News from NHSG

International Women’s Day (IWD) on Friday 8th March delivered some outstanding work from girls who took part in our annual competition designed to recognise trailblazing women over the decades.

Girls submitted films, poems, essays and dance choreography on the female they felt has done the most to empower girls and advance women’s rights in the last 100 years. The standard of entry was exceptional with submissions covering the lives of women such as Emily Wilding, Malala and Claudette Colvin.

Entries were judged in assembly by the International Women’s Day prize sponsor, Mrs Margaret Vane, whose daughter is an alumna of the school, alongside Helen Dalby, Senior Editor and Head of Digital at Reach plc which includes the Chronicle, Journal and Gazette, also an alumna of one of NHSG’s founding schools, Central High.

Connie Hayward, Year 9 was crowned the winner for her moving entry on suffragette Lady Constance Lytton. Connie, also a talented violinist who was recently awarded a coveted prize from the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music, produced a 6-minute film with a moving soundtrack, about the life and work of the Constance, an influential suffragette activist.

Other winners in the competition were as follows: in fourth place was Maya Torres, who filmed an emotive dance in honour of ‘Every Woman’ that has contributed to women’s rights. In third place was Imogen Davies, who created a poster and wrote on essay on the achievements of sailor Susie Goodhall. In second place, was Grace Heron’s beautiful poem on Civil Rights Movement pioneer, Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus.

Also to mark IWD, girls had fashioned a cloak of red pom-poms which they wrapped around our signature seahorse statue in the Pupil Plaza. This was part of the Period Positivity movement and replicated a similar event taking place in Newcastle city-centre on the same day, whereby campaigners turned Grey’s Monument ‘red’ with a similar garment!

Meanwhile, a talented troupe of NHSG GCSE and A Level dancers travelled to Gateshead to open the Shared Interest #BalanceforBetter event. The girls performed a moving reading of Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou, set to music and choreography. Some of you may remember seeing this excellent piece at Prizegiving in September 2018. The afternoon was a celebration of Shared Interest’s investment projects and it was amazing to learn how their work has changed the lives of women across Africa, South America and Britain, including Newcastle.

With the myriad of course and university choices open to girls at NHSG, our Higher Education Evening on 20th March proved to be an outstanding success. We were able to bring over 40 Higher Education institutions from around the country together in the Main Hall, giving girls and parents of Years 10-13 an unrivalled opportunity to ‘visit’ universities and other organisations in just a couple of hours.

Among the universities that joined us were those from Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrew’s, for example, as well as those from much further afield such as Liverpool, Bath, and UCL.

As well as the individual exhibition stalls, we also offered a selection of ‘drop-in’ talks which proved very popular. These included a very well attended talk by Edinburgh University, followed by a talk about ‘Competitive Courses’ from the University of Bath, and finally a talk from a Durham University Professor, specifically on why choosing a Modern Foreign Language is so beneficial in the long-term.

Later, talks were delivered by the University of Liverpool, Sunderland, Glasgow, and a final session on Art Foundation Courses with Newcastle College. We were also very fortunate to have ArtEd (Acting & Musical Theatre) deliver a drama workshop to some of our pupils prior to the conference on the afternoon of Wednesday 20th March.

The event was also attended by companies promoting their degree apprenticeships and school leaver schemes, for pupils looking for an alternative to university education. These businesses included EY, PwC, Accenture & Europa Worldwide.

Numerous subject areas were covered and the event provided a unique opportunity for our pupils to explore the wide array of courses and additional opportunities on offer in the next stage of their educational journey. We hope this has inspired our girls to explore the many options available to them and begin their research early.

It was great that we were also able to extend an invitation to other local schools so that their pupils could also benefit from this opportunity.

STEM Discovery Week 2019, 6th -15th March, is an international initiative that encourages projects, organisations and schools across Europe and around the world, to celebrate careers and studies in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

As part of recognising this initiative, Miss Williams organised NHSG’s very first Mother and Daughter Science Fair, inviting girls and their mums to work on a Science project of their choice and display their findings at an afternoon exhibition of all-things Science on 9th March.

The variety, and quality, of the research was fantastic, covering a vast number of topics in great detail; from chemical reactions, electricity-producing lemons, homemade hovercrafts and everything in-between - it was clear that girls and their Mums had invested a huge amount of time and energy investigating their topic.

Mrs Waton, Head of Science at Senior School, was in attendance to award prizes for the best work, a task which the rest of the teachers did not envy! It was an extremely difficult decision but winning prizes were awarded to Lily Roberts, Amy Sutherland, Elizabeth Voysey and Wizda Qasim. Runners-up were Jasmine Bell, Poppy Charlton, Charlotte Hardie and sisters Caitlin and Emily Doran.

Well done to all the girls and Mums who took part.