A spaceman in the basement. A sinister plot to trick the whole world. And only one boy who can stop it.

There was certainly lots to discuss at last week’s parent and student reading club (the first of the year) when we looked at the highly acclaimed ‘Maggot Moon’ by Sally Gardner. Mixed reactions and mixed opinions meant there were plenty of talking points … although the boys didn’t need a second invitation to talk about this exciting young adult novel. The only time the room fell quiet was when the drinks and biscuits were served.

Many of the boys (and their parents) have already started reading our chosen book for the next meeting of the club. ‘Half Bad’ by Sally Green promises to be a thrilling read full of witches, magic and dark secrets.

Sound interesting? Then get reading! Copies of the book are available from the LRC and we would love to see even more of our year 7 and 8 students attending on Tuesday 10^th November at 7:30.

North Midlands Championships Macclesfield (3/4 & 17/18 Oct 2015)

Stuart Eastwood has opened the new swimming season with some great performances. He has been in action over 2 weekends at the North Midlands championships competing in 15 events at the 25m pool in Macclesfield.  He swims in the 16 years+/Open Age group.  He took 5 bronze, 2 silver and 1 gold medal at the championships.  In a great performance he managed to gain a further qualifying time in the 50m backstroke for the forthcoming North West Winter Regional Championships.  That means he has now qualified for a total of 10 events in the NW Winter Regionals to be held in November.

His times  at the North Midlands Championships were;

50m freestyle                                    26.68

100m freestyle                                  57.28 (PB)                 3rd BRONZE

200m freestyle                                  2:04.86                       3rd BRONZE

400m freestyle                                  4:27.70                       1st GOLD

50m breaststroke                              33.13

100m breaststroke                           1:112.58                     3rd BRONZE

200m breaststroke                           2:45.21                       2nd SILVER

50m butterfly                                     28.92 (PB)

100m butterfly                                   1:04.89

200m butterfly                                   2:21.67                       3rd BRONZE

50m backstroke                                29.96 (PB) *               3rd BRONZE

(* new North West Regional Champs qualifying time!)

100m backstroke                              1:07.69 (PB)

200m backstroke                              2:29.41

200m Individual Medley                 2:26.24

400m Individual Medley                 5:10.25                       2nd SILVER

(PB = new Personal Best time)

This continues the race for achieving qualifying times for the North West Regional Championships for Summer 2016.  He has already achieved qualifying times for all events for the forthcoming Cheshire County Championships.  Stuart is a member and Vice Captain of the Crewe Flyers Swimming Club and is also a member of the South Cheshire Athlete Performance Academy (APA).  He is Captain of Sandbach School swimming team and is studying ‘A’ level PE.

Year 9 student Nathan Mitchell, along with his two team mates, this weekend won the National  Scouts Junior Overall Shooting Team Championship at Bisley, improving on last year’s second place.

Well done Nathan.

Photos by Alex Robinson (Year 12).

Steve Hodgkinson and Jeff Lewis (former pupils themselves) were privileged recently to meet Sam Smallwood.  At 96 he is the oldest Sandbachian known to the Old Sandbachians Association.

Born in Middlewich in 1919, he attended the school from 1931 – 1938.  After training as a teacher at Crewe College he taught at Whitegate, Wheelock and Warmingham before he was drafted into the Royal Marines in WW2.  Sam was stationed on the South coast, before sailing to N Africa, Malta, Sicily, and Italy.

After the war Sam trained as a Bass singer at The Royal Manchester College of Music before returning to his teaching career.  He married and raised a family in London where he taught until retirement.

At 90 Sam expressed a desire to march at The Cenotaph.  It was only at this point he pointed out he had never claimed his medals.  With the help of his family Sam claimed his medals 64 years after WWII ended. He was invited to Westminster Palace where The Minister for Veterans, Kevan Jones presented Sam with The War Medal, Battle of Britain Medal,
Africa Star, Italy Star and The 1939-45 Medal.  Later he fulfilled his ambition and marched with the veterans.

Sam shared some of his memories, including the fact that he was instructed by one teacher not to refer to Sandbach School, but simply to “The School”.  He also sang the old School songs Gaudeamus (in Latin) and 40 Years On.  We presented him with an OSA tie and the latest Sandbachian.  It was wonderful to see how after so many years Sandbach School is so important to this great Old Boy.  We want to express our sincere thanks and best wishes to Sam and to his daughter Jane, who made the visit possible by getting in touch.

Jeff Lewis (OSA Secretary)

All photos by Year 9 student Tom Hilditch.

On Thursday the 12^th November, students from years 11, 12 and 13
were given the opportunity to work with Idle Motion, a cutting edge professional theatre company who specialise in using projection, music and movement to create powerful and moving immersive theatrical performances.

Their latest production ‘That is All You Need to Know’ is based on Bletchley Park and the cracking of the Enigma code and runs from the 15-19^th of December in the New Diorama, London. The director of the production and two of the leading actors worked with our students in the Theatre Space to show them how projection can be used to set the scene rather than building and rigging large sets.

The workshop tied in perfectly with the current Year 13 Theatre Studies devised piece which is also based around the Enigma machine but focuses on the three Polish Mathematicians who cracked the coding of the original machine before passing on their knowledge to Bletchley Park when Poland was invaded by the Germans. Students from year 12 and 11 were also invited into the workshop to give them lots of new ideas to use in their forthcoming practical examination performances.

Most of the students involved in the workshop are also in the cast of Frankenstein, the senior school production which runs in the Theatre Space on the 14^th, 15^th and 16^th of December. This will be an ambitious production which also features sophisticated use of film and projection to tell the story of Frankenstein and Creature. Recent renovations in the Theatre Space has ensured that Sandbach School can keep up to date with the latest performance technology and working with Idle Motion has inspired the students at the school to use the space to its full potential.

www.idlemotion.co.uk

Frankenstein Tickets are available from Main Reception.

We are holding some Sixth Form subject taster sessions, for students looking for Sixth Form 2016 entry.  The taster sessions provide prospective students with a taste of the various subjects available at Sandbach School Sixth Form. In addition to trying different subjects, students will have the opportunity to meet teaching staff,

In the Sixth Form Centre.

From 3.30pm – 5.00pm on Tuesday 24th November.

Refreshments will be provided.

We welcome applications from boys and girls in the South Cheshire area.

Please email Mrs K Booth to reserve a place: sixthform@sandbachschool.org

The school sent 2 squads to the recent Cheshire County Schools Table Tennis Championships at Widnes.

The U16s had an excellent day losing to the eventual winners in the semi-final on a tie break decision.

The U13s also had an excellent day, not losing a game and being crowned Cheshire Schools Table Tennis Champions and qualifying for the Regional Finals.

The team was made up of:

James Courtney – Captain

James Sisca

Braden Jones

Connor Coyle

Well done to all.

As is so often the case at Schools up and down the country
it’s very easy to forget that teachers and other members of staff (like the students themselves of course) have lives and interests of their own outside of the classroom.  Sandbach School is no different.  In this series of articles we have a look at some of the hobbies, pastimes and passions of members of staff – things that you might not otherwise know they get up to when the school bell rings.

Jamie Huddleston studied for a BEd in Design & Technology at MMU after several years working as the Health, Safety and Quality Manager at Ceramic Gas Products in Longton.  His first teaching post was also in his native Stoke-on-Trent at Mitchell Business & Enterprise College and he joined the Design & Technology department here at Sandbach School in 2009.  When he’s not teaching students about food groups, smoked salmon canapés and how to scramble an egg he has another very interesting string to his bow.  Jamie is a budding entrepreneur hoping one day to make a big splash in the condiments market with his ‘Stokie’ chilli sauce!

“Obviously being a design and technology teacher I’ve always been interested in inventing things and as part of their studies I expect my students to come up with new food ideas which can be a really difficult challenge.  I’ve always thought I ought to have a go myself.  Practice what I preach.”

Jamie is a keen gardener and grows his own produce.  He decided to set himself the challenge of creating a new product a couple of years ago whilst on a visit to the Isle of Wight.

“I grow elephant garlic which I got from ‘The Garlic Farm’ there on a previous visit.  About three years ago when I was on the Island again I visited a place called ‘The House of Chilli’ where you can taste chilli sauces from all around the world. They explain all about the chilli content and the flavours, the heat values and the Scoville Scale and it’s all really quite interesting.  I thought I’d love to have a go at making a sauce myself.”

Returning to his current home in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, Jamie started to experiment one weekend with chillies, ginger, coconut and a number of other ingredients and came up with a prototype. Born and bred as he was in the Potteries, Jamie was very keen to produce a sauce that would reflect his Stoke heritage.  The concept of a ‘Stokie Sauce’ to accompany the Staffordshire Oatcake was born and after making a batch with cheese he took them into school to canvas the opinions of teachers there.  He also produced some market research questionnaires (which is exactly what he’d expect his students to do) and armed with some constructive feedback tweaked the recipe over a period of about a year until he was happy with his new creation.

“But I didn’t know what to do next.  I didn’t know what the flowchart is when you start your own business.  What are the rules?  Do I have to have the sauce tested? Do I have to get it registered? Have I got to let the environment agency know? So I decided to do a bit of research.”

Jamie is secretary of his local cricket club and while the environmental health Inspector was there on a routine call he picked her brains on what he should do next. And he was very glad he did.

“She advised me that I should be heating the sauce to 75 degrees; to pasteurise it. Many of the dry ingredients come from places like Thailand so you can’t be sure they’re not carrying bacteria.”

The trouble was that once he heated it, the sauce split and separated resulting in a rather unattractive bottle of oil with some sludge at the bottom.  Not wanting to be defeated at this point however, Jamie persevered and changed the recipe again, using a combination of water and oil to better support the other ingredients in suspension.

“I was lucky I’d found the answer because I could so easily have given up at that point.”

The next step was to have the sauce tested to ascertain its shelf life.  Jamie took it to a local laboratory in Fegg Hayes.

“It was going to cost £400 but I thought it was money well spent if it prevented someone suing me.  But you see the sauce is full of natural preservatives – oil, vinegar, lime juice, salt, sugar – so as well as giving it a nice flavour they all contribute to keeping it safe.”

Environmental health visited his kitchen where he and his wife of fourteen years, Katy, actually make the sauce.  They were given a 5 star hygiene rating. So, with the sauce made, tasted, perfected and tested all Jamie needed to do now was launch it on the unsuspecting public and in the Summer of 2015 he did just that.

“A friend of mine in Stoke decided he’d like a change of career and he was due to open a cafe in July.  He had Neil ‘Nello’ Baldwin coming to do the honours and he suggested it could be a great opportunity for me too as he’d be stocking the sauce to have with his oatcakes.”

So it was all hands to the pumps.  Jamie had to quickly source two thousand bottles, have his labels professionally made, buy the ingredients in bulk and make as much sauce as he and Katy could.

“My wife’s a primary school teacher so has about as much spare time as I do and we’ve two young children so it was a struggle to get the sauce made in time.  Plus the chap making the labels didn’t get back from holiday till a couple of days before the launch so it was all a bit stressful.”

The local press loved the whole concept of a Potteries’ lad producing a ‘Spicy Oatcake Sauce’ to have with the local delicacy.  Radios Stoke, Signal and Six Towns all ran features, the Sentinel and the Chronicle covered the story but unfortunately for Jamie not in time for any of the cafes and shops he visited to know anything about it.

“I hadn’t told them I was coming so I was turning up on the Saturday morning (which is their busiest day), shoving a bottle in their faces and saying ‘do you want to take it?’. They didn’t have a clue what it was. They weren’t that interested and I was completely and utterly deflated. I really wanted to cry at that point. But that’s the thing with business.  People say you’ve just got to keep plugging away at it and it doesn’t come easily unless you’re really, really lucky.”

And plug away he did.  He circulated all the information by letter and took the sauce to various charity events, the Betley Show and the chilli festival at the Dorothy Clive Garden.

“That was brilliant because we came second in the chilli sauce competition there.  It’s the first real accolade we’ve had which was great.”

Now there are eighteen stockists in Staffordshire and South Cheshire including the artisan food shop and delicatessen at ‘Trentham Gardens’ and ‘Godfrey C Williams’ and ‘The Cheese Shop’ both in Sandbach. Jamie also has a website www.stokiesauce.co.uk where you can see all the stockists and buy online.

“I’m really proud of what Katy and I have achieved.  I was brought up in the town of Stoke on the outskirts of Fenton. I’ve a broad Stoke accent and my Grandad was very much a Stokie.  I’m passionate about the area and the people.  They’re really great and so are their oatcakes. I couldn’t live without either.”

Recipe for Cheesy Bacon Oatcakes

Serves 3

Ingredients

• 6 Staffordshire oatcakes
• 6 rashers of streaky bacon
• 1 bottle of ‘Spicy Oatcake Sauce’
• Tasty Lancashire cheese, grated

Method

Grill the bacon until crispy.  Warm the oatcakes under the grill for a couple of minutes.  Spread about a teaspoon of ‘Spicy Oatcake Sauce’ onto each oatcake, add a rasher of bacon and a sprinkling of cheese.  Grill for a couple of minutes until the cheese melts.  Roll up and serve with more sauce to dip. Delicious!

Jamie Huddleston’s ‘Spicy Oatcake Sauce’ is also being sold at School to raise money for the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital as part of the Year 9 Christmas charity event.  The bottles make great stocking filler presents and can be bought for £3 from Room 53 (£1 goes to the charity).

Please find below the latest edition of the student e-newspaper, The Scholar.

Well done to all of the students involved.

All 3 hockey teams (U14, U16 and U18) are now in their respective County Cup Finals, this has never happened before and it is a credit to both the staff coaching the teams and the boys quality, hard work and commitment.

The U14 and U16s have also qualified for the North West Regional Tournaments which are a direct route to qualification for the National Finals. The U18s are still in the National Knockout Cup and play Wirral GS in the next round.

The county Cup finals will be as follows:

Sandbach School U18 v Kings Chester

Sandbach School U16 v Kings Macclesfield

Sandbach School U14 v Wilmslow

All 3 finals will take place in the new year (the U18 one will be hosted here) with the other 2 still to be organised.

The U16 indoor hockey team also won the North West Indoor Tournament where they were unbeaten and progressed to the North finals narrowly missing out on a place at the National Finals on penalty strokes.

We also have Andrew Bull – current Great Britain and England Senior international and professional player in Holland, coming in to do a gifted and talented coaching session with several students across years 7-10.

The Royal Geological Society runs a national competition every year to find budding young geographers.  The topic this year is all about ‘Why does Antarctica matter?’ in recognition of it being 100 years since Sir Ernest Shakleton’s brave attempt at being the first to cross Antarctica. We had outstanding entries from over 50 students – well done to all that submitted posters that explored why Antarctica still matters today.

COMMENDATION CERTIFICATES

• Angus Walker 8E
• Harvey Finnegan 8E
• Macauley Taylor 8E
• Tom Smyth 8E
• Alex Withenshaw 8N
• Isaac Christian 8N
• David Naylor 8N
• Elliot Birch 8N
• Harry Hartley 8A
• Daniel Joy 9E
• Oliver Temporal 9E

RUNNERS UP

• Oliver Wilson 8N
• Jack Malpass 8N
• Sam Sheardown 8A
• Joe Berry 8D
• Max Rayner 8E
• Ryan Hancock 9E
• Mackenzie Lawton 9E

WINNER

Will Dale 8E

Congratulations!

In the final week of the Autumn term, Sandbach School Theatre presented Frankenstein. The play had been skilfully adapted by Andy Cargill into a timeless piece which captured the themes and morality of the original story written by Mary Shelley.

Will Bloor played ‘Creature’, the human created and abandoned by Victor Frankenstein played by Oliver Dernie. Both students captured the emotion and tension between the two characters who develop a bond of hatred and who vow to destroy each other.

The Theatre Space was transformed for the show to capture the grand scale of the story. Miss Greenwood directed a number of monologues on video to narrate the live action and physical theatre which took place on stage. The video was edited by Mr Mace into a seamless story which integrated with a musical underscore that drove the emotion of the piece. The set and stage represented the industrial revolution and the drive for scientific change with which Victor Frankenstein makes the creature.

Mr Davies was production manager and led the tech team in building and lighting a set which included four projectors, three smoke machines, two screens, a front gauze, live flame gel, a grave and live grass!

Mr Anderson, who directed the piece said ‘everybody worked incredibly hard to put this production together. The cast dedicated many hours of rehearsal to create an outstanding performance. Mrs Gaston again provided a wonderful fluid style of choreography which tied the whole piece and story together. The tech crew and creative team gave up many evenings in the week running up to the production to build and light the set and the results were amazing.’

It was a fitting end to a busy term which saw the department stage Henry V, a complex A Level performance based on the Enigma machine and the beginning of rehearsals for the Key Stage 3 Musical.

Four undergraduate Law students from the Universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol and Nottingham came in to school to talk to to the A2 and AS Law groups about their university courses and other matters such as applications procedures, clearing, funding, tips for getting those all important grades and …. university social life . This was all delivered with great enthusiasm and humour.

Feedback from students was very positive – this was an invaluable opportunity to get real insight into university life. 

We had a great assembly this morning by Britain’s Manliest Man
– RAF officer and testicular cancer survivor Flight Lieutenant Alun “Peps” Pepper 43, who visited the school to talk to the Year 10 students.

He was crowned “Britain’s Manliest Man” fighting off more than 1,000 fellow applicants to win the nationwide competition, which was organised by a men’s grooming brand, fitness magazine and cancer charity.

Alun, originally from Crewe, spoke to the students about how he became an RAF fighter pilot and the determination it took after several knock backs.  He also spoke to the boys about his testicular cancer and raised their awareness of the disease.

So far this academic year the students and staff at Sandbach School have raised over £6000 for various charities. The whole school community have taken part in Children in Need and the Text Santa Christmas Jumper day raising over £3000 on these events.  Activities included non-uniform days, fun runs and even a soak the teacher event.

Most recently Year 9 students and staff have been taking part in fund raising activities for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. This charity is close to the students’ hearts as one of their fellow year 9 students has been treated at Alder Hey.   Jack Buddle was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, a form of cancer. He was in remission but sadly after a year he was diagnosed again late last year. He has undergone treatment at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and has recently been given the all clear. However, it is his attitude that is what makes him such an inspiration. Throughout he has been determined to be in school at all opportunities, he is always positive, smiling and a role model student.

His form group decided to do a small fundraiser for him by organising a sponsored run. However, the whole year group wanted to be involved and wanted to raise as much money as possible in support of Jack. On Wednesday 9th December, his year group and staff members, undertook a sponsored run for him and trying to gain as much sponsorship as possible. They also sold #Jog4Jack wristbands to raise awareness and money.   The students raised £2150, with the cheque being presented to Cath Harding, Head of Community Fundraising at Alder Hey Children’s Charity, in assembly recently.

Alongside this, Mr Cornell and Mr Cooper undertook a 24 hour sporting challenge. They aimed to play as many sports as possible in 24 hours. The sports events included a staff versus students netball game, bowls, tennis, hockey and crazy golf around the school ending in a run. It was a tough and physically demanding challenge but one they were both keen to do to show support for Jack.  This part of the fund raising has so far raised £1,183 (with their Just Giving page still open for donations) making the total so far £3,333.

This is an amazing effort.  Congratulations to everyone involved.