Feast your eyes on some snapshots from our 2023 prom night. The gleaming exteriors of the expensive cars set the stage for a night filled with excitement. Who could forget the fire performer who captivated us with their skills, their artistry and fearless performance added an electrifying touch to the night. 🔥
Thank you to everyone who made this night an extraordinary one and a huge congratulations to our year 11 cohort. More photos to follow.
During year group assemblies this week, we were able to celebrate the outstanding achievements of KS3 pupils. Staff have had the difficulty of nominating one pupil from KS3 to recognise their hard work and contributions in each subject. To put this amazing achievement into context, the winners of the awards were selected from a total of 678 pupils.
The winners are below:
English: Josh T
Maths: Billy W
Science: Amber R
Art: Aurora B
Dance: Michaela N
Drama: Rakeb S
Geography: Jay S
History: Toby S
PE: Kaiden N
3D Design: Emily G
On Monday 26th June we said a fond farewell to the class of 2023. Myself, the Heads of House, and Mr Seager took the opportunity to reflect on what an amazing contribution our year 11s have made over their five years at Bloxwich Academy, with plenty of stories shared and awards given out to celebrate the achievements of Year 11. In what has become tradition the assembly finished with a staff video where staff said their goodbyes in true Bloxwich Academy style.
I would like to finish by wishing Year 11 all the luck for their exam results and for their future careers, it has been an emotional and memorable year. Thanks for the memories class of 2023.
Over this final half term of the school year, our year 7, 8 and 9 pupils are all going to be taking part in an activity called 'A day's work for a day's pay.' Each pupil will be given a 'job' at random by their form tutor and will be told how much they would get paid each day and each week being employed in that role. At the start of the following week, pupil’s will fill out a payslip showing how much they would have earned in the past week, but this is linked to their school attendance. For example, if a pupil is absent for a day at school, they would lose a day's pay from their job. If they are late to school, they would lose half a day's pay.
Pupils will complete a booklet during this activity over the next six weeks and in the first tutor session of each week they will fill in their weekly payslip (based on their attendance during the last week) and complete a short reflection activity. In the first of the sessions, pupils will find out what job role they have been given at random and will record how they feel about this and discover how much they can expect to earn daily and weekly.
During the last week of term, there will be a reward for those with the best attendance at their job. Good luck everybody!
Our post 16 year 12 students recently attended the UK University and Apprenticeship search fair at Edgbaston Stadium in Birmingham. This is a twice-yearly event where students get the opportunity to meet representatives from universities and apprenticeship providers from all over the country in one place. They were able to attend seminars and workshops where they found out more about the application processes, what makes a good application and how they can stand out for the crowd and be successful in their applications to universities, employers and apprenticeship providers, as well as meeting with admissions tutors from a huge variety of UK universities all in preparation for their applications in the autumn term of year 13.
Our local Further Education College (Walsall College) recently held assemblies with pupils in years 7 to 10. The focus of these assemblies was to tell our pupils about some of the options that will be available to them at the end of their GCSE courses. This assembly informed us about the new T-Level qualifications that are being offered by colleges nationally in vocational education which also include a large work placement. The college visitors also explained to our pupils how apprenticeships worked and what types of jobs these can lead to in the future, as well as showing examples of the apprenticeship courses that the college offers. Pupils were shown case study videos from current students on both apprenticeship and T-Level courses to find out more about the courses and what they could expect. Walsall college will be back later in the year to attend our careers fair and will be able to talk to pupils on a on to one basis if they have any questions.
Matrix’s first ever cross-trust pupil awards event, held at Millennium Point on 20th April, was a fantastic success.
Pupils were recognised for exemplifying our trust values of creativity, resilience, selflessness, enthusiasm and continuous improvement. There were also awards for exemplary members of our Cadet Forces.
With more than 7000 pupils across our trust schools, it was really difficult to choose the 46 award winners. Those who did receive the awards should feel deservedly proud of their achievement.
The awards-giving was punctuated with several fantastic performances, including DJs from Barr Beacon, a piano virtuoso from Year 4 of Bloxwich Academy and Etone’s ‘Mega Band’. Before the event, we had over an hour of performances from pupils across our trust schools, all of who had been selected to perform after a trust-wide talent competition, which had more than 100 entrants.
The evening started with a video relating the story of our trust up until the end of 2022. Our CEO Ms Draycott then spoke about the two newest schools, Smestow Academy and Wednesfield Academy, who joined the Matrix family this year.
There was also a special video explaining ‘what a makes a Matrix pupil’, starring a teacher from each of our schools.
Here is what some of our parents and carers have said about the event:
“The awards ceremony was fantastic. It was great to see pupils getting their awards and the fantastic performances from across the Matrix Academy Trust schools.”
“It meant so much to see all the pupils being awarded for life skills rather than academic achievement. The head teachers giving a little speech about each pupil was a lovely touch and really personalised it.”
“Thank you for a wonderful evening. It was very special to see everyone receiving their awards.”
“Thank you for a special evening celebrating the achievements of pupils. We are especially proud of our daughter!”
“Tonight was simply amazing!”
Ms Draycott and Director of School Improvement Mr Lowbridge-Ellis introduced each of the awards and our headteachers explained who they had chosen and why. Trustee Sir Mark Aspinall bestowed the awards on the worthy winners.
We took part in the National Careers Week recently in the academy, thinking about how we raise our aspirations and have more confidence in ourselves and our skills and how being better at doing this will lead to better opportunities in our future careers. Students in years 7-10 took part in assemblies, form time activities and a PSHE with this focus throughout the week. Staff also got involved by filling in posters to put on classroom and office doors telling students what other jobs they had done before working in our school and the skills they learned whilst doing them. Some of these included being a pizza maker, cabin crew and even a Christmas elf….
World Book Day was truly a magical day at Bloxwich Academy! Members of staff enjoyed dressing up as their favourite fictional characters, including Mr Seager as Harry Potter! The student well and truly enjoyed seeing all these fictional characters brought to life by their teachers and the winner of the best dressed was Miss Woolery as Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast!
During World Book Day, the students contributed to a variety of form time activities such as KS3 creating their own colourful and inspirational quoted bookmarks (a shout out to Lacey- 7X1) for winning this competition, with KS4 also creating their own Book Review on a literature text they have studied or a book they reading for pleasure. Bloxwich Academy also ran a ‘Whole School Scavenger Book Hunt Challenge’ in our fantastic, well-resourced, new Library, this allowed KS3/KS4 students during break and lunch to work through prompts that matched the book in the library. The winner for the ‘Scavenger Book Hunt’ challenge was Umna Kazem (8T1) who won a Huge Easter Egg! Additionally, within English, students had a drop-down lesson, where they focused on World Book Day activities, their class teachers selected a vast range and amusing fictional extracts that would suit the class, students enjoyed a glimpse of unseen fictional texts that they were able to base strong predictions on. The students also participated in the game ‘Never have I ever’ which was related to texts they have read for pleasure, this allowed students to venture their next read. All form tutors across school also participated in ‘drop everything and read’, this allowed tutors to bring in and read a section of their favourite novel and discuss with students why they would recommend the text; this was a wonderful experience for students to listen to and aspire to read the same text. Beauty and the Beast Theme!
![Talent-Competition[68]](https://bloxwichacademy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/freshizer/0de12418de7e7b06853294d8a0a9337b_Talent-Competition68-scaled-1440-c-90.jpg)
Do you have a special talent you wish to showcase at our next big live event.
You will have the chance to perform on stage in front of a live audience in Birmingham at Millennium Point in their state-of-the-art theatre on Thursday 20th April 2022. Whether it be singing, dancing, juggling, stand-up comedy or anything and everything in between, we want to see all your wonderful talents.
How to enter:
Secondary School
Leamore Lane
Bloxwich, Walsall
West Midlands
WS2 7NR
T: 01922 710 257
postbox@bloxwichacademy.co.uk
Secondary SENDCo – Mrs Bensley
Monday - Thursday: 8:00 am - 4:00 pm
Friday: 8:00 am - 3:30 pm
