It’s buzzing here already, despite the big freeze outside! Headmistress Mrs Marion Gibbs welcomed us back and congratulated both pre-A level (and post A level) university applicants. Most girls have offers from their top choice places, although some have yet to hear from universities which wait until March to make offers. At the time of writing, 26 girls have offers from Oxford and Cambridge and there are some great offers from other universities.

Exciting sports news too: the senior freestyle swimming team are through to the National Finals on 5 February, and Natasha Sinha has qualified for the National Swimming Finals in both the 100 and 200 metres butterfly. Congratulations to Natasha who has also been awarded a bursary by Starting Blocks Trustees to help fund her swimming training.

Fingers crossed for the girls involved in the national Biology Olympiad competition in February (Emily Mirchandani, Pooja Patel, Morwenna Read, Mariam Rela, Hussun Ara Shah, Kaushiki Singh, Laetitia Ward, Julia Wedmore, Anna Anthonypillai, and Sanjana Bhalla). There’s talk of a team for the Linguistics Olympiad too, involving both modern and classical languages. If you want to hear some of the 50 or so languages spoken at JAGS and at home, come to this year’s multicultural evening at 7pm on Friday 29 January. ‘Genesis’ is in aid of Invisible Children, a charity that works to prevent children being abducted and forced into becoming child soldiers.  The evening is open to parents and friends of JAGS