School That Matters: Celebrating our Pupils
- Jul 10
- 2 min read
Last week we celebrated the achievements of the pupils in Years 7-10 at our annual Awards Ceremony. We will do the same for the Year 11 leavers later in the year. Normally our ceremony takes place at The Point, Old Trafford Cricket ground, but this year we brought the event in-house and it was all-the-better for it.
Across two separate awards ceremonies we recognised the many successes of the year with a wide variety of awards. The celebrations began with musical entertainment to welcome our guests: the Steel Pan band and various singers and instrumentalists. Then we were treated to the choir and guided through each ceremony by a team of pupil comperes ably assisted by Mr. Jordan. After a short reflection on the year that has gone by, we invited Fr Chris Gorton to the stage to present the awards. In his short speech he leaned into the words of our mission statement and encouraged our pupils to be people FO – ‘for others’. It was simple, but very effective and a message that is more needed than ever.
The purpose of our awards events is only partly to give out prizes. It is more about acknowledging that our pupils are capable of more than they know, achieve great things against seemingly insurmountable odds and also represent the very best of ourselves. Whilst our awards were given for academic achievement, they also recognised sporting endeavour, leadership, reading, living out our mission and the individual character and determination of pupils. For adults it is incredibly easy to buy into the idea of younger people being self-obsessed and lacking in resilience, when in fact they are great examples of the qualities more of us need to navigate the world and its future.
As this week’s newsletter shows our pupils are also at the cutting edge of this future, attending the hustings for the Greater Manchester Mayoral Elections as guests of the Manchester Evening News. The journalist who hosted them was very impressed by their astute questioning, interest, curiosity and willingness to be open to new ideas and people. That is indeed the FO – ‘for others’ – that Father Chris was talking about.
Ben Davis,
Headteacher
