One of the great highlights of the NSB calendar is our annual Year 9 'Find your Voice Challenge Cup'. Oracy is a discrete lesson in the Year 9 curriculum and the Finals evening showcases some of the school's best orators. Oracy Lead, Miss Bason reports: 

This Monday, we witnessed the third NSB Find Your Voice Challenge, an inspiring event that showcased the incredible oracy skills of our students. The evening featured a panel of esteemed guest judges and speakers, including Saints coach Sam Vesty, Henry Dunn - an inspiring public speaker and adaptive CrossFit athlete and Leonie-Jane Walker, a former NSB student now working for Northampton Police.

The night was filled with a diverse range of speeches, each delivered with passion and confidence. After much deliberation from the judges, the results were as follows:

3rd Place – Nazar Kisilov: War in Ukraine
2nd Place – Hussain Quereshi: Smiling is Contagious
Winner – Freddie Love: Inspirational People (awarded the Morcea Walker Cup)

Freddie Love truly wowed the judges with his speech about the inspirational people in his life, including a heart-felt reference to his own mum.

This truly was an amazing evening, where our Year 9 students demonstrated exceptional speaking skills. A huge thank you to all the staff involved, our guest judges, Morcea Walker, and of course, the incredible students who presented their speeches!

 

On Tuesday, the 1911 building was a thriving hive of activity thanks to our Employment and Opportunities Evening for students from Years 11-13. Huge thanks to our Careers Team of Mrs Howard, Mrs Hinton, Miss Harvey, Mrs Tilley, Miss Rickaby and Mrs Greenaway and to all the visiting organisations for putting such a brilliant event together. Careers Lead for the school, Miss Rickaby reports:

On Tuesday, the Careers Team hosted the annual Employment and Opportunities Evening, and it was a huge success. We had over 70 exhibitors from accountancy, law, sports management, engineering, logistics, architecture, healthcare and construction to name but a few of the industries who joined us. Universities from up and down the country were also in attendance. It was wonderful to see so many NSB alumni joining us too, from Airbus, Telford Mann, Sepura, Bedfordshire Police, TC Group and Matchroom Boxing.

The event is a real highlight in our Careers calendar, and it was fantastic to observe so many meaningful conversations and 'lightbulb' moments in the discussions that students were having with exhibitors and our careers advice team. 

 

Our Maths results at GCSE and A Level are amongst the very best in the country and we have some incredibly gifted mathematicians throughout all year groups. Two teams of students have recently taken part in the 'National Maths Challenge' and 'Northants Maths Feast' respectably. Team Manager for both events, Miss Crooke reports:

Maths Challenge

On Friday 14th March (pi day, very aptly!), a group of Year 8 and 9 students (pictured below: Christopher Orekoya, Rizwan Khan, William Lotz and Tristan Marusinski) represented the school in the regional UKMT Team Maths Challenge.  The team performed phenomenally across the four rounds - including an impressive perfect score in the first two.  The team finished in a close second place behind Warwick School, narrowly missing out on the National Finals.  A massive well done to the students involved, and best of luck to them for the upcoming 'Grey Kangaroo' round of the Intermediate Maths Challenge! The four boys represented the school immaculately and multiple teachers from other schools commented on how polite and intelligent they were. I couldn't have asked for a better team!

Maths Feast

On Wednesday 19th March, NSB was very proud to host this year's Northants Maths Feast, welcoming top Maths students from 7 of the local schools to compete in a morning of fun and challenging Maths problems.  NSB submitted two teams, both of which performed superbly and made the school very proud.  A particularly big well done goes to Zakk Carpenter, Haolin Yu, Yixuan Chen and Kavish Raagavan who, as a team, ended up taking first place!

A massive thank you as well to the Year 12 students who helped support the teams and who ensured the day ran smoothly, the competing participants were very grateful for their help!

 

Our U18 netballers enjoyed a fantastic win this week in the Caroline Chisholm Charity Cup - Miss Harvey reports:

The NSB Netball First VII were invited to play at Caroline Chisholm School's inaugural charity netball tournament on Monday. The girls played hard and came away victorious in every one of their matches. Some highlights of the tournament included fantastic defending from Amelie Andrews and Holly Pheasant, and a stellar centre pass intercept from Erin Mclaggan, in her first team debut. 

 

Year 12 student, Amber Haycock,  has been selected for the Aquatics GB para-swimming World Class Programme for the 2025 season.  Amber has been classed as a podium potential level athlete which is defined as an athlete possessing genuine potential to make the GB team at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic or Paralympic Games.

This is an exceptional achievement for Amber and her name appears in the announcement on the Aquatics GB website alongside some other world class performers:

Paris champions among 2025 Aquatics GB para-swimming World Class Programme list

Huge congratulations also to Year 12 students, Hugh Shields and Jack Lewis who have been selected (a year young!) for England's U18 Six Nations Squad with fixtures to be played in April.

 

We were delighted to see that former NSB Sportsman of the year (2022) - Ed Smith has been lighting up the British Universities Cycle Track. Ray White - Ed's former Indoor Rowing Coach at the school reports on a fantastic British title win for him:

After sporting success at NSB in rugby, indoor rowing and athletics, Edward tried track cycling at Bath University. He instantly found an affinity with the sport, and through numerous weight training and track sessions he increased his strength, speed and power to begin racing at a competitive level.

This year, Edward has competed at the British Cycling Track Nationals and BUCS (British Universities and Colleges Sport Championships).

At the Nationals he competed in the Individual Sprint, Team Sprint and Kierin events.

In the sprint, Edward was drawn against Matt Richardson (Olympic Silver medalist) in the last 16. Although beaten, he acquitted himself well, and to ride against an Olympian was an experience never to forget.

At the BUCS Championships, Edward set the quickest flying 200m in the Open Sprint. He progressed through the rounds to make it to the final. In the best of three rides, Edward had to overcome a narrow loss to a Loughborough Uni rider in the first ride. However, in the second and third rides he made no mistake by under-cutting his opponent to lead out the last lap sprint to secure the Gold Medal and become British Universities Champion. The video can be seen here:

Our Indoor Rowing Team are waiting somewhat anxiously today for the results of the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships which will come out at 5pm today. The event permits junior rowers from across the country to submit times (with evidence) throughout the week up until the 5pm deadline - we are very hopeful of a trove of medals, including Gold - results will be reported through our Sports Social Media feeds and in this Bulletin next week! 

We have some monumental National Cup fixtures today, with the Year 8 A Team footballers taking on Fulham Boys School at home in the U13 National Cup Semi-Finals (Round 9), the Basketball U16 team taking on St Lukes from Devon in the Quarter Finals of their National Cup and the U18 Water Polo team who are competing in their National Cup Final in Watford. Please look out for the results on our sports social media accounts.

 

Finally, our musicians are very much looking forward to the opportunity to show off their talents this weekend at the Music for Youth Regional finals which are being held here at NSB in the Cripps Hall Theatre. Entry is free and you can see when the NSB groups are on via this timetable:

Saturday 22nd March

16:15pm - Brass Quintet

19:30pm - Metalworks

Sunday 23rd March

10:30am - Symphonic Winds

11:00am - Bodhran Bodhran

11:30am - Big Bad

14:15pm - Sax Pistols

16:00pm - Symphony Orchestra

16:30pm - Molto Teso

 

 

Richard Bernard
Headteacher