School games day 2018

24th July 2018J Godbolt

There was a fantastic atmosphere and feeling of team spirit at this year’s Oathall School games day. A whole day of competitive events including tennis, dodgeball, handball, cycling, tug of war and traditional athletic events had been organised by the PE team. There were outstanding performances from individuals as well as the teams with everyone competing to be the best tutor group in their year and of course, the overall House winners.

Congratulations to Voyager House who were the Oathall 2018 school games day winners.

A round-up of the scores from yesterday:

Year 7 Tutor Winners – 7EARK Mrs Kingsford
Year 8 Tutor Winners – 8VPS – Mrs Sullivan
Year 9 Tutor Winners – 9DKRG – Mrs Garrick
Year 10 Tutor winners – 10PSK – Mrs Kirkpatrick

Well done to everyone who took part.

Target reached!

21st June 2018J Godbolt

With only two more days to go, the PTA’s target to raise £25,000 for maths and science resources has been achieved and exceeded. The total currently stands at just over £26,000.

Thank you to everyone who has made a donation or contributed to the fundraising campaign. 

There are still 2 days left of the fundraising campaign so if you did mean to make a donation then there’s still time for you to go online and make a pledge on the Oathall PTA Crowdfunder page.

Thank you for all your support.

Oathall Bake Off

8th June 2018J Godbolt

‘Royal Wedding’ was the theme in this year’s Bake-Off competition. The competition is run annually and is open to students in years 7,8, 9 and 10. The competition and prizes are sponsored by the Rotary Club of Haywards Heath and the entries are judged by the WI. Students are given 4 hours to bake and decorate a cake which is then judged on taste, appearance and technical difficulty. The winning entry was made by Emily, who has now won on three separate occasions. Well done to all of the students who took part.

Mid Sussex STEM Challenge

28th March 2018J Godbolt

Last Friday, six teams from Oathall, Warden Park Academy and St Paul’s Catholic College took part in the final stage of the Mid Sussex STEM challenge. Both Oathall teams got through to the final stages where they had to present their business plan for their electric bikes to a panel of judges in a ‘Dragon’s Den’ scenario. Both teams presented well, answering some really tough questions from the panel which included local MP, Sir Nicholas Soames. At the end of the presentations the Oathall team, ‘The Cycling Five’  were victorious with the ‘Hairy Cyclists’ our other team taking second place.

The students were presented with a shield by Sir Nicholoas Soames at Mid Sussex District Council offices on Friday 23 March.

Sir Nicholas said: “I was thrilled to present the Mid Sussex STEM Challenge Award to Cycling5 from Oathall Community College in Haywards Heath, whose other brilliant team the Hairy Cyclists were runners up. It was a remarkable display of skill and business acumen in the design of an electric bike.”

Well done to all the students taking part and well-earned victory.

Youth Community Service Award

27th March 2018J Godbolt

We are proud to announce that two of our students; Phoebe Davies (Year 10) and Jamie Christie (Year 11) have received a Youth Community Service Award from the Rotary Club Haywards Heath.

Jamie and Phoebe received the award for ‘exceptional work in the Community and dedication to others’, thus upholding the Rotary motto of “Service above Self ”. Congratulations to Phoebe and Jamie for the work they have done as volunteers and fundraisers, both within their local community and the college itself.

 

Rock Challenge 2018

6th February 2018J Godbolt

On Tuesday 30th January, students from Oathall took part in the 2018 Rock Challenge Competition. Although we weren’t placed this year, the achievement from each and every student was outstanding. This was the culmination of 7 months hard work and dedication from the performers, stage crew and lighting team.

Our performance this year was titled ‘Is it in my head’. This was a contemporary piece looking at aspects on mental health. The concept was based on the on the quote;

‘We are so accepting of any body part breaking down, other than our brains. That is ignorance, pure ignorance. That world has created a world that doesn’t understand depression, that doesn’t understand mental health’.

The Rock Challenge was established in order to combine the benefits of taking part in a large scale dance production with involvement in a positive ‘drug free’ activity. I am proud that at Oathall the Rock Challenge brings students of all ages, backgrounds and gender together in order to work collaboratively on a brilliant production. The students take charge not only of choreography but costumes, sound, lighting, scenery and video direction.

The actual Rock Challenge day is a blur of pre performance nerves and energetic preparation. The students are able to watch other schools rehearse as well as take part in mass warm up, dance sessions and competitions. Each school gives a performance of 8 minutes which seems to go by in a flash following all the hard work and anticipation. Our students all performed magnificently, every single one giving 100% effort. It is always a joy to see how the all students work together as a team, and really reflects the ‘community’ aspect of Oathall.

I would like to thank every student who took part in and contributed to this year’s production, you were all pleasure to work with. With special thanks to Kaytlin Smith and Florence Gaskell in year 11, their hard work and commitment did not go unnoticed. Thank you also to all the staff who gave their help to the running of the event.

Although Oathall did not win, yet again we swept the board gaining awards in the following;

• Award of Excellence in Lighting
• Award of Excellence for Concept
• Award of Excellence in Entertainment

Finally thank you to all the parents who kindly support dance at Oathall and help to encourage our students to achieve amazing things.

Impressive GCSE results

24th August 2017J Godbolt

Congratulations to Oathall students who are celebrating a very impressive set of results for 2017.

Oathall students have responded well to the challenges set by the newly reformed GCSEs. The new grading system and more challenging content has been met with hard work and commitment. As a result, in English and mathematics 75% of Oathall students have achieved passes. In mathematics 20% and in English 28% were awarded grade 7 or higher.

In comparison to the national results released today by Ofqual, it is clear that Oathall students achieved notably higher outcomes at all levels.

The fact that 22% of all grades, across all subjects were awarded at the very highest levels (A+/7+) illustrates how ambitious Oathall students are to excel academically. There were many individual success stories with some 12% of the year group achieving 8 or more grades at these highest (A+/7+) levels.

The college has seen excellent results in all areas of the curriculum. Notably, 31% of all grades across the humanities subjects (geography, history and RE) were awarded at A+ and biology, chemistry and physics 46% of all grades were at this highest level. In sport and performance subjects 75% of grades were awarded at C+ and in technology and the arts, 84% of all grades were at C+.

Mr Rodriguez, Headteacher congratulated all the students on their results and said:
‘I am delighted to see how Oathall students have met the challenges of the reformed GCSE’s and performed so well over the entire range of subjects; they so deserve their successes today.”

Details of our 2017 GCSE results are available here. 

 

English Faculty Public Speaking Competition

1st August 2017J Godbolt

At the end of the summer term students in Y7 and Y8 took part in the annual public speaking competition organised by the English Faculty. The topic this year for the speaking teams was  “Let me persuade you about…”.

Entries were judged by Oathall staff and members of the local Rotary Club. The staff and judges were very impressed with the quality of all the speeches and the students’ thorough preparation and confident delivery.

The results are as follows:

Year 7
1st place: Dominika Knotkova-Hanley
2nd place: Zoe Downey
Joint 3rd place: Isla Mustin and Billy Reid

Year 8
1st place: Abigail Cooper
2nd place: Felix Carte
3rd place: Georgia White

Congratulations to the winners and well done to all the students that took part.

The Fifteenth National Students’ Art Exhibition 2017

14th July 2017J Godbolt

Congratulations‎ to our year 11 artists Holly Jones, Naomi Johnson, Jessica Laimons and photographer Katie Hastings whose work was selected to be exhibited in the NSAE held in the prestigious Mall Galleries under the patronage of The Royal Society of British Artists. We are delighted that eight pieces of work were exhibited from our students demonstrating the exceptional talent and commitment to excellence at Oathall. Art pieces submitted by Tristan Redgrove and Millie Brown were also highly commended.

Chris Russell, CEO, “It is encouraging to find that in times of serious funding problems, schools still want to celebrate their art at national level. Anyone seeing the impact of selection on the artists, teachers and parents will be uplifted, as they will by the enormous effort and commitment that goes into such an exhibition.”