Before the end of the term, we came together to honour the remarkable achievements of our students in our Celebration Assembly. This serves as an occasion to spotlight the dedication, talent and hard work from students, both in and out of school. From academic triumphs to artistic accomplishments and athletic prowess to community contributions, we are thrilled to shine a spotlight on the achievements that make our students unique.
Head’s Awards
Head’s Awards are given for exceptional performances both inside and outside of school. Congratulations to the following students:
Evie C (S5) volunteered her Saturday to spend time talking to and touring the Class of 1983 around school for their reunion. She was confident and personable, she made their day – a fantastic example of a modern OHS pupil! Thank you, Evie.
Iphigenie T (S4) organised a successful Classics Conference. She also showed incredible bravery. The first speaker had to pull out at the very last minute and Iphigenie, completely unphased, volunteered to give her ERP presentation instead, in front of 40 people and 9 other schools who were joining online. Not only did she have the bravery and the ‘get-up-and-go’ to give a fascinating talk on Antonia the Younger but also answered questions from the audience. She stepped into the breach and rescued a difficult situation. A complete star!
Sheena Y (8S) successfully auditioned for a place in the viola section of the National Children’s Orchestra, and has been placed in the under 13s orchestra. Congratulations, Sheena.
Teresa L (S5), Hebe W (S7), Tashika A (11G) and Dora C (11S) for achieving a Certificate of Distinction, the highest level, in the Mathematical Olympiad for Girls.
Eva C (S2), Amelie L (S3), Grace M (S2), Heidi P (S7) and Emma R (S4) for organising and delivering a fantastic Politics conference on Brexit.
Noraca C (S6) and Chloe W (S7) for planning and delivering a really informative and moving assembly to the whole school to mark Remembrance Day. You impressed us with the amount of research and effort that went into preparing for the assembly. Well done!
Emily C in Year 11 has become Number 1 in Britain for Girls U17 Squash, winning at the British Championships. Emily is currently ranked number 16 in UK women’s squash and is ranked number 93 internationally. Emily has been an inspiration to her peers as she has helped set up the first OHS squash team and has been a driving force, encouraging and coaching the team throughout.
Polly L in Year 8 contributed and performed in a Drama A level devising piece based on the folk tale of King Thrushbeard. Polly is to be highly praised for her talent, commitment and conscientiousness throughout all rehearsals through to the performance night.
Rosalind A (S8), Sophia B (S3), Gabi P (S1) and Jasmine S (S4) for delivering their Extended Project Research presentation to Year 11 students as part of their Sixth Form Taster Day. You were a great ambassador for academic rigour and agile thinking, and for the pleasure that extended research brings.
Hannah P (S2), whose dramatic talents were commended by Stepping Stones Performing Arts Company, which resulted in Hannah taking up extended work experience with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Gabi P (S1) receives a Head’s Award for gaining the Certificate of Merit, the highest level, in the Andrew Jobbings Senior Kangaroo.
Sophia K’s (7O) efforts in gymnastics continue as she recently took part in two high-profile competitions. At the National Group League Finals, in Wigan, Sophia competed as part of an Espoir group, level 3. Her group performed 2 routines: free (without an apparatus) and with hoops. They scored gold in both, becoming national champions in their category.
Beatrice B (10H), Charlotte C (9O), Amelie L (9S), Ella M (9G), Isla S (9O) and Bianca Z (9H) for competing in the Cross Country National Finals. This included all the schools in England which had also qualified from their Region to compete. The girls all ran fantastically to finish in 14th place as a team. Well done all, some fantastic running and a credit to OHS.
Cecily W (S1) Represented England in U17 football age group.
Eva C (S2) and Emma R (S4) for planning and delivering Oxford High School’s first Celebrate Your Culture Day. It was a great idea and a really successful event.
Hannah P (S6) and Cass W (S6) for editing this term’s OWLS articles so professionally.
Naomi C (S4) and Alice J (S6) who put in a huge amount of effort and showed impressive resilience in their perseverance to organise the Ceilidh in aid of GoMAD.
Tanya N (S4) has auditioned successfully to join the National Youth Concert Band. This is the UK’s flagship band for young woodwind, brass and percussion players, and is made up of some of the best young musicians in the country.
Maria Clara S (8S) travelled to Spain to compete in the Ten Pro tennis tournament at the Rafa Nadal Academy, playing against top juniors from across Europe. She won 5/8 matches in the round-robin event, placing 19th in the U12 category and 9th in the U13 category. A fantastic achievement.
Alicia Q (8H), Avani S (8H) and Aneesa Z (8H) (Team It_Ain’t_Rocket_Science) worked extremely hard for the 10 days of the CyberFirst Girls Competition, cracking codes, decrypting messages, and solving coding puzzles. They not only came first among all independent schools, but were the top team of the 3608 that entered from around the country.
Aadya V (9S), Taisia K (9D), Maria Clara S (8S) and Aneesa Z (8H) for competing in the U13 LTA National Schools tennis team competition and finishing 3rd in the division 1 regional finals, which meant finishing in the top 12 schools nationally.
Jessica S (11H) for giving a talk at the Oxfordshire Youth Chemistry conference on the topic of Hydrothermal vents and LUCA (last universal common ancestor).
Leo P (11H) and Mathilda K (11H) for winning Best Paper at the Oxfordshire Youth Chemistry Conference with their paper “How To Scan a Planet: A Chemical Analysis of Ganymede and its Applications to Interplanetary Exploration and Migration”.
Yumna Z (11O) presented at the Oxfordshire Youth Chemistry Conference on the topic of Extra-terrestrial atmospheric bio-signatures and Raman Spectroscopy.
Cass W (S6) entered the John Locke Institute Philosophy essay competition and wrote an essay answering the question ‘In what sense are you the same person today as you were when you were 10 years old?’. Cass considered the philosophy of what it means to be a person who thinks and feels. There were over 19,000 submissions and Cass’ essay was awarded a commendation for being an outstanding submission. Cass attended the award ceremony at the Sheldonian Theatre earlier in the term.
Oxfordshire’s Young Scientists of the Year Awards 2023
The Young Scientists of the Year Awards took place in November, with three Year 13 students nominated for their dedication to the sciences both within and beyond the curriculum. Well done to Emma L, Gabi P and Rafael I.
Cotswold Wildlife Park 2023 Photo Competition
As part of the Year 8 trip to the Cotswold Wildlife Park for Kaleidoscope day on Tuesday 17th October, students had the opportunity to enter a photo competition. The judges (Miss Steer, Miss Barbour, and Mr Pelling) were so impressed by the quality of entries. It was a very difficult decision to narrow down and decide on an overall winner and two runners up. 9 students were also highly commended for their fantastic photographs.
Runners-up included Alice G, for an excellent behaviour shot that captured the liveliness of the red pandas, and Lily C, for her fantastic shot that captured the close-up detail of a lemur. But the winner is… Milly K for her superb attention to detail.
French Spelling Bee
Over the last few weeks, the Year 8 students studying French have all taken part in a spelling bee competition. With one minute to spell a maximum number of words (with accents, dashes, and spaces), the students did fantastically.
This year we had twelve students taking part in the final on Thursday 30th November 2023. With an excellent score of 20 words spelled correctly, Sophia T won the competition and the prize of a beautiful Le Petit Prince book. Yalan F came second with 15 words and Linzi C was third with 14 words.
Poet in the Hat 2023
We had a huge number of poems entered for our National Poetry Day competition on the theme of Refuge. Well done all entrants!
Commendations
Tessa G (S3) for ‘talking with God in a Starbucks on Saturday’.
Eylul K (10S) for ‘Our place at the end of Clemence Street’.
Matilde-Iris R (7O) for ‘Wasp’.
Chloe W (S7) for ‘Uproot’.
Highly Commended
Mary L (10S) for ‘Y si yo hablo de casa’.
Sophia G (S1) for ‘O Antonio’.
OHS Poet in the Hat 2023
Esther K (S4) for ‘Requiem for Gwen’.
Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry 2023
Sir Stephen Harold Spender, CBE, was a 20th Century English poet, novelist and essayist. Every year, OHS enters this competition, which was established in 2004. It is a wonderful way to combine the joy of translation with discovering foreign poetry. To enter the competition, students (and staff) have to translate a poem of their choice from any language into English. They also have to write a commentary about their work.
In July 2023, OHS entered 27 students and staff into the competition, which is twice as many entries as last year. Their work represented 16 different languages, also twice as many as last year (all those taught at school, as well as languages such as Polish, Arabic and old English).
Congratulations to the following students and staff for receiving a highly commended award:
The Ukrainian Spotlight strand of the competition is awarded to Lena Z (Year 11)
The Teacher Laureate Prize is awarded to Mrs Liebrecht (French).
And finally, as one of the three winners in the Key Stage 5 Category of the Stephen Spender Prize Tilly M (Year 13).