know from the messages we received how much Dick has meant to generations of pupils and the difference he has made to their lives. We wish him, on behalf of pupils past and present, “Bon Voyage”~ and a wonderful retirement.
Continued congratulations must go to the Year 9 rugby team who recently participated in and won the Basingstoke Schools U-14 District sevens tournament. Sevens rugby is a very fast form of the game suiting quick, agile and physically fit players who can avoid contact and who have excellent passing skills.
January can sometimes be a bit of a dark and gloomy month but there has been a number of quite exciting new things going on at Testbourne
We have recently gained the International School Award (Foundation Level) from the British Council. The award is for curriculum-based international work done by a school and has been prompted by our twinning with Mityana Secondary School, Uganda and our involvement in Global Action.
The Mityana partnership is really beginning to flourish, after a preliminary visit by Mrs Evans, our Head of RE, when she was given a tremendously warm welcome. Our first project is to raise funds to help the school install tanks to collect rainwater - saving pupils nearly an hour's hard walk down and back up the hill to bring back water in a jerry can. Our pupils have already raised nearly £700 with a mufti day and disco at the end of term
A group of Year 9 & 10 pupils are busy raising funds to enable them to visit Mityana next Autumn- accompanied amongst others by Mr Stevens! Some things just feel right! Curriculum areas are working on how to further the partnership through their subject areas.
We are one of just 30 Global Action Schools in the UK ~ investigating sustainable development and ways of tackling global poverty. The work will include pupils conducting a sustainable audit of our own school, looking at how we use/waste resource and energy. The outcome of their work will be published in a presentation to a conference in Brussels ~ which we hope some of our pupils will attend.
We have also invited The Carbon Trust to visit the school to measure our “carbon footprint”~ and see how we might reduce it.
Pupils also had their horizons widened when Veronica Mulley came in to speak to Year 10 and 11 pupils about her work as a BBC editor and journalist. This followed our application to be a BBC Question Time School ~ we are waiting to hear whether we have been successful.