Friday 22nd October 2021


Autumn is truly here and we have had a really busy week in school.

We welcome some associate teachers to Castell Alun for their first placement from the universities of Chester, Bangor and Liverpool and, despite the weather, our GCSE Geographers have been completing their coursework on a fieldtrip in the local area.  Thank you so much to all parents/carers who joined us for our virtual Year 11 Parents’ Evening yesterday.  We are told that the conversations held were both encouraging and productive.  Thank you also for the feedback that we have had about virtual Parents’ Evenings over the course of the last academic year.  It certainly appears to be the case that the vast majority of you are keen for us to continue with this format.

Also this week, a number of our students competed in the Flintshire Cross Country Championships.  Luca (Year 9) ran an outstanding race and won the event for his year group.  Luca we are really proud of you, and also everybody who took part and gave their best as usual.  Continuing with our sporting theme, well done to our Year 9 Boys’ Football Team who won 2-1 against Elfed in the second round of the Welsh Cup.  We have a really large number of keen netballers in Years 7 and 8 at the moment and we are busily trying to sort out fixtures for them to develop and demonstrate their skills.  Please check out our Twitter feed which lists the many activities that will be going on over half term.  This information is available on Google Classroom also.  For example, on Tuesday 26th October, there will be a Youth Hwb Roadshow entailing free sports, arts, crafts and of course refreshments at Willowfields in Hope from 1pm to 3pm.  Everyone between the ages of 11-18 is invited to participate in this youth engagement event which seeks to promote physical wellbeing. Just turn up and enjoy guys!  Really well done and thank you to Huw and Liv (Year 8), who have given their time, energy and expertise to assisting with the football coaching of primary school children at Ysgol Estyn over recent weeks.  Finally, we want to say that we have been so impressed by the number of students attending our extra-curricular clubs over this half term and we hope this will indeed continue and grow further after half term.

Our friends at CAFA (Castell Alun Friends’ Association) will be running their weekly lottery again this year in support of our school.  We would dearly love everybody to participate, so if you would like to buy some tickets or if you are just generally interested in this scheme please visit www.yourschoollottery.co.uk/play and search for Castell Alun High School.

As is our custom at this time of year we celebrate Harvest.  Although it’s really disappointing that we can’t get together as a whole school for this festival, our Year 7 Tutor Groups have been busy creating harvest boxes and collecting food donations from home and other sources which we will pass on to Wrexham Food Bank in the near future.  It’s touching to see a physical demonstration of the way in which our students care about the needs of others, especially those who are less fortunate than ourselves.

Our Sixth Form area has been cheerfully decorated and our students and staff have reported for duty in various pink clothes this morning.  As you probably remember, we do this annually to raise both money and awareness for the Breast Cancer now campaign and Hope House also.  Please follow this link for further information https://www.wearitpink.org.   In addition to wearing pink, students will be selling pink cakes, doughnuts and pink ribbon doughnuts, with profits going to the aforementioned charities.  This year the event has been organised as a collaboration between the Business Enterprise group (Year 11) and the Sixth Form Charity Committee.  Everybody has had a lot of fun and feasted on many pink goodies, but we are really mindful of the need to continue drawing attention to the serious issue of Breast Cancer. Thank you so much to those involved in running the day, Harriet George and Gabby (Year 11) and Emily, Alex, Jan and Katie (Year 12).

When we return to school after half term some Key Stage 4 and 5 students will be sitting external examinations in Maths and English.  We have no further news to report from Welsh Government with regards to summer examinations, except of course that they are still scheduled to be conducted as was the case before the pandemic.

We wish you all a happy and safe half term and hope that it is genuinely a period of time in which you can recharge your batteries.