Latest News

French Excellence Club – Club d’excellence

Wed 30 May 2018

Congratulations to Polly Farrington and Aodhan Kavanagh, both in Year 7, for excelling in French this year. Both students have been given a certificate and a French Dictionary as a reward.

The Excellence Club is for students who want to thrive in French and decide to go the extra mile. They must present 6 activities of their choice, each related to an aspect of French culture such as films, videos, songs, books, comics, and French cuisine. Presentations can take various forms such as role-plays, posters, booklets.

Polly’s exemplary work includes two research pieces, one about Napoleon and another one about the Eiffel Tower. She made posters and presented her findings to the rest of the class.

Aodhan’s love for cooking pleased the MFL department as, among other activities, he has twice baked (!) delicious French recipes, presenting them in both languages!

Well done Polly and Aodhan for your determination and commitment. Hopefully more students will follow your example!

Mrs E Karaoglani

DofE Bronze Expedition

Thu 24 May 2018

34 students completed their Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Expedition over the May bank holiday. These students were split into six different teams and their objective was to navigate their way from Ashford through to Canterbury.

Once the assessors had given all of the teams their briefing for the weekend and kitted them up with their Trangia, tents and water it was time to set off at 11 am on Saturday morning. All six teams had mapped their route to take them West, through Ashford to reach Mystole Campsite.

With everyone setting off in high spirits, their objective was to reach their lunch checkpoint by 2 pm. All teams looked very hot and bothered when they arrived, so it was a welcome break for them to enjoy their lunch in the shade, under the high, green trees in the beautiful countryside that Kent has to offer.

On Sunday morning at 6 am, with the sun shining and birds singing, it was time to wake those who had slept in. With everyone up, dismantling their tents and making breakfast, it was 7.30 am by the time they all set off for their second day.

All teams made excellent progress through the day and were all in at their final checkpoint by 3 pm.

A fantastic and lovely weekend for the students to all pass their expedition. Furthermore, to top it off, Monday was a bank holiday with the day off school to rest their tired and blistered feet!

Mr Rowe

Cricket at St Simon Stock 2018

Tue 15 May 2018

Cricket has started well this academic season after numerous wash outs and unpredictable weather threatened to cause havoc with competition draws.

All three teams in Years 7 – 9 have made a tremendous start to the season and remain unbeaten in the Kent Cup competitions. Notable performances include:

The Year 9 team having an incredible win away at Ashford school by 22 runs. Captain Darian Tzanakakis led the way with an unbeaten 55.
The Year 8 team winning against Dane Court Grammar by 15 runs, with Tobin Thomas scoring 17 runs and having impressive bowling figures of 5-17.

Whilst the fixtures are going well, the cricket club goes from strength to strength with in excess of 40 boys and girls turning up each week to improve on their skills and put them in practice with small sided games.

Mr Fiddler

Up For Debate

Thu 10 May 2018

On Thursday 19^th April, six ambitious and courageous year nine students represented our school in the regional final of the ‘Up for Debate’ national debating competition held at Ibstock Place School in London.

Thomas Raines, Jacqueline Anithottathil and Finley Brighton participated in two challenging debates in the morning, centred on the taxation of junk food and the ownership of cultural treasures – against some extremely tough competition from schools all over the south east. They were able to convincingly win their second debate with some outstanding rhetoric and rebuttal. In the afternoon, after a short debating workshop, they drew upon all the feedback they had been given throughout the day to prepare for an impromptu debate, arguing against the motion that assisted suicide should be legalised.

They also won this debate,totalling two out of the three over the course of the day, which was absolutely fantastic. To top this all off, Thomas was named as one of the day’s top ten ‘Outstanding Speakers’. This is an absolutely amazing achievement given that there were 33 schools and 38 teams participating. Jacqueline, our second speaker, stated “Being given advice about debating from professional judges and being able to compete with other schools has been an amazing experience that me and my team will never forget.”

While supporting our debating team, Simon Davis was a consummate professional in his role as timekeeper on all three debates and Alysa Shaikh and Joshua Sangwan posed challenging questions during each of the three floor debates – becoming more confident as the day progressed.

A teacher from one of the schools we competed against specifically commented upon the excellent linguistic skills our debaters demonstrated and, as always, our students were exemplary in their behaviour – acting as wonderful oratory ambassadors for our school. The students came away excited at the prospect of continuing to develop their debating skills across the curriculum while we will now be looking at current year seven and eight students as prospective competitors for next year’s competition.

Mrs Underdown

Leader of Literacy and Communication

Year 7 Maidstone Championship Winners

Thu 10 May 2018

The team had reached the final having won all their league matches and defeating Cornwallis Academy in the semi-final.

Hosted at the Gallagher Stadium, the final kicked off between St Simon Stock and The Malling School in a very lively atmosphere created by our ever supporting fans.

The match commenced at great pace with all players running around everywhere, but soon after, our boys settled and began to play their style of football. After a domineering spell ten minutes into the first half our boys went ahead with Riley Court and soon after Jashar Coleman. The first half went on to be dominated by our boys with the opposition goalkeeper pulling out some incredible saves. Two – zero first half to our boys.

The second began in the same fashion and soon after our boys extended the lead to three – zero with an Oscar Webb 20 yards screamer. This proved to be the turning point, our boys dropped into a defensive mind set, lost shape and their way of playing. The opposition took full advantage of this and started to take control of the game, scoring a brace in quick succession and then going on to threaten for an equalizer to only be denied by our on form goalkeeper Liam Bennet. With outstanding defensive displays by Johnny Sparrowhawk and Man of the Match Daniel Lewis, our boys managed to defend their lead and win the trophy.

The boys have had an incredible season having also reached the quarter-finals of the Kent cup and Mr Nimani has high hopes for the years to come.

Mr Nimani – PE

Busy Time for STEM

Thu 10 May 2018

We have had a busy time in recent weeks with STEM activities that have either taken place or are scheduled for Year 10 and Year 7 students.

A group comprising a total of 64 students in Year 10 spent a morning learning about geodesic domes and examples of where they can be found: the most famous examples are the domes at the Eden Project. In teams the students then had to follow a set of instructions to construct their own geodesic dome. To be successful the students needed to read and follow a set of instructions, communicate well with their fellow team members and to show resilience if they hit problems in the construction of their dome. All these skills are important in our everyday lives in school, at home, playing sport or at work.

Four Year 7 students attended a fantastic day of chemistry at a one day Salter’s Chemistry Camp on 9^th May. The students worked brilliantly well as a team as they tried to solve a mystery of a stolen trophy and then to make a chemical reaction happen at exactly the same time as the “bongs” of Big Ben. The students were Alana Boughton-Reynolds, Jack Jennings, Bianca Manolache and Isiah Tayag and their comments on the day included:

“I enjoyed going to Salter’s because the challenges we got (the Salter’s challenge and the University challenge) were difficult but we got through them well. Even though we didn’t get any prizes we still really enjoyed ourselves.”
“The best part was the demonstration where they made mango or lemon sorbet using liquid nitrogen. They gave it out to everyone along with cookies. It was fantastic! One of the best sorbets I have ever tasted.”

Two classes in Year 10 will be involved in an Enterprising Science event on Monday 21^st June. They will have the chance to think about their perceptions of science in the work place and of scientists, identify their employability skills, meet a STEM ambassador and work out what he/she does for a living.

Ms Whitehead

Lego (C) Robot Club

Thu 10 May 2018

One of the extra-curricular clubs within the schools is “Robot Club”, bringing together subjects related to STEM topics (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths).

The 6th form prefects and robot club members have designed and built a new and exciting design; a spinning pair of hammers attached to their robot!

The robot club works with year 7 and year 8 members and is a wonderful example of where our 6th Form students support the extracurricular activities of our younger learners.

Mr Barley

English Department Superstars

Thu 10 May 2018

Mitchell Lambert and Rosie Mills have achieved over 100 merits each.

Year Eight

Both Alex Dudley and Dante Wong in Year 8 have written exceptional pieces of creative writing; the class were tasked with writing a section from their autobiographies after reading how Mo Farah overcame obstacles in his early life. Both boys wrote carefully-crafted, personal accounts of tough times in their own lives and should be commended on their writing.

Mrs Price, Mr Doig and Miss Harman

Year Nine

Year 9 continue to work tirelessly in preparing for their GCSEs. The first of two special mentions goes to Christopher Knowles (H02) who was the first student this year to meet all his Year 11 target grades while he is still in Year 9! This is an incredible achievement. Secondly a special mention to Mitchell Lambert (H02) and Rosie Mills (H02) who have both tipped 100 merits already this year. Clearly H02 are a form of superstars.

Mrs Price and Mr Ormand-Neale.

Good Samaritan Mass

Mon 07 May 2018

On Tuesday 24th April, a group of Year 7 students attended the Good Samaritan Mass, where Archbishop Peter thanked those assembled for raising money during the year for the Crisis Fund, administered by the Catholic Children’s Society in Westminster.

He explained that the fund exists to help families in need and that supporting those in need enables us to eminently fulfill the second Great Commandment, to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. The Archbishop elucidated that the parable of The Good Samaritan offers a perfect example of a person who takes care of someone he does not know, but to whom he is compelled to offer help through compassion.

The RE Department