Oulder Hill Community School and Language College

Oulder Hill Community School

Oulder Hill School and Sandifords Gallery on Drake Street are joining forces this summer. Mr and Mrs Sandiford have very kindly offered the use of part of their premises to allow us to showcase our students’ art, textiles and technology work. The Exhibition is free and will feature some amazing and innovative work done by our students. If you and your children are in Rochdale over the summer holidays and want to see something different, visit the exhibition – it is a must see. The Exhibition will run from 14 July to 31 August.

We put on a ‘Space Day’ for our Year 8 Gifted and Talented students last week. They attended a space show delivered by an astrophysicist and saw a presentation about living and working in space on the ‘Space Bus’ – they even got to try some astronaut food! They then visited the inflatable planetarium for work on the solar system and a virtual tour through the history of space travel. They also got to make their own planispheres and telescopes, as well as rockets, which they launched in the Street at the end of the day. The Year 9 Gifted and Talented students had an Enterprise Day last week, which was also a fantastic experience. They designed, researched and manufactured sports badges for pupils who attend clubs in school, for them to wear next year. They really enjoyed the day and their final presentations and products were excellent. These were very informative, engaging and worthwhile events so thank you to everyone who organised it and well done to our students who took part – you got really involved and got lots out of it.

Just before half term our PE faculty took some students from Years 9 and 10 to a fantastic day out at the Paralympic World Cup Athletics in Manchester. The students were so respectful and really interested in all the events and all the athletes, especially the ‘blade runner’ Oscar Pistorius, who smashed the 400m world record whilst they were there. They also had the pleasure of watching the women’s 200m visually impaired race. The competitors ran with a ‘guide’ around the track and the winner managed to run an amazing time of 25 seconds.

The fantastic form of our Under 13 Cricket team continued last week against Hollingworth High School. Oulder Hill, batting first, gave the opposition a very competitive 101 runs to beat, however they could only manage 81. Man of the match was John Chaplin who bowled and batted superbly. The rest of the team was James Schofield, Oliver Greenwood, Faad Khan, Luke Barrett, Ellis Taylor, Bailey Smyth, Kai Creswell and Daniel Schofield.

The Under 15 team, also playing against Hollingworth, also came out victorious in what was described by staff as ‘a pulsating cricket game.’ Our lads batted first and made 112 runs from 16 overs. In reply, Hollingworth needed to score four runs off the last six bowls to win. Adam Ahmed came to the rescue and bowled a maiden over to secure the victory. He was also named man of the match for making 27 runs. Congratulations to Adam, and the rest of the delighted team, who are now in the semi-final of the Rochdale Schools’ Competition. The team in full was Sam Fitton, Daniel Buckley, Abnaan Ali, Muteen Saeed, Joe Mitchell, Robert Heath, James Schofield, Hamza Mughal, Oliver Greenwood, Adam Ahmed, Aamir Bashir and Ellis Taylor.

Finally, we bring you some news about our Key Stage 3 Art Club – some of our students from Years 7 and 8 are involved in a joint project for the Rochdale Arts Festival. It is organised by a group called ‘The Hive’ and involves creating a section of the Mona Lisa. The piece will be unveiled on the 9 of July in Rochdale town centre by the Mayor to open the art festival.