On Wednesday 9 May 2012, Kingsbury High School pupils visited the Olympic Park to watch the UK’s best young athletes compete at the Olympic Stadium, race around the Velodrome and swim at the Aquatics Centre as the Olympic Park hosted the final day of the Sainsbury’s 2012 School Games.

Sainsbury’s 2012 School Games is a multi-sport event for 1,600 elite young athletes. During this three day event, competition took place in badminton, fencing, gymnastics, hockey, judo, road cycling, rugby 7s, table tennis, volleyball and wheelchair basketball in London venues.

[information & image provided by Mr Gibson]

This will enable us to showcase our hopes for the future while answering any questions
you may have. The evening will take the form of a drop in session where prospective plans
will be displayed and a team from Goals plc and the School will be on hand to answer your
questions. There is no set presentation and you can come at a time convenient to you.

The new Centre will comprise six five-a-side football pitches, two seven-a-side pitches
together with a sports pavilion and parking. Although this development will be built primarily as a soccer facility, we intend to use it as a multi-sports complex for our students providing a range of activities on these flexible all-weather surfaces. Our aim throughout has been to enhance significantly our sporting facilities allowing us to transform part of a rutted, waterlogged and underutilised playing field to an outstanding sports facility that will provide a range of high quality sporting opportunities for ourselves, other schools and the local community.

We are sure you will be as excited as us about the opportunities it will bring and look forward to seeing you on 30 May.

On Wednesday 02 May 2012, Year 10 ‘adiStar’ Young Ambassador students, Alisha Dhillon and Samad Rizvi, organised a workshop to upskill a new tier of ‘Bronze Ambassadors’ students from primary schools.

The role of a Young Ambassador involves increasing participation in school sport and PE, promoting active and healthy lifestyles and spreading the word of the Olympic and Paralympic values of, Personal excellence, Respect, Friendship, Inspiration, Determination, Courage and Equality.

Students from Kingsbury Green Primary School, Roe Green Junior School and Oliver Goldsmith Primary School attended the workshop. The students will be holding assemblies and competitions in their schools to help inspire others to take part.

[text by Ms High; photographs by Camille]

Year 9 students, Jai Ramchandani and Sahil Kotecha, represented Kingsbury High School at the Financially Speaking Final held at Bridewell Hall in Fleet Street on Tuesday 24 April 2012. The students were selected out of 30 Year 9 students by members of Speakers Trust at an event held at the school earlier last term. Kingsbury High School was the only Brent school invited to take part and was only one of 2 from schools north of the river. The students acquitted themselves extremely well.

The judging panel included:

- Paul Lewis, Personal Finance Journalist & Broadcaster
- Hugh Pym, Chief Economics Correspondent for the BBC
- Liz Ambekar, Director of Finance for The Eve Appeal
- Paul Warren, Bursar for Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge
- Franca Rofe, Corporate Affairs, Citi
- Alex Palfreman, Financially Speaking Winner 2011, St Bonaventure’s Comprehensive Catholic School, Newham

Out of the 20 schools, 10 places were awarded at the end of the event of which Jai took 5th place.

A video of Jai’s speech will be available for viewing on the Speakers Trust YouTube channel in the next few days.

[information provided by Ms Woodrow & Mr Das; Photographs by Tony Preece & provided by Speakers Trust]

On Friday the 23rd of March, six Kingsbury High School students attended the 2012 Deutsche Bank Debate Mate Cup Competition at London School of Economics. The students were selected by Law undergraduate mentors’ of Kings College University, London.

The Deutsche Bank Debate Mate Cup is a competition run by a charity organisation known as Debate Mate. Every week mentors come along to train and gear Kingsbury High School students to develop their oracy skills so that they can take part in national competitions such as the Deutsche Bank Debate Mate Cup and the Urban Debate League. The competitions involve nearly a hundred schools who are encouraged to challenge each other in debates.

Kingsbury High School students worked extremely hard to prepare for the event, which involved three debate rounds. Out of the three rounds, students were provided with one pre-released motion and the other two were revealed 15 minutes prior to the debate. Students were up against a new team from a different school in each round.

The motions were challenging with statements such as: ‘This House believes that the UK should intervene militarily in Syria’. Within a short period of time and intense pressure the Key Stage 3 Debate Club team were able to come out successfully from 2 of the 3 debates. They all worked very hard to gain support for their point of view and to engage their peers in serious discussions about issues that affect us all.

At the end of the day and after many live performances, students left with precious advice from judges who professionally take part in debating competitions from all around the world.

[text provided by Ms Salmah; image provided by Ben McNelly, Programme Director, Debate Mate]

For each round, students had to prepare for a pre-released motion and on the day, two debate rounds took place. Out of the two, one of the motions was pre-released and the second debate would be a blind one. Students performed brilliantly, throwing their powerful thoughts out to the audience with conviction and force. The judges placed both teams which were representing Kingsbury High School Debate Club at the top.

Students now have one more round to take part in and are currently in training for the grand final which will take place at the House of Lords. The students are very excited about the prospect of performing at such a prestigious venue.

[information provided by Ms Salmah]

When you’re learning a foreign language, why is vocabulary like Lego? That was the question put to Year 7 as they prepared to enter the Vocab Express National Championship – a vocabulary-learning competition which took place in March.

The answer is that vocabulary is like the building blocks of a language: with more words you can build better sentences and express yourself more creatively.

Over 90 pupils from Year 7 put this into practice by rising to the challenge the week-long contest, competing against schools from across the country to see who could learn the most new words in a week. Thanks to their determination and excellent effort, Kingsbury came 6th in the national Medio Challenge Cup.

There were some excellent individual performances: Parag Pindoria, Ritik Patel, Nikhil Shikotra, Abarathan Jeevaraj and Nikita Shikotra all scored more than 10,000 points. The school’s top scorer was Hasibullah Ghulamhaidar in 7G, who scored 28,215 – putting him in the top 25 in the country for his score in German. Congratulations on this excellent achievement!

[text by Mr N Jenkins; photograph by Camille]

On Kingsbury High School’s Aim Higher Day on Wednesday 18 April 2012, former students volunteered to come back to school to give the current intake a personal insight into both university life and pursuing a successful career….

Pictured are:
Back row: Layla Hantouli and Chirag Kumar
Third row: Lauren Long, Trusha Raval, Sheena Evans, Valerie Mussi-Braojos & Suraj Gosai
Second row: Vascliff Fuller (V.A.S.), Geoffrey Yussouf & Fatima Ali
Front row: Mahamed Hashi & Louis Cheshire

[text by Matt Price; photo by Steve/Jo]

Up-and-coming producer, singer, rapper, dancer and former Kingsbury High School student who goes by the name of V.A.S. has returned to the school to film his latest music video called Butterfly.

Taken from his album ‘The Chronicles Of Chilby’, Butterfly is a song about a teenage crush. The video was directed by Raheem Bakare and produced by V.A.S. himself. The 22 year-old from North West London says “The video shows a unique and cheeky character put together with a catchy chorus that everyone just won’t be able to get out of their heads.”

V.A.S. recognises the importance of being a positive role model to young people, not only through his music, but also through motivational talks at High Schools and through his work with youth focused organisations such as Nutmeg Community.

V.A.S. recently visited Kingsbury High School to talk to students about his education, music, ambitions and to inspire students to follow their dreams. V.A.S. exhibits his determination and will to succeed in a positive way and reiterates this to young people. He says “one of the reasons I don’t swear in my songs is that first of all my mother would kill me, but also the older generation will not take you seriously and the younger generation will think it’s okay and it isn’t.”

V.A.S. says his inspiration for Butterfly was “remembering how it feels to have a crush on someone and the feeling of having that first crush in school where you start smiling just because the girl you like is there, forgetting about football, computer games, cars and everything else.” V.A.S. however, didn’t forget about his education and after leaving Kingsbury High School five years ago, went on to graduate from Middlesex University with a 2.1 honours degree in Business & Economics.

Butterfly was released on Monday 09th April 2012 and is available to buy on itunes.

[text & photographs by Camille]

Congratulations to the Year 8 football team who became Brent Champions after beating Preston Manor 7-2 in the final in March.