Wokingham

The achievements of students at the Bulmershe School were officially put on record on Friday February 24, when Wokingham District Council’s executive member for children’s services Cllr Frank Browne visited the School to learn at first hand about their academic and sporting successes.

Headteacher Peter Lewis keeps a book of achievement in which the successes of both individuals and groups are recorded and Wokingham Cllr Frank Browne witnessed the most recent ‘book signing’ by students on Friday.

Many students at the Woodley school were celebrating particular achievements. Head girl Zoe Tyndall has won a place at Magdalen College Oxford to read History whilst Tim Skinner has won a place at Jesus College Cambridge to read Physical and Natural Sciences. Natalie Bryce will also be joining her peers at Oxford when she reads Law (Jurisprudence) at St Catherine’s College. The fourth Oxbridge student is former head girl Memoona Khan who will be taking up a place at New Hall, Cambridge, to read English.

Also signing the book of achievement was head boy Ritchie Dann. He is the managing director of the 2005 Young Enterprise Team and recently won an award at Reading Town Hall for the most innovative product. Peter Charij also achieved recognition as the Reading junior male sports personality of the year for his significant achievements in rowing at a national level.

The Bulmershe School, Wokingham is a specialist sports college and many of the pupils have recently celebrated success on the sporting field, including Chloe Farrance and Stacey Chance, both members of the Bulmershe Gym Club. They will be flying off to China in May to take part in an international competition in aerobic gymnastics. They were also members of the school team, which gained a number of awards for their 2005 Rock Challenge and they performed in a competition at The New Theatre in Oxford.

Mitchell Pallett - a long-standing member of the GB junior squad in Wushu, a martial art - is training hard for the first World Youth Wushu Championships in Malaysia in August 2006. Wokingham Cllr Frank Browne also met talented footballers Abdulai Baggie and Paul Gideon. Abdulai is on the books of ReadingFootball Club and Paul with Southampton Football Club.

Moving away from sporting success, William Reddie and Joe Spark have become successful public speakers and debaters. They were both recent winners in the Rotary Youth Speaks competition and in the English Speaking Union debates. They competed and defeated Eton College, but lost out to Winchester College in the final.

In 2005, two students Zoe Tyndall and Joe Spark represented the school’s 2005 World Challenge Trip to Peru. Their expedition was filmed and the DVD of their trip is now being used as the worldwide promotional video for World Challenge.

Cllr Frank Browne, executive member for Wokingham children’s services, said: “I really enjoyed meeting the young people at The Bulmershe School, many of whom have achieved great personal triumphs in their own specific areas of interest. There is tremendous talent at this school both on and off the sports field and it was good to see young people achieving so very highly academically as well as in a sporting capacity. I was also delighted to have the opportunity to tour the school and discuss a number of issues with the headteacher including future investment at the school and measures they need to take to address attendance. The local authority is committed to working with the school to provide the best education for all its pupils.

“I had a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon at Bulmershe School and I look forward to working with the school in the near future and developing our already positive relationship further.”

Headteacher Peter Lewis said: “We were delighted to welcome Cllr Browne to our school and I would like to thank him for taking the time to meet with a number of our students. As their headteacher, I am very proud of their achievements, both on the academic front where four of our students have won places to Oxbridge, and in a wide variety of other areas of life from sporting activities to public speaking.

“Cllr Browne was interested in the exciting future plans of our young people and I hope that he enjoyed hearing from them personally, including Joe who put the case against party politics and for the independence of individual politicians! Afterwards Cllr Browne toured the school and visited some classes. We discussed very positively the ways in which the school and the local authority can work collaboratively to deliver high quality provision for the school and the community on the Bulmershe campus.”

Wokingham District Council