Very early on Saturday 7th March, a coach from the Birmingham Catholic Youth Service, came to collect 9 of St Edmund’s students and 3 staff members to take them to ‘Flame 2’, the National Catholic Youth Day at the SSE Arena in Wembley.

Wearing their black t-shirts with pride, they were part of 8,000 young Catholics who had joined together to celebrate with joy the mercy of God.

During the day there were times of silence, joy, dancing, prayer, adoration, music and great energy.

There were many inspirational speakers and presenters, each with their own message. To name a few: Fr Dermott Donnelly, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Baroness Sheila Hollins, David Wells, Fr Timothy Radcliffe, Cardinal Vincent Nicholls and two Grammy Award singer and musician Matt Redman . They even had a message from Pope Frances and became the biggest tweet of the day #FLAME2.

Our very own Archbishop Bernard Longley sat amongst us and didn’t mind the odd ‘selfie’ with the young people.

Deb Ferris Lay Chaplain quotes: “We were blessed with great weather and each of us experienced the ‘flame’ inside of us to go and ‘Live life to the Full’ John 10:10.”

St Edmund’s Year 10 and 11 students took part in the Wolverhampton City Dance Festival at Codsall High School on Wednesday 4th March.

The students have been rehearsing for this festival for a few months during their PE dance lessons, lunch and also after school. All this hard work paid off because their performances were outstanding.

Natasha Clarke, our dance specialist and Mrs D’Agostino who accompanied them were extremely pleased with all the girls after their stunning performances. Year 11 girls dancing to ‘All that Jazz’ were superb, so professional and they danced with confidence in their amazing costumes.

Year 10 girls preformed a well-rehearsed and emotional piece to an Usher track and Fern Nicholls in Year 11 performed a fantastic solo piece to Chandelier. Fern has put a lot of time and effort into practicing for her solo piece and it was a stunning performance. She had the crowd off their seats, cheering at the end!

Well done to everyone and hopefully the girls will continue to keep up the hard work with some new dances next year.

Special thanks go to Natasha Clarke for all her hard work in PE dance lessons and to Mrs D’Agostino for taking the dancers to the show.

Great news, we’re running a Scholastic Book Club to earn free books for our school. We’ll be sending the Book Club leaflets home, so that you and your child can choose from the latest exciting selection of books. Please place your order online at http://schools.scholastic.co.uk/st-edmunds-wv3

by March 18th, 2015.

Or send your order in to Mrs Lowe with the payment in a sealed envelope.

The Wolverhampton Music HUB has commissioned ‘The Rock Music Limited’ to deliver song writing workshops in three secondary schools based around the subject, ‘social awareness’.

We are delighted to say that St Edmund’s Catholic Academy, along with Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Sports College and Highfields School was one of the chosen schools.

The mentors have been busy working with the Year 10 GCSE group and are now already into their second week of song writing.

The workshop will last six weeks and involve the talented musicians coming in to school and working with our students, helping them to write and perform their own songs; this ranges from students playing instruments to those singing.

Mrs Catriona Roberts, Head of Music remarks: “This is a fantastic way to learn how to create music for our students. We are very grateful to the four tutors for sharing their expertise in song writing and teaching our young musicians how to explore their potential creative writing skills.”

At the end of the six week programme, the students will have written and recorded their collective group songs and be well equipped to start their own individual song writing careers, as part of their GCSE assessment.

A number of enthusiastic Wolverhampton students braved the cold weather and took part in the ‘Sleep Easy’ campaign on Friday 6 March 2015, to raise money in changing the lives of young homeless people in the Black Country.

Sleep Easy is a national event which sees hundreds of people from up and down the country giving up their TOG rated duvets to help change the lives of homeless young people in their communities. Sixth Form students at St Edmund’s Catholic Academy in Wolverhampton prepared themselves to spend their Friday night sleeping in a cardboard box.

Every night, YMCA Black Country Group provides support and shelter for over 300 homeless young people across the Black Country and Staffordshire border area in addition to family mediation, substance misuse support and other services in order to prevent homelessness occurring in the first place.

St Edmund’s Catholic Academy are hoping to raise around £500 for the Moving Forward Fund which enables these young people to move on in their lives, by providing not only the practical things that make a house a home but also accessing employment and training opportunities, as well as providing them with much needed emotional support.

This is the first time a school in Wolverhampton has participated in this campaign as Daniel Collett, Head Boy at St Edmund’s, commented: “It’s definitely an experience that we won’t forget, and Friday night really gave us an insight into the reality of the many people who sleep rough on a daily basis. It was all for a great cause and I’m so glad we got to do it.”

The campaign took place at St Edmund’s Catholic Academy, on Friday 6th March from 6pm – 6am, with a soup kitchen provided by Modern Foreign Languages teacher, Mrs Michaela Knibbs, and an inspirational speech from the YMCA together with ‘Michael’, who was previously homeless but had his life turned around with the help of the charity.

Grace Heeley, Communications Officer for YMCA, commented: “It was fantastic to see so many students taking part in Sleep Easy. Daniel really threw himself into organising the event and it paid off! Thanks to the help of Daniel and the students at St Edmund’s Catholic Academy, we’re well on our way to raising £5,000 for YMCA’s Moving Forward Fund, which will help our residents move on in their lives when they are ready to leave YMCA into their own accommodation.”

St Edmund’s would like to say a very big thank you to Mr and Mrs Knibbs who donated both their time and all the food for the soup kitchen. However, most importantly to Mr Bentley, Ms Richards and Vice Chair of the Academy Committee, Ann Shorthouse, for giving up their well-earned, comfortable Friday night to accompany the students. This type of event just couldn’t go ahead without the good will and support of our fantastic staff.

The Smallpeice​ Trust have been appointed as educational providers for the new HS2 train line. STEM days provide our students with opportunities to enhance their learning and aptitude for problem solving, creativity, design and engineering. 35 of our more able students were selected to work with the team from the Smallpeice trust to design solutions for problems facing the new high speed rail line. During the day students took part in real life engineering challenges, which linked to the wider world of design and engineering. This also provided understanding of future career and education opportunities.

During the day students designed some chairs for the new trains as part of the passenger experience challenge. They designed and made some moving walkways and lifts including structures for one of the new stations. In addition to this, students took on the Network Challenge where they had to manoeuvre a high speed model train through a variety of station scenarios.

Our students were a credit to the school and produced some very imaginative solutions to the problems that HS2 faces. Prizes were awarded by Mrs Hughes at the end of the day for the best chair, best moving walkways solution and the Network Challenge winners.

St Edmund’s would like to introduce a car pooling scheme for parents/students. We are hoping to match up families who live in close proximity so they may be able join together and share journeys.

If any parent would like to register please contact Mrs Thomas in the Finance Office on 01902 558888 or ethomas@stedmunds.org

We would like to take the opportunity to remind parents that the turning circle may be used to drop students off at the beginning of the school day. However we would ask that cars do not come on to the Compton Park site at the end of the day to allow the students and buses safe passage through the site.

As part of World Book Day, there is a free event taking place today called ‘Teen Fest.’

The online event will take place from 6-8pm and will give students the opportunity to talk to their favourite Author online!

For more details of time schedules go to http://www.wbdteenfest.com/

It’s great to see so many of our students reading books around school today, demonstrating that a book can be read anywhere you go.

Year thirteen pupils studying BTEC Sport attended ‘The Towers Outdoor Education Centre’ from 23rd to 27th February. A great week was had by all pupils, teachers and instructors, with memories that will last a very long time. The trip was arranged as part of their studies, where they are required to demonstrate advanced skills in two outdoor and adventurous activities.

The week commenced in fitting style with wind and rain, coupled with mountaineering, being the order of the day. It was hard work due to the adverse weather conditions and made map wading, walking on a bearing, and group work that much harder – however, the group pulled together! It was the following day when the fear really set in during an abseiling session; but then again, a thirty metre decline down a rock face will possibly do that to anyone! The rock climbing assessment was complete by the afternoon at Plas-y-Brenin, The National Mountain Centre.

The weather conditions had not improved when climbing Cnicht on the Wednesday. Students managed to reach the summit of the mountain, or at least that’s what the instructor said as they could not see more than ten metres in front of them. The snowball fight on the way up was pretty tiring too! The pupils completed their assessments in mountaineering, and thanks to their good navigation skills, they made it back down again!

Gorge walking, map reading and a session on the via-ferrata completed the week of assessments. The instructors, Gareth and Lorenza from Towers, commented on how the desired criteria had been achieved by all pupils, and thought that they had been a pleasure to spend time with. They particularly liked how the group had developed socially throughout the week, and had made use of their expertise to help them complete their assignments.