Wednesday 19th July 2017


Our Year 12 students have been completing Work Experience over the last few weeks.  Our enterprising youngsters have arranged a wide variety of placements including local schools, hospitals, businesses and universities. The willingness of so many of these establishments to support the school’s Work Experience programme provides valuable opportunities and an insight into the World of Work for Year 12 students.
The feedback received from the various placements already completed has been all positive and a delight to read. The students from Castell Alun have been a credit to themselves and the school.

I would also like to say thank you to the North Wales Fire Brigade, who following several arson attacks in the area over the last few years, came into our Lower School assemblies to present a safety video.

The Summer 2017 term has given the school many success stories to celebrate.

Our athletics team have had some brilliant results at the Flintshire Athletics meetings.  Year 7 girls finished 4th and Year 7 boys won the meet with stand out performances from Daniel Davies, Pippa Barlow, Charlotte Wooley, Josh Stennet and Oliver Francis.

Our Year 9 and 10 team events were also very successful, with girls finishing 3rd and boys 2nd, allowing them to qualify for the Welsh Athletics Championships in Brecon.  Isaac Lecki and Jonathan Jones both won their events.  The boys finished 4th overall out of eight schools across Wales.

Four of our students were selected to represent North East Wales Athletics Team in Cardiff. Well done to Isaac Lecki and Alex Foster who competed in the event.

As I mentioned in my last blog, Ceri Jones from Year 9 won a silver medal in the WJKA Karate World Championships in Holland, only missing the gold narrowly.  She now goes on to compete in the World Cup in Malta in September.

Our Year 7 and 8 Cheerleading squad competed in the 5×60 Flintshire School Championships, coming 2nd in their competition. They qualified for the National School Cheerleading competition held at the Manchester Velodrome in June and came away with 2nd Place in the Key Stage 3 Level 2 category.

Our KS3 boys’ cricket team played in the 5×60 Cricket Cup against schools from Flintshire and our teams came away with a 2nd and 3rd place. Well done.

We also entered the 5×60 Flintshire Schools Dodgeball competition in which our team came 2nd narrowly losing to Argoed High School in the Final.

Matthew Sandoz of Year 9 represented Wales in the European Golf Championships in Scotland in June. He finished 6th overall which is a fine achievement indeed.
Josh Davies finished 6th in the Hull Boys U13 Squash event, but did manage to pick up his Welsh Cap for Squash. Well Done Josh.

This term has been very successful for Tennis. Mr. Gadie has been running the ‘Road to Wimbledon’ Tennis Competition. Two finals took place, Toby Rees-Slawson of Year 9 beat Tommy Ellis of Year 9 and Hannah Ison, Year 8, narrowly beat Mischa Williams of Year 7.  All 4 competitors qualified for the North Wales round. They competed at Denbigh on Saturday and Hannah Ison and Will Owens won their finals allowing them to compete in the National Finals at Wimbledon in August.

Our Year 7/8 and 9/10 Tennis Teams also competed in the Flintshire schools’ competition with the Year 7/8 girls coming 2nd and the Year 7/8 and 9/10 boys winning. The boys’ teams progressed on to represent Flintshire in the North East Wales Round and also won that competition. They will now represent North Wales in the North England Round in September. On the tennis theme, eight selected students got the chance to go to Wimbledon on Tuesday last week.  They had a great experience, especially seeing Jamie Murray in the mixed doubles on court 2.

We held our Sports Day last Friday. There was lots of excitement and some excellent competitions across the track and field events.

This year we saw several records broken. Tegan Rawsthorne broke the record for the 200m and long jump and Emma Davies took the Shot Putt record.

Oliver Francis and Jamie Hardy put in amazing performances in the High Jump along with Jonathon Jones in the Javelin and Stuart McHarrie in the Long Jump.

We have also calculated the Victor and Victrix Ludorum winners from each year group. This award is for the boy and girl in each year group who was awarded the most points for their form.

Year 7 Girls

Seren Roberts

Year 7 Boys

 Joshua Stennett

Year 8 Girls

Rosie Blaze

Year 8 Boys

Bryn Davies

Year 9 Girls

Tegan Rawsthorne

Year 9 Boys

Jack Hitchin

Year 10 Girls

Shannon Samuel

Year 10 Boys

Stuart McHarrie

Thank you to all students who have taken part in the extra-curricular activities this year and also thank you to the PE staff who give up a lot of their time to organise and arrange fixtures, activities and experiences for our students.

Just a reminder that Results Days this year are Thursday 17th August for A level and Thursday 24th August for GCSE. Enrolment days for Sixth Form are Year 12 Monday 4th September, and Year 13 Tuesday 5th September. School is open to students on Tuesday 5th September.

I would like to thank all parents and carers for their continued support during the last academic year and wish you all a safe and enjoyable summer.