Dear Parents and Friends,

Congratulations to the 1853 Committee on another excellent quiz night held in Great Hall last Saturday evening and particularly to Wayne Trice for his entertaining hosting. The Quiz Night raffle raised funds for the Motor Neurone Disease Association, in particular to support our friend Graham Clark.

On Sunday, the CCF RAF Cadets were testing their skills in the Air Squadron Trophy at RAF Halton. The team members performed extremely well and were placed third overall. At the same time young trampolinists were bouncing through their routines in Taunton at the South West Regional Finals. Congratulations to all involved and particularly to Connor Roach Bowler for achieving 2nd place in his class and qualifying for the National Final.

At the Evensong service on Sunday evening we welcomed new choristers and celebrated Candlemas with the full support of the combined Choirs. The music continued on Wednesday evening when the Auditorium was filled for the Royal Russell Young Musician of the Year final. Guest adjudicator Mr Edward Whiting from Benenden had an almost impossible task in selecting from the Junior, Intermediate and Senior finalists as the quality of individual performance was at the highest level. My congratulations to all involved, and especially to Lily Addis who was selected as the winner following her enchanting rendition of ‘The Girl in 14G’. It was wonderful to see Year 7 sharing the same stage as our more experienced performers and to see that the future of Royal Russell music is very bright indeed.

The Valentine edition of the ‘r’ magazine was published last week full of pupil articles and comments. The editorial team of Jamie King, Max Shirley have worked extremely hard to ensure this half term ‘r’ production is delivered on time. The Valentine theme continued today with the girls of Buchanan House decorating Valentine Cup Cakes and delivering delicious treats to friends around the campus! Money raised from the sale of these cakes will be donated to Reverse Rett and the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

A group of 75 talented young linguists took part in a morning of challenging tasks on Monday to test their analytical language skills.

We heard fantastic reports from the delegation of students and staff who attended The International Model United Nations Conference at The Hague last week during Assembly. We also received many positive comments about their conduct and performance. It is testament to the strength of our MUN programme that these students dominated their committees and were so prominent in the press team. My congratulations to all involved.

I was pleased to award certificates for Gold effort grades to the following hard-working students: Georgia Yeulett, Anna Clery, Luke McCabe, Robyn Copithorne Crainey, Nafeesah Riaz, Sean Power, Mollie Palmer, Polina Podkovyrina, Roman Podkovyrin, Georgia Covill, Rebecca Clery and Luke McCabe.

It has been a busy week in Sport, with success in the London Badminton Finals and against Donottar and Colfe’s in Netball. In House Sport, Reade and Queen’s were victorious in the Table Tennis competition and the boys’ Junior Basketball was won by Cambridge.

This morning the Senior Ski Trip set off for Utah and during half-term we also have a group of young Geographers and explorers travelling to Iceland. The CCF will be competing in the Bootneck Challenge in Peterborough.

I hope that pupils and families will find some time to recharge batteries over the next week in preparation for a busy and exciting second half.

With best wishes,

Headmaster’s Weekly

Newsletter

10 February 2017

Chris Hutchinson Headmaster

From the Chapel

On Sunday eight Year 7 girls were formally admitted as Chapel Choristers. They each were vested with a white surplice placed over a red cassock. The Choristers, the Barber Shop and the Choral Society then led the singing as we celebrated Candlemas with Choral Evensong.

Simone Weil (1909 - 43) George Herbert (1593 – 1633)

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, If I lacked any thing. A guest, I answered, worthy to be here: Love said, You shall be he. I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear, I cannot look on thee. Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, Who made the eyes but I? Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame Go where it doth deserve. And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame? My dear, then I will serve. You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat.

Because of sin, I feels unworthy to accept the welcome of Love (Christ), who gently explains that he created me and (on the cross) bore my sins. I then agrees to accept the invitation, whereupon Love explains that I must accept the invitation to taste my meat, an allusion to receiving Christ in Holy Communion. This Love, which insists on being with sinners, is deeper than the love suggested by St Valentine’s Day messages. A vote in Chapel suggested that there are more who wish to receive such messages than are planning to send them!

Answer to Chapel Quiz 96 Candlemas is February 2nd, the 40th and final day of the Christmas/ Epiphany season. Candles refer to the words of old Simeon, who in the Temple described the infant Christ as God’s light.

Chapel Quiz 97 Who was St Valentine? Prizes for pupils.

Peace and Mercy Provost Mahaffy of Trinity College Dublin described a sermon he heard as like the peace and mercy of God. “It was like the peace of God because it passed all understanding and like his mercy because it showed every sign of enduring for ever.” [see Philippians 4:7 and Psalm 136]

In a weekday service we heard of the transformation of the life of Simone Weil, an agnostic and a philosopher. She wrote how, in the third of three religious experiences, “Christ himself came down and took possession of me” whilst she recited George Herbert’s poem, Love (III).

Young Musician of the Year Final

Congratulations to our talented girls and boys who performed in this week’s Young Musician of the Year Final to a full and appreciative audience. The standard was exceptionally high in all categories and provided an outstanding evening of entertainment. Congratulations to Lily Addis for winning the overall title and trophy. Senior: 3rd Verity Burcombe 2nd Lucy Schofield 1st Lily Addis (and overall winner) Intermediate: 5th Ben Preston 4th Ty Bennett 3rd Tess Williams 2nd Joy Eden 1st Jessie Hunt Junior: 3rd Nancy Burgess-Gibbs 2nd Anna Stone 1st Ophelia Humphreys Elvis

Music Dinner

ALL ABOARD! The Musicians and Singers of Royal Russell invite you to join them on a Magical Musical Tour around the world and beyond.

The tour leaves on Saturday 11th March 2017 from the Great Hall. Please meet at 6.30pm for a 7.00pm departure and we hope to be back by 10.00pm. Please feel free to bring snacks and drinks for the Journey but we will be stopping a Mo’s Place for supper. Tickets cost £15 to include supper and a free travelling essentials raffle. Tickets are available through rrsmusicevents@gmail.com or through our Travel Agent Mrs Archer in the Music Department (Tickets will not available on the Bus).

SEE YOU THERE. DON’T MISS THE BUS!

Buchanan’s ‘We’ve got the Love’ Valentine Cup Cakes Buchanan’s Chapel service last week was all about how love and kindness can see you through the darkest times. To celebrate the power of friendship and support, as well as to raise money for two charities close to Buchanan’s hearts, we iced and decorated 200 cupcakes. Today, students and staff throughout the school community have been buying and receiving vouchers, letting them know someone cares, which they exchanged for one of these delicious creations! A huge thank you to all those involved: the catering team and their bakers, the shoppers, the icers, the fabulous FT department and all those talented decorators. Not only did we have a lot of fun, enjoyed some sugar rushes from the obligatory bowl ‘cleaning’ and, of course, tried to convey a sense of all the love out there, but we have also raised over £200 for Reverse Rett and Cystic Fibrosis Trust. Happy Valentine’s Day, one and all. Love Mrs Pepperdine and everyone in Buchanan

Linguistics Olympiad

How do Italian families work? Inuit mythical creatures. Basquing in the sun. Māori for the beach. On the right Tamil track.

Random topics? Perhaps, but they all came together under the same challenge: linguistics. Over 75 students across the school took part in the annual Linguistics Olympiad held on Monday morning. The rooms were full of excited teams that put their best analytical skills at work to tackle the tasks.

After sorting out quickly the Italian family names, the younger students had a challenging time trying to decipher the Inuktitut characters to discover some mythical creatures, and finished off with a quick journey through some Indo-European languages. Years 10 and 11 dealt with Tshiluba (spoken in Congo) and the Basque language, which although spoken by people in the western Pyrenees, is not related to either Spanish or French, or indeed, any other language anywhere. Sixth form students had a taste of the indigenous language of New Zealand (Māori), but were really tested by the train system in Singapore: ‘Where do we get off? Need to work out the station names in Tamil!’

A lot of excitement and brain stretching. It was challenging, sometimes intense, but certainly fun to work together trying to solve these language puzzles.

Royal Russell Students begin THIMUN 2017

As the mass drummers and horn players left the World Forum theatre Royal Russell students could start to look back on another very successful THIMUN conference. Peter continued to play a large role as a journalist in the media team and ended up writing four full page articles during the week. Georgia and Aisha were both excellent chairs, Georgia in total control of her committees at all times and Aisha - good-humoured, consistent, clear and fair. Georgia had the privilege of addressing the conference at the closing ceremonies. Of the delegates two of the more successful were Stevie and Lucas who did very well in ECOSOC together. Stevie as the main submitter on her resolution (which passed) and Lucas as second speaker on his resolution which also passed. Everyone spoke in their committee and the most improved delegate was Jade who grew in confidence during the week and spoke in her large committee every day. Otherwise Pippa spoke many times and was unlucky her resolution was never debated, Josh worked really hard and finally got his resolution debated on the last day (and passed) and Skanda made his mark on his committee presenting a rightfully partisan resolution on the first day which failed with flying colours. It was a long week especially with the new system of no plenaries but everyone stuck to their task and were still putting up their placards on the last afternoon. Outside of the conference the students on Wednesday afternoon either visited Humanities House where they were treated as a refugee, or went to watch a case at the ICC where a Lord’s Resistance Army general was being prosecuted.

CODA Presents “Rope” by Patrick Hamilton

If you have an evening free in half term and want to experience some quality theatre, right here in the comfort of our school, CODA (Croydon Operatic and Dramatic Association), of which our own Jonathan Edwards is a member, are putting on a play called ‘Rope’ in the Auditorium. You may know the Hitchcock film adaptation starring James Stewart – this is the original play. A thriller about two Oxford students who think they will get away with a heinous crime…..will they get found out?!

Like many other local amateur dramatics companies, CODA (Croydon Operatic & Dramatic Association) has been hit by the recent closures of the Fairfield Halls, the Charles Cryer Theatre and the Secombe Centre – all venues they used to perform at regularly. CODA are therefore delighted to bring Patrick Hamilton’s Rope to Royal Russell. The play is set on the first floor of a house in Mayfair, London in 1929. The story, thought to be based loosely on the Leopold and Loeb murder case, concerns two young university students, who have murdered a fellow student as an expression of their supposed intellectual superiority. At the beginning of the play they hide the body in a chest. They proceed to host a party for his friends and family at which the chest containing his corpse is used to serve a buffet.

Performance Information Show Dates: 15-18 February 2017 (5 performances in total)

Time: Evening shows at 7:45pm, Saturday Matinee 2:30pm

Ticket Prices: £10 (£9 concessions)

Venue: Royal Russell School Performing Arts Centre Auditorium Coombe Lane, Croydon CR9 5RF

Additional information can be found at www.codashows.co.uk

1853 Society Quiz Night

The Annual Quiz Night, hosted by the 1853 Society was held last Saturday.

A full Great Hall battled it out to answer seven rounds of questions with topics including music, general knowledge and a fun ‘observation’ task. Congratulations to the winning team ‘The Generation Game’.

With thanks to the 1853 Committee for their organisation and to parent and magician Wayne Trice for his super-slick compering and magic tricks!

The proceeds of the raffle were donated to the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

Forthcoming events organised by the 1853 Society are: Year 7 and 8 R-Fest Disco Friday 3 March 2017 - details to be sent to parents shortly. Comedy Night - Saturday 18 March 2017. Community Ball - 4 November 2017 - full details to be published shortly.

The preferred payment method is Wisepay.

Year 10 Student DJ Krish Performs at Wembley Stadium

Krishann Sivagnanam, Year 10 St Andrew’s, put his immense DJ’ing skills into practice once again when he performed at the disco segment of the West London Business Awards 2017 at Wembley Stadium - with impressive reviews: “DJ Krish drew people onto the dance floor at the start of the disco segment of our Awards night at Wembley stadium; always the toughest gig of the night! With great mixing between songs, the enthusiasm of the crowd he drew onto the dance floor seemed more energised than many clubs.” “When it comes to DJs under 15, DJ Krish is setting the trend for others to follow. Last year he played at the reception at the prestigious 14th Annual Urban Music Awards. He has already collaborated with other top DJs including Seb Fontaine and Jazzie Q. DJ Krish has already set the bar high for himself, with ambitions to be hitting the DJ scene in Ibiza within 5 years.” Well done to Krishann and we look forward to hearing more about his successes in the future.

From the Sport Department

SWIMMING GALA On Tuesday we had the rearranged Girls’ House Gala. Some excellent races were swum, none more so than the intermediate 100m freestyle where Saffron Wood set a new school record in a time of 1:06:73. This also tops the all-time girls hall of fame which includes seniors!

Buchanan were first followed by Queen’s, then Hollenden and Reade.

TRAMPOLINING The Trampoline squad travelled to Taunton in Somerset for the Southern Zonal trampoline finals. After a relaxing dinner Saturday night we were all ready for the competition.

In the U14 Intermediate group, Grace, Anna, Emelie and Ellie all bounced brilliantly using new routines with multiple somersaults, showing massive improvement from the regional qualifier. The team finished 4th, a fantastic achievement - well done.

In the Elite category, the highest level, Matt bounced against boys up to Year 9 and performed 2 great routines to finish a credible 7th - performing complex skills with somersaults and twists. Amelia also competed at the Elite level against Year 9 pupils and put in a solid performance to finish 9th, using an 8 somersault routine! Another 2 superb results.

To round off a great day, Connor bouncing in the U19 Novice group was an exceptionally focused performance with 2 cracking routines. He secured 2nd place and an individual spot at the National Schools Finals in Newcastle- this is amazing!

Thank you to Sara, Ralph, Naomi and Helen for all their hard work preparing the team. Also to our other 4 officials who travelled with us to enable us to enter the competition.

KEY STAGE 3 LONDON BADMINTON FINALS

After winning the KS3 Croydon Borough competition before Christmas David Lang, Mihir Patel, Jack Tree, Liam Smith and Callahan Dennis all went on to represent Croydon in the London Finals this week.

The team played in a group where only one team would progress further in the national competition. They beat Tiffin Boys from Kingston 5-0 and John Roan from Greenwich 5-0. In the deciding match the boys were very unlucky to lose 3-2 to a very strong Wilsons team. Mihir put in a fantastic performance in this match by winning his singles and then partnering Liam to a doubles victory.

Well done to all of the boys who competed so well.

FOOTBALL

A fantastic week in which Royal Russell Football made history!

In a hard fought semi-final match against Hampton last Wednesday, Royal Russell secured a 1-0 victory to make it to the final of the ISFA National Cup for the first time in our history. On 20th March we will be playing against Millfield at the MK Dons stadium in Milton Keynes – we are hoping for as much support as possible from our school community and information has been sent to parents and pupils today.

No school has ever won the ISFA National 6s and ISFA National Cup in one year so we will be trying to write our name in the history books!

Following the euphoria of Wednesday we had 1XI and 2XI London Cup matches against Latymer on Saturday. Both matches finished 3-3 and our 1XI went on to win on penalties but our 2XI unfortunately lost 3-1 on penalties.

NETBALL

Saturday U12,13,14 and 15 B teams took to the court in an away fixture at Dunottar School. The girls attitude on the day was absolutely brilliant, the girls were a real asset to the school.

From Monday through to Wednesday, all age groups played Colfe’s School. The U12 and U13A and B teams were away on Monday. Across both U12 teams, we were able to try out a lot of combinations and get everyone on court. The girls are starting to apply some principles of play to the game which is extremely encouraging to see. The U13A and B both had a strong second half and will be working on the start of the match in training, so we can work on having this intensity throughout the whole game.

On Tuesday the U14A and B teams played at home. The U14A team took the game away in the first quarter leading 9-2 and extending this lead to 23-3 by half time. The full time score was 37-15. Grace Scott won Player of the Match, awarded by Colfe’s. A special mention goes to Issy Yard for trying a new position and playing extremely well! Issy recently joined the academy group, her performance is credit to all the hard work she is putting into her training. The U14B narrowly lost their game, but had a fantastic team performance. Molly, Ashley-Anne and Martha put up a great defensive effort at the back and kept it a low scoring game. The U18 and U15 results will be reported after half term. All of the U14’s should be incredibly proud of their performances, both teams put out their strongest performance to date. It has been a great end to the half term for netball!

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Diary Dates

Friday 10 February Mufti-Day in Aid of Children's Mental Health Week - £2 donation

Friday 10 February Half-term begins

Friday 10 February Senior School Ski Trip Departs

Wednesday 15 February Iceland Trip Departs

Wednesday 15 February RAF Flying at Benson

Sunday 19 February CCF NCO Cadre

Monday 20 February Half-term ends 8.15am for Registration

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