Category : Front Page News

Sporting Success

Our Y7 & Y8 athletes took part in The Haringey Borough Athletics Competition against 10 other schools this week. Some fantastic performances all round and we are rightly proud of all the students involved. 

Pupils who finished in the top 3:

• Cavalli – Winner of 200M race (undefeated in this event since the start of Year 7)
• Darius – Second in 300M race 
• Micah Second in 100M
• Diego – Second in 80M Hurdles 
• Le’Keyshia – Winner of 80M hurdles
• Chrisstanel  – Second in 100M
• Cavalli, Micah, Tafari & Diego – Winners of 4×100 relay
• Nizae, Rohan, Khavalli & Michael – Second in 4×100 relay 

We do however want to draw particular attention to the performance of Darius. Darius managed to finish in second place despite being injured during the race – a real testament to his resilience! 

 

Hope in Haringey – Youth Summit 2024

On Friday 7th June a group of our student leaders attended the annual Hope in Haringey Youth Summit. This year the theme was ‘safer schools, safer community’ and speakers included David Lammy, representatives from the serious youth violence reduction team and fantastic music and dance performances from a number of artists.

Our students gave a presentation on some of the work we have been doing in school to reduce bullying. The students presented incredibly well and represented us fantastically. It was a great morning all round!

 

OpenView Workshops

During the past two weeks we have been visited by workshop leaders from ‘OpenView’. The company has delivered workshops to our students on the importance of being an upstander, not a bystander. These workshops have been interactive and great fun for all our students. The learning opportunities around feeling safe and not being afraid to speak up have been brilliant. 

Student Success – ‘The Voice Kids’ – Poland

This week we are profiling some great news for a Duke’s student. Michell Siwak in year 10 took part in the Polish version of ‘The Voice Kids’ recently and won! The whole of the Duke’s community is very proud of Michell and the experience has opened up a number of doors for her in the future.

Michell is an incredibly talented singer and songwriter who has showcased her talents at Duke’s on many occasions. Michell said ‘I love singing but I’m not singing to be famous. I sing because I wouldn’t know what to do without it. I’ve always said that to myself to stay grounded.’ Michell also writes her own songs which she loves.

 

Of the experiences working on the ‘The Voice Kids’ Michell said: ‘It was so much fun. Every performance was energetic and getting advice from the famous Polish singers was amazing’. 

 

Everyone at Duke’s is so proud of Michell. We know we’ll be seeing more from her in terms of performance in the future.

Trips and Workshops 

We’ve had a busy week this week with trips and workshops. Our weekly ‘inspire’ group took a trip to Linklaters Law Firm as part of their English and employability workshops and got to learn more about communication in the world of work. 

Alongside this our year 7 Challenge Mentoring group also took their trip to Linklaters on Wednesday as part of their mentoring programme. The students took part in workshops aimed at improving confidence, motivation and academic attainment. The positive feedback from students was overwhelming.  

 

Bright Futures 

The Bright Futures Team were back at Duke’s delivering one of their final workshops before the residential trip taking place in June. The year 9 students who have now been selected to attend the residential trip found out about what they will be doing during their trip to North Wales. The activities and sessions they will take part in are fantastic and all of the students are very excited!

Year 10 Football Success

This week the year 10 football team took part in a 5 a side football tournament. The team played 9 football matches, managing to convincingly win 7 of the matches. Patrick was the competition top goal scorer after effortlessly scoring 3 goals all games in except 1. Excellent performance from the team but a special mention for Musa who played in defence and was as solid as a rock when protecting our goal. 

 

Well done to Mr Durrant and the rest of the team for a fantastic sporting success!

 

African School’s Partnership

This week saw the second meeting of our partner school in Sierra Leone.  Duke’s has been partnered with Lumley Secondary School which is part of EduAid – an educational charity based in the country. Over the course of the next two terms Duke’s plans to partner with Lumley Secondary School on a project around ‘Oracy for Democracy’ – the project will include students from Duke’s meeting with students from Lumley Secondary School through virtual meetings and sharing their ideas on how we best champion student voice. We aim to learn from each other. 

 

Our student leadership team at Duke’s had a great and lively meeting with the students in Sierra Leone comparing different aspects of student voice with an exciting project lined up for the final part of the summer term.