End of Term Letter – From the Headmistress  December 2008

Click here for a full pdf version of the document.

Many exciting and stimulating events have happened at JAGS since my October newsletter. During the October half-term break groups of girls and staff undertook several very successful trips:  6th form Geographers visited Morocco, 6th form Italian students stayed with their exchange partners in Venice,  girls from Years 10 & 11 studied Spanish in Barcelona and French in Montpellier, while closer to home a Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Silver expedition took place in Sussex.  In November, the Art and Art History departments led a Sixth form trip to Paris and the German department took girls from Years 8 & 9 to visit the Aachen Christmas markets.  Back in London Year 7 pupils visited several art galleries, Year 9 pupils enjoyed an outing to the Natural History Museum with the Biology and Geography departments, Year 10 Art students spent a day drawing at Kew Gardens, Year 11 Historians went to the Cold War exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, GCSE and A level Drama students have attended a number of productions, a group of 6th form Politics and Languages students took part in a special programme at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and 6th formers have attended specialist lectures in Chemistry, Classics, Geography, History, French, Mathematics, Politics and Religious Studies.   Many thanks to all the staff who have given up their time to accompany school trips.

Many other inspirational events and talks by outside speakers took place within the school.  Girls from Years 8 & 9 were delighted to hear Michael Morpurgo, the well-known author, speak and they queued patiently for signed copies of his latest book.  Year 10 girls spent a day honing their study skills with a team of specialists.  Sixth form students had the opportunity to attend a Medicourse, hosted at JAGS and attended by 100 students from all over the country.  During Black History month, 40 girls from Year 9 and above took part in a special workshop.  Our Science Week saw a huge range of events for girls of all ages, including creepy crawlies, messy Chemistry and the Large Hadron Collider.  Year 7 pupils enjoyed a visit from Roop Singh, who gave a talk and workshops on Sikhism.  Year 11 were privileged to attend our annual Holocaust Survivors Testimony Programme; Kitty Langton and Alice Taylor (Year 12) participated in the Holocaust Educational Trust’s challenging visit to Auschwitz.  Dr Philip Broadhead spoke to the History Society about Luther and the Reformation. Year 11 Art students enjoyed a presentation about Turner from the artist, Robert Poulter, and Jennifer Lee, the acclaimed ceramicist, spoke to 6th formers about her work.  Finally this term we welcomed Makoto Shinkai, the eminent Japanese animateur, to show one of his films and talk about his work.

The first ever JAGS Art Fair was very successful; 31 local artists displayed their works for sale and visitors came from as far afield as Lancashire.  Sales and entry fees totalled almost £28,000 and a further sum in excess of £6,000 was made through the online auction.  We have learned a lot from the experience and hope to make this an annual event.  The profits of this year’s Fair are going into the fund for our proposed new Community Music Centre.  We continue to make steady progress with this campaign and thank all who have attended the Information Evenings and other events; we now have a special section of our website dedicated to the project – www.jags.org.uk/jacmc .  Please do take the time to look at this.  Not to be outshone, our Year 13 A level artists staged a wonderful exhibition of their coursework during the penultimate week of term.  Our next major Art event will be at Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Drawn Together Exhibition of JAGS work will be in the Linbury Room from 4 – 26 February 2009; a treat not to be missed!

JAGS girls’ creativity was also much in evidence at our 21st Annual Poetry Festival.  More than 70 girls from Years 7-13 read their own compositions in the Prissian Theatre in December, producing a stunning variety of high quality verse.  We were delighted to welcome Jean Sprackland, the winner of last year’s Costa prize, as our guest poet and adjudicator and she held workshops and readings with pupils during the afternoon.  Two days later the Prissian Theatre hosted a very different event – the JAGS Recycled Fashion Show.  This was planned and organised entirely by our Sixth Form students, led by Sophie Strong, and staged as a fundraiser for the British Heart Foundation and Iraqi Christians in Need.  Wonderful dresses constructed from bus tickets, discarded CDs, plastic carrier bags, newspapers and other ‘rubbish’ were confidently worn by a team of JAGS models and we were fortunate to have professional judges: Amy Browne, JAGS alumna and model, and two designers Rachel Jones and Angie Morris-Winmill.

The Drama department has had an excellent term.  Year 10 GCSE students staged excerpts from Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle in our new purpose-built drama studio to acclaim from their audience of parents and fellow pupils.  The main Senior Production of the musical The Matchgirls was an absolutely stunning triumph and many congratulations are due to all those involved.  We were transported to the grimy world of the match factory in Victorian London and brought to tears of laughter and sorrow as both the comedy and tragedy unfolded.  The acting, singing, dancing and orchestral playing were all superb.  This was followed by an equally entertaining production of the musical Oh, What a Lovely War at Dulwich College.  The boys and girls from both our schools benefit enormously from such opportunities to work together and this term’s two productions provided an excellent example of inspired cooperation.  Many thanks to all the staff who made these possible.

Teams and individual girls have participated in regional and national competitions in a wide variety of subjects.   Congratulations to our Hans Woyda mathematics quiz team who had some success in their league, beating Dulwich College!  Meanwhile JAGS senior maths team (Iona Ballantyne, Katrina Ferron, Harriet Godwin and Nicola Ingram) reached the regional final of the UK Maths Trust Competition, before suffering a noble defeat.  Our Sixth Form mathematicians participated in the UK Senior Maths Challenge in November and achieved 21 Bronze, 13 Silver and 2 Gold certificates.  Congratulations to Rosie Patchett (Year 13) on her Gold and to Rosemary Ware (Year 12) who won Gold and the Best in School Certificate. Our team of Year 13 Economists (Charlotte Bowyer, Caitlin Burtonshaw, Dalia Rassam and Fabia Strathdee) made a highly competent presentation and responded well to searching questions in their heat of the Bank of England Target 2.0 competition, but despite beating five other schools ended as runners-up to Eton on a split decision by the judges.  Alicia Manley (Year 12) was selected to spend a day at the Spanish Embassy, participating in the final of la Ruta Quetzal, an international competition for pupils aged 15-16 years to promote Spanish.  Four JAGS girls from Year 13 took part in the pan-European Juvenes Translatores 2008, Poppy Simon (French), Leila Morris (German), Madeleine Owen-Smith (Italian) and Anita Kessie (Spanish); we await news of their results. 

Our Sports teams have had another very good season in a number of events.  Once again we had a team in the National Finals of the Junior Cross-Country Championships.  Over 900 schools had entered the first rounds and the top 24 competed in Leicester.  Many congratulations to our team (Grace de Rome, Fiona Basham, Ashleigh Campbell, Georgina Hay, Johanna Mandal, Charlotte Scott, Natasha Sinha, and Rebecca Stormer) who came 2nd overall, with Grace being placed 7th out of 144 athletes.  Earlier this term, our Junior Cross-Country team had won the Southwark Championships while our Intermediate team had come 2nd in their age group, with Grace de Rome coming first individually in the Junior race and Katie Snowden taking first place in the Intermediate race.  Our Swimming teams have also met with success. The Intermediate team won both the medley and freestyle relays in the Regional round, while the Juniors came second.  The Senior team won their freestyle relay and came second in the medley – their time was good enough to earn them a place in the National Finals in Gloucester next February.  Well done and good luck to Hannah Cannell, Ruby Curran Jones, Alicia Manley, Milly Mirchandani and Emma Schofield!  In the London Schools’ Swimming Competitions the U16 team won first place and the U13 and U14 teams both came second.  In Hockey our U14 team has played well and reached the quarter-finals of the Surrey Tournament.  Our U14 Netball team won all their matches so convincingly in the Surrey Tournament that they have been invited to take part in the National Netball Competition.  Our U12, U13 and U14 Netball teams have qualified for the Surrey Finals next March.  Both our Year 7 and Year 8 Netball teams were also victorious at the recent Bacon’s College Invitational Tournament; the Year 7 team won all their matches without conceding a single goal!  Congratulations to the Year 8 & 9 girls, Poppy Baron, Clemency Barrett, Ashleigh Campbell, Annabel Norris and Elinor Webb, who have been chosen for the Surrey Netball satellite squad, and to Philippa Frizelle who has been selected for the Kent Netball satellite squad.  Well done, too, to Rhea Bhadresha (Year 12), who has been selected for the Surrey Table Tennis team.  We are also very proud of Bryony Gill (Year 11) who represented Great Britain in an international gymnastics competition in Luxembourg in December.  Congratulations to Katherine de Rome, who left JAGS this summer, who has just been awarded a Cambridge Blue for swimming.  Many thanks to all the staff and parents who train, encourage and support our talented sportswomen.

Our Musicians have had an equally busy and successful few weeks.  Our Orchestral Concert at St Barnabas in November provided an enjoyable showcase for performers of all ages and stages of development, including extracts from The Snowman and orchestral pieces by Arnold, Strauss and Bizet. The following day girls from our Whole School Choir joined pupils from 7 other schools in the Southwark Schools’ Learning Partnership in an inspiring choral concert at Southwark Cathedral, singing extracts from Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and Gospel music.  Later, girls from Year 10-13 produced their own mini-concerts in a most entertaining and closely fought Senior House Music Competition. November also saw JAGS play host to our first ever Recorder Festival, which attracted over 100 visitors from local schools.  JAGS musicians continue to go out into the community to perform; our Madrigalists, Big Band and WonderBrass raised funds for Kids Company, performing at the Frost Fair in Borough Market and a number of groups played and sang at a Dulwich Picture Gallery event in Christ’s Chapel.  JAGS Gospel Choir also received much praise for their performance in the chapel of the Royal Hospital Chelsea at a special Christmas concert in aid of the South African Sparrow Schools.  They have also sung in local churches.  The end of term Choral Concert at St Barnabas was another resounding success; the audience was delighted by Britten’s Ceremony of Carols and thrilled by the exciting performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana.  Many thanks and congratulations to all our musicians and their teachers.

GCSE English Literature: We received a fax during the October half-term holiday telling us that all our GCSE English Literature scripts had been remarked and informing us of new marks and grades.  35 girls had marks increased and 20 girls were upgraded.  This means that 18 girls now have 10 A* at GCSE not the 8 girls originally reported and the English Literature totals are now 36 A*, 54 A., 15 B as opposed to the initial 21 A*, 64 A., 20 B grades.  A strong letter of complaint has been sent to the Board about both the inaccuracy of the marking and the time taken to resolve the issue. 

Throughout the term JAGS girls and staff have been involved in a huge range of Community Action and charitable fundraising activities. Each week groups and individuals give up their time to visit a local Cheshire Home and other elderly people under the auspices of Dulwich Helpline, to help with pupils at Bessemer Grange Primary, Kingswood School, Turney Special School and at our Saturday Literacy scheme; others work with Aylesbury Academic Grassroots on Saturdays or at Kids Company during the week.   Twelve 6th form girls also ran a successful pilot event at Kids Company, involving art, drama and music activities and a shared lunch; this will now become a twice-termly event.   Local ‘Silver Surfers’ come for lessons here on Monday afternoons and primary school pupils are coached by our Community Sports Leaders’ Award students.  Girls have sold poppies for the British Legion, washed cars, sold cakes, worn crazy outfits and worked hard to raise funds for their different House Charities. Well done to all those who represented JAGS at the Foundation Talent Show and congratulations to Morgen Evans (7G) who was awarded Best in School.  Many thanks, too, to the large number of teachers who turned out to play a fast-moving game of hockey as a Charity Event. News about these and all our other events are on the JAGS website at www.jags.org.uk

The Parents’ Association held a most enjoyable Quiz Night, wonderfully hosted by Henry Kelly – many thanks to all who worked hard to make this event such a success.  Thank you also to those who run our 2nd hand uniform sales.  We are currently reviewing our uniform – with a view to improving the quality and girls’ smartness, while reducing the cost.  We will be consulting widely and ensuring a transition period if we make any changes.

As I write, I am assured that the problems with the floor in the new Dining Hall have now been resolved and that we shall be using it after Christmas. At least we have been enjoying all our other wonderful new facilities this term.

I wish you all a restful and enjoyable Christmas and New Year holiday and hope that even those girls facing mock GCSE examinations or A level modules on their return manage to relax and enjoy themselves a little.