Category : News

On Thursday, our drama students from Year 9,10 and 11 had the exciting opportunity to work with the professional theatre company Splendid. The students were invited to watch a performance of Splendid’s most recent production of Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, adapted by the company’s artistic director Kerry Frampton and producer Ben Hales.

The company’s work is inspired by practitioner and playwright Bertolt Brecht and it was a great experience for our students to witness how a company of only three actors can captivate a live audience.

Following this fantastic production, Year 9 and 10 students had the opportunity to meet the actors and to participate in workshops inspired by physical storytelling. It was a great pleasure to see the students smiling, fully engaging in activities and pushing themselves out of their comfort zones.

The students will now use what they have learnt from Splendid to inspire their devising process later on in the year when they will be creating their own performances from a stimulus.

Our Silver Duke of Edinburgh students took part in a practice expedition in the Ashdown forest at the end of July. The expedition lasted four days and it went extremely well. The three teams worked well together to navigate the routes and demonstrated their ability to camp independently, with maturity and great organisational skills. Many thanks to Miss Ruxton, Mr Hughes, Miss Cooney and Miss Leppard for supervising the trip. The assessed expedition in the New Forest went excellently; the groups walked from the seaside at Hurst View campsite all the way to Holmsley campsite. Walking 20 miles over three days with all the camping equipment, food and camping stove is a fantastic achievement.

The assessor was very impressed with our students and I hope they can complete their Volunteering, Physical and Skill sections in order to achieve the full Silver Award, which is internationally recognised. Fingers crossed the students will be eligible and keen to pursue the Gold level afterwards, which will take us to the Lake District and Peak District during the Easter and summer holidays. Many thanks to Mr Jonathan Crowley, our assessor, Mr T Alloway and Miss McDonnell for all their support.

Alperton Community School has produced an excellent set of results at GCSE. This year we have again improved our attainment score in spite of the increased challenge of the new GCSEs.

The results for the most able students were exceptional in the new more demanding GCSEs with 20% of students achieving the top grades (9-7) in English and maths. There were almost 80 grades at 9-7 in the sciences – biology, chemistry and physics. In total, ACS students achieved almost 300 grades at 9-7/A*-A.

ACS students achieved 57 Grade 9 results across the new qualifications, putting them into the top 4% of results in the country.  Students achieved 10 Grade 9 results in English and 9 Grade 9 results in maths. Across the sciences, 15 students achieved the highest possible grade.

The progress students have made from their primary school is excellent.  In the last few years, the school has achieved a huge increase in the percentage of students achieving grade 4 and above equivalent in English and maths. In 2019, 60% of students made better than expected progress in English and over 50% of students made better than expected progress in maths.

Disha Kirticumar was very pleased with Grade 9 in English language, English literature, maths, biology, chemistry, physics, history, geography and Spanish as well as A* in further maths; she said “I am so pleased with my results.  It has been hard work and the teachers have helped me so much.  I am one step closer to achieving my aspirations”.

Chandru Suresh was very pleased with six Grade 9s, four Grade 8s and an A* grade in further maths.  He said “I have worked hard, but the teachers at Alperton really care about you and help you to get the best results”.

Billal Swaleh made exceptional progress since arriving at the school.  He achieved four Grade 9s, three Grade 8s and an A* in further maths, “I would like to thank my teachers – they have helped me achieve so much since I arrived at Alperton.  I am looking forward to studying for my A Levels in the Sixth Form

Gerard McKenna, Headteacher, said “once again, our students have performed exceptionally well at GCSE.  I believe we achieved excellent outcomes because we aspire to provide every student with an outstanding education within a supportive, vibrant and stimulating learning environment.  We have established a strong track record of enabling every student to reach their full academic and personal potential.  I am sure that our results will improve again next year now that our new school building is fully operational, providing our students with the best possible facilities and resources”.

Year 13 Alperton Community School students have again exceeded all expectations with an excellent set of A Level results. With some results yet to come in, ACS students have been awarded 90 A* and A grades, with over 50% of the examinations being awarded A*, A or B grades. As a result, many of our students have been accepted at prestigious Russell Group universities.

We are particularly pleased with continued strong performances in English, Maths, Further Maths, Chemistry and Media. We are especially pleased with the exceptional progress students made in Business Studies, Economics, ICT, Sociology and Psychology.

ICT continued to be a very successful and popular subject with almost all students achieving the highest grades of Distinction and Distinction*. The 2019 results are a further improvement on last year’s results which showed Alperton Community School to be higher than the national average.

Special congratulations go to Hamza Ahmadi who achieved A*A*A and will read Medicine at Cambridge University and Balqiis Ali who achieved A*,A,B and will read English at Cambridge University. Other top achievers include Sarvesh Thaleshwar A*A A (reading Aerospace Engineering at Bristol); Mital Ashok A*A*A (reading Maths and Computer Science at Imperial); Dhyan Patel A*AA (reading Economics at LSE); Abdirahman Hassan AAB (reading Electronic Engineering at UCL) and Ayshia Darroux AAB (reading Law at Sussex).

Hamza said “I am really happy with my results and can’t wait to start my medicine course at Cambridge.” Balqiis said “I have really enjoyed studying at Alperton Community School. I really appreciate all the support I have had from all my teachers.” Twelve students achieved at least two A/A* in their A levels which is an outstanding achievement.

Students from Alperton Community School are now represented in the following Russell Group universities: Oxford, Cambridge, London School of Economics, Imperial, York, Warwick, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, University College London, King’s College London, Queen Mary, Sheffield and Southampton.

Gerard McKenna, Headteacher, said “We are very proud of the excellent achievement and progress made by all of our students. We work closely together as a community of staff, students and parents to support every one of our students to meet their aspirational goals. Our students inspire us to continually improve and we have established and maintained an excellent track record of success. It is a real pleasure to work with such talented and committed staff who have created a vibrant and stimulating learning environment for our students. Our oversubscribed school includes world class facilities at our brand new lower school site and we have developed our upper school site to fully support the needs of our Year 11 and Sixth form students.”

On Friday 5th July, fourteen excited Y7 and 8 students made their way to Lord’s Cricket Ground to be a part of the Cricket World Cup match between Pakistan and Bangladesh. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity for the students, as not only were they going to watch the game, they had also been invited to stand with the players on the field during the national anthems. It was exciting to see them standing smart in the new kit they were given and smiling as the cameras scanned across their faces. Most likely they didn’t realise that millions of people would’ve been watching them across the globe on TV!

After the anthems, they were all able to take our seats and enjoying watching the game, getting involved in the chants, the friendly banter between teams, and doing mexican waves. At half time the students had a second chance to be in the limelight as they were taken to the field to play some games in front of the crowd. Some of the students even managed to hit a few balls into the crowd! Overall it was a fantastic day and one which I’m sure the students will never forget.

On Tuesday, 2nd July, our Sixth Form students in Year 12 became involved in team building and problem solving activities at Go Ape and in London. Continue reading →

Alperton was lucky enough to have two authors visiting last week! Poet and author Ashley Hickson-Lovence spoke to Year 12 English students about his journey from Hackney council estate to published author of the novel ‘The 392’. Students got an insight into the publishing process as Ashley took them through the importance of finding the right agent and publisher, as well as fellow authors to support your work.

Now completing his PhD in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, he gave students a glimpse of the early stages of his second novel, which focuses on the life of football referee Uriah Rennie. Ashley followed this with a creative writing workshop for 30 lucky Year 7 and 8 students. He performed some of his own spoken-word poetry, and after analysing imagery in a variety of poems, students put pen to paper to write about their home. Those brave enough to present their work shared some stunning, evocative poems.

Later in the week, author Annabel Pitcher spoke to Year 8 students about her book ‘My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece’, which they have been reading in form time this year. In a fascinating presentation, Annabel explained how 9/11 and the fallibility of childhood memories had inspired her to write the novel. She answered questions from students about the writing process and the importance of tackling difficult topics such as racism and grief. After her talk, Annabel ran a dynamic creative writing workshop for selected students in which they were challenged to write a horror story with a twist. After acting out a terrifying walk past a bike outside an abandoned house – with sound effects! – students produced some truly chilling openings to their stories.

Last week Year 5 pupils from our main feeder primary schools were treated to a variety of activities and lessons as part of our Year 5 Taster Days. All the sessions delivered by Alperton staff were very well received by our year 5 pupils coming from the following primary schools: Oakington Manor, Lyon Park, Barham Primary and Vicar’s Green. We were particularly proud of how well our staff collaborated in order to accommodate the needs of the excited year 5 pupils.

Our students who welcomed the year 5s were a real credit to the school. All the primary staff were impressed and many pupils commented that they would go home and tell their parents that they wish to make Alperton their first choice of secondary school. The highlights of this week was witnessing the smiling faces of every child who left us at the end of their exclusive day. If your child contributed in any way to this week, please congratulate them for being a shining example for the younger pupils and for making us very proud.

Below are a few extracts from the feedback we received from the primary school staff: 

“On behalf of the year 5 children and staff I would like to thank you for yesterday’s taster day. The children all came back with big smiles and couldn’t tell me enough about how much they enjoyed their day.”

 “The staff found it very interesting from a CPD point of view as well which is fantastic.” 

“Thank you for organising such a wonderful day for our children. They all had a wide range of experiences which they can’t stop talking about!”

“The staff at your school were so patient with our children which made them feel less overwhelmed by being in such a big building with big children!”

“The timings were perfect and the choice of subjects and their contents were just right for our children. In addition to this, I was in awe of your children at Alperton and how kind they are when they see visitors.”

“The helpers you had were like little guardian angels in the corridor, quietly assisting us on our way when we got lost!”

“ I really enjoyed my day and can say the same for the rest of the staff too.”