Friday 3rd May 2019


It’s lovely to see everyone safe and sound in school after the Easter holidays.  We welcomed back a large number of students who had participated in Duke of Edinburgh expeditions over the holidays, each with their own take on how the weather treated them, and it has been great catching up with our upper school Geography students this week, and hearing their wonderful tales about their trip to Naples over Easter.  Many thanks to our hard working staff who make such trips possible.

We held our Whole School Assembly on the theme of ‘Eco Week’ and Will and Kirstyn of our Sixth Form read very well.  As part of our Eco-Week initiative students and staff have been engaged in activities such as litter picking, an up-cycling competition, making and selling sustainable palm oil and palm oil free cakes, and eco films have been shown in the school hall throughout the week.  We are very grateful for the participation of everyone involved because the Castell Alun family is really keen to promote sustainable lifestyles.

On a similar theme CAFA has teamed up with our School Eco-Council to hold a Recycling Event on Saturday 11th May between 11am and 1pm in the school hall. Please be so good as to bring along ink cartridges, mobile phones, CDs, DVDs, batteries, old gadgets like iPods and Xbox controllers, old coins, spectacles, toys and books, because all of these items will be converted into cash or passed on to charitable outlets in order to support our school or various charities. Anyone who brings along five or more items will have the chance of winning a hamper!

We are now well and truly in the midst of the public examination season, and this period of time will last until the final week of June.  We understand that this time of year can be stressful for both students and parents/carers and would ask that you keep in touch with us, and let us know about any concerns as they arise.

A group of students in the lower school enjoyed an afternoon with the Welsh Poet of the Year, Casia Wiliam, on Monday, and a number of these students have been inspired to develop their own creative welsh language skills further.  In addition, a good number of drama and dance students were treated to a visit to watch ‘Sweeny Todd’ in Liverpool yesterday evening.

Congratulations and huge respect once again to Mr. Paul Muncey, our Site Supervisor, who not only competed in the London Marathon on Sunday, but beat his personal best time!  We are really proud of Paul and the fantastic work he has done to support ‘Children with Cancer’.

Really well done to Ben in Year 11 who has signed an official contract for a two year scholarship with Bury FC and will start with them full time on the 1st July.  I also want to give a special mention to Evie in Year 7 who performed brilliantly in a gymnastics competition in Italy over the holidays.  Evie and her team did fantastically and even came away with two silver medals and a bronze!

We have now launched our new extra-curricular timetable for the summer term – please follow this link.  We want all of our students to be happy, confident and healthy and it’s great to see so many of them participating weekly in the great variety of activities on offer outside of the standard curriculum.

As we look to next week we wish our lower school students all the very best with their Literacy and Numeracy tests and really hope that everyone enjoys the extra day off on Monday.