Head's Newsletter 18 May 2018

Dear Parents I'm delighted to formally announce some great news: we have been successful in our bid for funding for another building project! We will now be spending just over £2 million building a two storey extension to our sports centre. This will considerably improve our changing facilities at school, as well as provide for a completely new fitness suite and weights room and two further fitness studios. It will be a wonderful addition to our facilities, allowing us to significantly improve the sporting provision for the boys. We hope that construction work will begin in 2019, and we will once again be running a campaign to raise donations for the fitting out of this building. In the meantime, work will begin on Monday converting the three rooms of the 'West Wing' into a new sixth form centre. This project should be completed over the next couple of months so it will therefore be ready for the start of the new academic year. It will significantly improve the sixth form facilities and is another exciting development for the School. This week the public exams have begun, and both the year 11 and year 13 are now on study leave. We obviously wish them all the best in their studies and hope they do well, but also that they maintain a balance and perspective at what can be a stressful time. Likewise for those students doing internal exams in the other years. Please

note that there are slightly different arrangements for next week, which have been emailed separately to each year group. This week’s newsletter is once again packed with the activities of the boys. There is a particular focus on some of the academic competitions in which boys have been involved. In addition there are reports on the John Muir expeditions, the recent fantastic dance performances, and the excellent concert held at All Saints’ Church. On the sports front it's great to see so much enthusiasm for the cricket. The boys are truly fortunate to be able to play at our beautiful grounds, and I'm very pleased that we have seen considerable success, particularly in the younger years' matches. Do come along to watch and support. We have also seen successes in athletics and some great performances by our rowers at the Chiswick regatta. Finally I would urge you, if you haven't done so already, to ensure you are following us on Twitter @Tiffin_School. News is put out on an almost daily occurrence, and we will also use Twitter to quickly highlight late changes to daily arrangements. Please feel free to retweet any of our posts to your friends, families and followers! Yours, M D Gascoigne, Headteacher

IMPORTANT DATES

Early finish for Years 7, 8 and 9 at 12:40 pm

Thursday 24 May

Professional Development Day—no boys in school

Friday 25 May

Half term

28 May—1 June

First day back for Years 7-10

Monday 4 June

Wednesday 27 June (moved from 13 June)

Twilight Professional Development—school finishes at 1 pm

On Wednesday 2 nd May the Mighty Tiffin EES team presented their project to assessors from EES and BP. They had been working for six months on a project of “The Forecourt of the Future”. This was looking at what fuel stations may look like in 2035. They took this idea and extended it to look at induction charging for electric vehicles on the move. They have worked hard on this over the last few months building models to demonstrate the concept as well as learning the physics of induction charging, building charging coils and building a circuit board as part of the overall modelling for the project. The Assessors were extremely impressed with their efforts and they had numerous compliments from the many BP engineers who visited their stand to ask questions and find out about their project ideas. This hard work resulted in them being awarded the prize for “Outstanding Contribution to Business” which was awarded for only the second year (the first year prize going to Tiffin also). One of the assessment team summed up their efforts as follows: “There was some tough competition out there – some very good projects, however it was a general consensus amongst the judges that your project came out top in every department. “ The team of Magnus Handley, Chris Abraham, Jamie Krammer, Hemanth Veluru, Hritish Joshi and Will Noble are congratulated on this outstanding achievement (pictured top right).

Four year 8 students from Tiffin travelled to UCL on the 29 th March for the Salters Festival of Chemistry, which is an analytical competition run in conjunction with the Royal Society of Chemistry. The boys were competing against teams from 24 other schools around London including Haberdashers and RGS to work out who had committed a theft. The task was a series of analyses and a cryptic code, the results of which were used to deduce who had perpetrated the particular crime. The challenge lasted about two hours. The team were judged on safety and teamwork as well as the completed report. The Tiffin team beat all others to win this competition. This is a highly prestigious and well-recognised competition and congratulations are due to the team of Oliver Cheung, Francis Gorniak, Ojas Gulati and Oran Sloan.

and produce a water filtering system for a building including a moisture sensor, filtering system, pump and water supply. The students worked competitively in teams and they rapidly produced designs and constructed suitable structures to support their mechanisms. Based upon the information from the speaker they proceeded to solder their circuits, test effective positions for the pump and construct an efficient watertight structure to collect rainwater. After 4 hours of hard labour their concepts were tested and the group marketed their idea. It was pleasing to note the ingenuity of design and enthusiasm of the groups. Their presentations were invariably to a professional standard and gained high praise from the STEM representative.

On 26 April 260 boys sat the UKMT Junior Maths Challenge but we have recently received the excellent results of the Intermediate Maths Challenge. The improvement in the schools results over the last few years has been quite remarkable. The UKMT Challenges are only aimed at gifted and talented mathematicians with almost every school in the country entering their best students. Only the top 6% of those entering receive Gold medals. 102 Tiffin boys achieved Golds Certificates.

The results were equally pleasing with a record 47 boys achieving merits or distinctions in the prestigious follow-on rounds including four boys who were in the top 50 nationally in their year groups winning book prizes.

The Design & Technology Department have maintained our links with STEM. This is a body which actively promotes awareness and opportunities within the field of engineering. 60 Year 9 boys took part in a STEM activity day with a guest presenter. The boys were issued with a brief to design

wilderness. All the lads had an enjoyable time in preparation for their weekend away camping trip in June which will build on what they have learnt on their day in the woods. Hopefully the boys will come away from this experience and realise the words of John Muir himself, that: ‘When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.’

On Thursday 10 th and Friday 11 th May two groups of 20 Year 9 boys ventured into deepest, darkest East Sussex as the first stage of the John Muir Award. Mr Muir, also known as the ‘Father of the National Parks’, was a Scottish-American naturalist who developed the system of Natural Parks in the US, focusing on the protection of wilderness and life. The award focuses on encouraging young people to: Discover a wild place; Explore it; Conserve it; and Share one’s experiences. Over the course of the two trips, the boys will carry out these four objectives and, in the process, learn to appreciate the natural world to a greater degree.

Corpus Christi Essay Competitions 2018 - Corpus Prize for Harmony

Congratulations to Robert Jones (12JW) who was awarded first

prize, the Corpus Prize for Harmony, in the Corpus Christi Essay Competitions. As the winner of his category, Robert was invited to Corpus Christi College Cambridge to tour the college, meet current students and receive his prize at a celebratory meal. The prize includes an award of £200. The Physics revision sessions put on by the Year 12 Physics Prefects proved very popular in the run up to the end of year exams. Lots of boys attended and the prefects were excellent at helping them with a variety of questions and topics. Photo below.

The boys spent the day learning how to craft items from wood, start fires with only the most scant of provisions, construct natural shelters and learn about their place in the

The 2018 School Concert was performed by Tiffin pupils on Thursday 3 rd May at All Saints’ Church Kingston to a full house. Alongside the Oratorio Concert in Novem- ber, this is one of Tiffin’s biggest annual performances, this year involving over 180 performers. The Wind Band opened the concert with three jazz standards, conclud- ing with Handel’s La Rejouissance. The Chamber Orchestra’s performance featured two concertos: Telemann Viola Concerto performed by Robert Jones, and Vivaldi’s Double Violin Concerto in A minor per- formed by Alan Erdelyi, James Hur, Chin Wei Tang and Tong Wu. A Nightingale Sang was performed by the Brass Band, followed by an impressive performance of Schu- bert’s String Quintet in C Mvt. I, involving two Year 13 cellists whose contribution to school music has been exceptional: Humph- rey Allen and Sebastian Tyrrall. Following the String Orchestra’s spirited performance of two movements from Warlock’s Capriol Suite, the School Orchestra performed the final movements of Haydn’s Symphony No. 104. The Swing Band’s set, including music by Henry Mancini and Duke Ellington, led to the evening’s finale: Up The Odyssey, a dra- matic work telling some of the stories from

pupils in their music lessons throughout the term. In the concert, they were joined by Year 8 leads and Year 7 actors to recreate the story for the amused and appreciative audience. Robin Blaze, co-chair of the Friends of Tiffin Music, spoke to the audi- ence about the ways in which pupils can benefit from becoming musicians, especial- ly at Tiffin. Pupils were encouraged to join some of the many ensembles they heard perform that evening, and parents were en- couraged to support them. To join, pupils need simply attend the next rehearsal. We look forward to many Year 7 pupils, who have already taken up a musical instrument since joining the school, participating in these ensembles in future terms.

Homer’s Odyssey, written for Tiffin pupils by David Nield, former Director of Music. The choruses were prepared by all Year 7

Very well done to George Birch in Year 12 who has won first prize for Young KAOS (Kingston Artists Open Studios) 2018 Competition, which is fantastic.

WINNING ARTWORK

The School Council choose the charities for whom mon- ey is raised. Our Mufti Day on behalf of Reedham Chil- dren’s Trust raised £1678 . The Trust help children living in desperately difficult and challenging circumstances due to problems with physical and mental health, living in poverty or managing a disability. The Trust’s interven- tion offers children and young people a chance to have a better life by giving them the opportunity to board at a nurturing, modern school where they can thrive and learn in a different and positive environment. Here they have the stability of a ‘second home’ where they are cared for, make new friends, explore new opportunities, and most of all receive a good education – while still keeping in close contact with their families.

Tiffin Dance Company (Year 10 GCSE dance students) performed at the Lyric, Hammer- smith, as part of IGNITION Dance Festival on Sunday 14 th May. The evening consisted of performances from many London lead- ing dance institutions and professional youth dance groups as well as vocational dance schools, ie, English National Ballet Youth Dance Company. Tiffin dancers per- formed a piece based on an original pro- duction of ‘Infra’ by Wayne McGregor. Through different choreographic processes dancers were able to find their individual movement styles and implemented those into the piece. The performance went ex- tremely well; well done to all the dancers!

Eighteen selected Year 8 dancers have been working on a performance project with choreographer Shaun Dillon. Dancers meet every week for 1½ hours in order to create, choreograph, learn and repeat some challenging contemporary movement content. The performance will be taking place on Saturday 16 th June at the Rose Theatre Kingston as part of Ignition Dance Festival organised by Dance West. For more info. please follow this link: https://www.rosetheatrekingston.org/ whats-on/ignition--community-dance- showcase

On 5 th May TSBC raced over 1000m at Chis- wick regatta. We fielded crews in both boys and girls events. The club managed to se- cure wins in several events. Jake Lane & Charles Jordan won the Junior 18 double sculls and Jonathan Bennett won his novice singles event. Eyoel Abebaw-Mesfin & Har- ry Pham-Thanh stuck to winning ways win- ning the J15 doubles comfortably, and the new wave of J14s won a good victory in their coxed quad event beating Emanuel School by over 2 lengths. A good weekend for silverware.

Tom Armstrong in Year 9 ran in the Surrey clubs athletics championships last week- end, in the 800m. He came second, to someone who is apparently the second best in the UK. His time was a new PB of 2mins 9s. Well done Tom.

12 September turned out to be an impres- sive day for the U13 cricketers . With mixed A and B sides playing on Saturday morning, both recorded impressive wins over Swit- zerland A XI and Halliford A XI.

J18 2x – Jake Lane & Charles Jordan See them row at pic.twitter.com/q2ZeUtl894