Weekly Newsletter

Bethany is a leading independent co-educational day
and boarding school for pupils aged 11-18

May 17, 2024

Headmaster’s Welcome

Dear Parents and Guardians

The lovely sunny weather of last week gave way to more changeable weather this week. That said, temperatures remain warm and it is great to see so many more pupils outside taking advantage of our campus.

This week has been a busy week for GCSE and A level examinations with nineteen of them taking place. It seems to be a case of “so far so good”, the pupils I have spoken with have been pleased with how they have performed in the various examinations to date.

The Year 9 Learn to Earn day went well yesterday and our Year 9 pupils gained a lot from the various workshops in which they participated.

The Silver Duke of Edinburgh Expedition takes place next weekend. The pupils leave on Thursday afternoon for the South Downs and finish on Saturday afternoon. I hope the weather will be kind to them.

Half term starts next Friday at 5pm.

No doubt those pupils sitting GCSE and A level examinations, as well as our Year 9 pupils, may wish to spend some of the half term break revising for their forthcoming examinations.

I spoke to the pupils this week in my weekly assembly about the merits of persistence and hard work. So it seems appropriate that I end with a quote from Thomas Edison (light bulb inventor). “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up, the most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time”. That is very good advice even if it is easier said than done.

Have a good weekend.

Francie Healy

Headmaster

Latest Bethany Blog

This week’s blog has been written by Mr Norman, Head of Design & Technology at Bethany School. He writes about how many of the skills learnt in Design & Technology are transferable to other subjects and are also so useful within our everyday lives.

Why is Design & Technology Important?

Design & Technology has always been an exciting and important subject that will help develop the future for our pupils and for their eventual careers. Employers are crying out for creative thinkers who can move their businesses forward with mental agility, logical thinking and using problem-solving as well as collaboration skills and approaches to up and coming challenges and world problems. Many skills learnt in Design & Technology are transferable to other subjects and are also so useful within our everyday lives.

At Bethany School, Design & Technology, right from the word go, gets pupils learning and experimenting with tools, machinery and equipment through many different projects which enables them to explore design and making all the way through to A Level. We have a exceptionally well equipped workshop that can be accessed not only in lessons but during most breaks and lunchtimes for all pupils in Years 7 through to 13.

CAD/CAM continues to develop within the department and many more pupils now include the use of the 3D Printer, Laser Cutter and CNC Router within their model making and prototyping.

Many pupils ask me what taking Design & Technology can lead onto as a career. The creative industries in the UK are booming and I came across a teaching resource called ‘WonderWhat?’ This is a free accessible tool for creative professionals, career advisors, teachers, looking to inspire and guide individuals with a creative career.

www.wonderwhat.co.uk

Pupils can find out what opportunities exist by tapping on images that they like and this then leads onto possible career avenues based on their preferences. Once matched to a potential chosen sector, pupils can access real-time information on salary ranges, job titles and invaluable insights and the latest news within the selected field. It is well worth looking at if you have a creative side.

I visited a design company many years ago in London called seymourpowell. The visit for me was fascinating and showed me how many different roles exist in the design industry. We were given a tour by Dick Powell (one of the owners) and he was passionate about seeing Design & Technology at the forefront of education, which of course, I agree with! He helped produce a small video which I often share with pupils here at Bethany, but I thought you might like to see it as well. It highlights why Design & Technology is such an import subject to study. I hope you agree?

Mr Norman

Head of Design & Technology

Latest Sports News

The latest sports news from Bethany School. Just the two cricket fixtures this week as our U13 teams took on Sutton Valence. The Bethany Junior swimming squad were also back in the pool as they competed in an invitational gala.

Swimming | Bethany Junior | Invitational Gala

The Bethany Junior swimming squad travelled to Dulwich, Cranbrook on Tuesday afternoon to compete in the invitational gala against Dulwich, Claremont and Marlborough House.

With a squad of twenty swimmers, the team were in good shape for the outdoor pool and 40m races. All of the team competed very well with several swimmers achieving excellent first place positions.

Lauren Baxter stormed to victory in the Year 8 fly and backstroke races, along with Harry Sweeting in the Year 7 fly and Hamish Henderson in the Year 8 breaststroke. Max Morgan claimed a debut victory with an excellent swim in the Year 8 breaststroke while Beatrice Kay also won the Year 8 breaststroke. Ciara Carniege and Isabelle Hindley also performed well, achieving placed positions, even though they were swimming up a year group.

The relay teams also performed well as Bethany finished the meet strongly with the Year 7 boys’ securing a first place finish in the medley and front crawl events and the Year 8 girls’ swimming to victory in the front crawl relay.

Cricket | Bethany U13A v Sutton Valence (away)

The Bethany U13A cricket team travelled away to Sutton Valence this week, where they won the toss and elected to bowl first.

Bethany’s bowling and fielding performance was exemplary, with the team displaying sharp fielding skills and capitalising on every opportunity that came their way. Michael St Clair Bishop starred with the ball, claiming two wickets, while Oliver Scott’s safe hands in the field resulted in two crucial catches. Bethany’s disciplined bowling and tight fielding restricted Sutton Valance to a total of 104 runs for the loss of 7 wickets.

In response, Bethany’s batting unit put on a commendable display, showing resilience and skill throughout their innings. Andrew Stubblefield provided a brilliant start, scoring 33 runs before being unfortunately run out. Max Morgan’s quickfire 29 runs injected momentum into Bethany’s innings, setting the stage for an exciting finish. Despite Sutton Valance’s strong bowling performance towards the end, Bethany remained in contention until the final over. In a valiant effort, Max Morgan and Oliver Scott fought hard, but fell short of the target by just 2 runs, ending the innings on 103 for 3.

Overall, it was an exciting and closely contested game of cricket, setting a promising tone for Bethany U13A’s season ahead.

Final score: Sutton Valence (104/7) beat Bethany (103/3) by one run

Player of the Match: Andrew Stubblefield

Coaches Player of the Match: Max Morgan

Cricket | Bethany U13B v Sutton Valence

The Bethany U13B cricket team hosted Sutton Valence this week. The visitors won the toss and chose to open the batting.

The visitors lost their their opening batsmen (LBW) fairly early on in proceedings after a great ball from Harry Jermyn. Sutton Valence’s 2^nd and 3^rd batsmen settled very quickly, both hitting various boundaries whilst amassing a respectable partnership. The visitors then decided to retire their 2^nd batsmen, shortly followed by their 3^rd. Bethany continued to ask some questions, managing to gain three more wickets before the 20 over innings was completed with Sutton Valence finishing on 123 for 4 wickets.

Bethany’s innings started slowly and the team failed to gather any real momentum and struggled to put a substantial score together. The majority of scores came from wides and singles, but the team weren’t able to penetrate the resolute Sutton Valance fielding to score any boundaries. With a slow run rate and wickets gradually falling Bethany finished with 68 runs all out.

Final score: Sutton Valence beat Bethany by 6 wickets

Pre-University Boarding Experience

After speaking to some Bethany alumni recently, we have been reminded how some of our leaving pupils struggle with going from the bubble that is Bethany, to first year university halls and fending for themselves.

Prior to Covid, the school used to have quite a few weekly/flexi boarders join in Year 13 to help provide the transition between Sixth Form and university and the independence that halls of residence requires.

In an effort to encourage pupils to look at weekly/flexi boarding as a bridging experience to university, all Year 12 pupils have the opportunity for a trial taster session on Tuesday 25^th and Wednesday 26^th June, at a subsidised cost.

Please find an itinerary for the event below.

Thursday 20^th June

During Senior Games Mr Duff will take all pupils signed up to this event to Lidl in Tovil with a combined budget of £5.00 per head to buy ingredients for the following Tuesday’s meal, plus snacks for the evening.

Tuesday 25^th June (normal School day)

8.00am – Pupils drop belongings into Karina in The Orchard

4.00pm – Karina provides pupils a master class in washing machines and ironing

5.00pm – ‘Cooking on a budget’ session with ingredients bought from Lidl. The objective: cook tomato/pesto pasta (vegetarian and meat option) in the Bethany Food & Nutrition room.

6.30pm – House meeting/registration in The Orchard common room

6.45 to 8.30pm – Supervised prep in The Orchard

8.30pm – Movie in the common room or access to gym/Sports Hall

10.00pm – Register with Orchard duty staff

10.30pm – Lights out

Wednesday 26^th June (normal School day)

8.00am – Breakfast in the School’s dining hall then normal School day

5.15pm – Meet in The Orchard common room in casual clothes for a trip to Hastings for crazy golf, fish and chips and free time. No access to beach/water for safety reasons.

8.30pm – Depart Hastings

9.30pm – Return to The Orchard, free time

10.00pm – Register with Orchard duty staff

10.30pm – Lights out

Thursday 27^th June (normal School day)

8.00am – breakfast in the School’s dining hall then normal School day

4.00pm – Remove belongings from Orchard

The cost for this event is £45.00 and is an optional taster event. The school does have enough capacity in The Orchard to accommodate all Year 12 day pupils who wish to take up the opportunity as we will be losing our Year 11 and Year 13 boarders after their last external examinations in mid-June.

If you would like your child to take part in this event, please fill in the MySchoolPortal form (link below) by Friday 24^th May to help us finalise numbers for planning purposes.

Lastly, the dorm corridors in The Orchard are strictly single sex, with a strict policy in terms of mixing only in the common areas. All Year 12 pupils would be expected to abide by all of the boarding house rules.

Mr Duff

Head of Sixth Form

Mr Davies

Housemaster, The Orchard

Year 9 Learn to Earn

This week all of Year 9 were off timetable on Thursday to receive presentations and workshops on a variety of life skills.

The topics included:

– Dreaming of a lifestyle

– Annual income v annual salary

– Budgeting for lifestyle

– What is success?

– What talent type are you?

– The cost of living

– Employability skills

– Goal setting

– Interviews with role play.

Pupils were engaged and enjoyed the day, presented by visitors from Young Enterprise. Some have certainly realised the benefit of working hard to realise their (costly!) expectations and aspirations!

Mrs Wareham

Head of Year 9 & Careers

British Culture Shock for International Pupils

One topic of the Year 10 English as an Additional Language course is that of ‘Culture Shock’ – the variety of aspects of one culture and its impact on international visitors. As part of the topic, Ms Rendall-Jones surveyed the class to see what our international pupils found to be shocking about the British.

First, the class all sampled Marmite and had to choose an appropriate adjective to describe their experience.

Surprisingly, 90% of the class used adjectives such as, “disgusting”. However, Liam, from Hong Kong, thought it was, “delicious”!

Then, pupils were asked to write about their examples of Culture Shock. All of the class felt that British food was a big area of culture shock. There were a lot of comments about how different the food was here from their own countries.

Gabi, from Hungary, remarked: British gastronomy is different from other countries, it is either you like it or you don’t. Beans on toast is not very popular in other countries in the world and the British have an obsession with tea. I find that a bit unusual to drink multiple cups of tea on a daily, especially with milk!

Aragorn agrees with Gabi about beans, particularly for breakfast: I don’t know why British people like eating baked beans for breakfast, it is the weirdest food for breakfast. It is just beans and tomato sauce combined. In my culture I eat congee for breakfast.   Tin of Baked Beans

Liam had an interesting perspective about our food before arriving in the UK: I used to always hear about how good and expensive the steaks are in the UK, making me think British people always have steaks in their dining time. However, it turns out that I was totally wrong!

However, for Mathilde it is what we don’t eat for our meals that she has found surprising: What I miss the most about home is French cheese and French baguettes. In France we eat this at every meal. Here, for dairy products we only drink milk, and never seems to eat cheese.

Zaiwei also missed food from China: The British culture is really different than China. For food, the Chinese people usually eat something made from flour, like noodles and dumplings.

For Alba, from Spain, it is the times of meals that are shocking: The thing that impacted me the most was the time we eat. During the week I have breakfast at 7:30am, then I eat around 12:55pm and finally I have dinner just after school finishes, at 5:30pm. In Spain, I have breakfast at the same time, because my school also starts at 8:30am, then I eat a little bit later, at 13:30pm and finally I have dinner at 9pm. What I find the most difficult is the dinner because I usually do some exercise after it so when I finish I’m very hungry. In my country, when we arrive from school we have a little snack to have energy for the whole afternoon and then at 9pm we have dinner.

Other aspects of our culture were surprising for Tim, from China: I arrived in the UK in 2022. Since then, I have found these British cultural traditions to be unusual. For example, the food they eat, the way they name things, and the terms they use all the time, like ‘cheers mate’.

Jiawei is happy that: British people are friendly to the strangers.

For Gabi, our conversation choices are unusual: British people always talk about the weather; even with someone they don’t know, they could start talking to them about the weather and use it to start a conversation.

There were many differences between Bethany and school in their countries. Inigo is delighted with the fact that Bethany has: longer breaks and more activities such as Enrichment, FoodTec, DT, Games, Music, Swimming and PSHCE.

And Jiawei likes the fact that: School in Britain has less pressure than China. We don’t have a lot of prep to do, that makes me feel much better than when I’m in China.

Going to and from Bethany at the end of term, Aragorn observes: The trains here don’t work very well. Sometimes the train gets delayed, or they just get cancelled most of the time, making travelling very difficult for me. In Hong Kong trains do not have as many delays as the UK. 

Average age of British passenger trains is 21, study says - BBC News

A final word about Culture Shock from Mathilde:

And one last thing, why do you eat potatoes at EVERY meal? 

Joshua To Perform At ‘Come Alive’

Joshua, Year 8 at Bethany School, will be performing at ‘Come Alive’ with DNC Academy, who he has danced with for 6 years.

The event is a collaboration of local artists & talent. This is the fifth year The Rotary Club of Tenterden are hosting ‘COME ALIVE’, a Variety Performance featuring local dance schools, cheer leaders, choirs and much more to raise money for local and international charities!

It sounds like a great event, all the best Joshua!

Year 7 Spoken Language Competition

Pupils in Year 7 DLS groups have worked hard in recent weeks to prepare a two-minute speech on an interesting topic of their choice. Each pupil then delivered their talk in front of an audience. The final part of the task was to read a 200-word extract with fluency and expression.

The standard was exceptionally high, and the pupils worked hard, often stepping outside of their comfort zone, to deliver speeches and readings that were engaging and clearly expressed.

During assessment, the pupils were involved in marking the work of their peers and, it is to everyone’s credit, that the marks were awarded fairly and thoughtfully.

In the end, both pupils and teachers agreed with the following results:

First Prize was awarded to Harry K who talked about VR headsets;

Second Prize went to Rollo J who enthusiastically shared his experience of running;

Third Prize was jointly awarded to Darcey S, Daniel S and Millie F.

Pupils who were Highly Commended were: Callum R, Raff M, Henry H and Oliver S.

Mrs Healy

DLS Department

Inter-Tutor Group Football Tournament

This Thursday we reached the final week of the inaugural Year 8 Inter-Tutor Group football competition. The week started in disappointing fashion as Tuesday’s fixtures were rained off. The pools panel sat in adjudication and awarded each team a point. This was of no consequence, as our avid readers will be aware, because the finalists were already decided after last Thursday’s fixtures.

And so on to the final, held on Thursday. The crowd was at fever-pitch for this meeting of Mrs Mewett’s and Mr Davies’ Tutor Groups, with the latter a slight favourite after their unbeaten regular season.

Like the group stage game between these two teams, the final was a cagey affair decided by a single goal. Once again it was Mr Davies’ group which prevailed, thanks – once again – to a winning goal scored by Max Morgan, who took his total for the tournament to a remarkable seven goals in five games. Mrs Mewett’s group had opportunities to score but couldn’t take them, and in the end it would be fair to say that the tournament’s strongest team emerged as champions.

Mr Clough’s security team delivered the enormous trophy and wild celebrations ensued, although the champagne quickly had to be put on ice again as period 1 beckoned.

Well done especially to the winning team – Max Morgan, Isaac Lord, Harry Russell and Gus Tuson – but also to all of the Year 8 tutor groups who made the tournament such fun; next week sees the start of the Year 7 version.

Prayer Request

In addition to the prayer group which meets as per the message below – If you would like the chaplain to pray for you or for someone you know, you can send your prayer requests to him using the link below and he will include them in his prayers for the school. All submissions are anonymous and won’t be seen by anyone other than the chaplain.

Submit a Prayer Request Form

Prayer Group

Upcoming Events

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Visit us

Be at Bethany

Finding your brave in a book: Thriving not Surviving

Year 7 Visit Juniper Hall

Science National Challenge Success

Why is Design & Technology Important?

Double Young Enterprise Success at Kent County Final

Raff and Gabi to Appear in Turner Contemporary