The Flagpole

It’s traditional at Christmas for the College to host a soiree to showcase pupils’ wonderful music and performance skills and this year’s joyous event took place on Thursday 12 December. Hosted by Director of Music, Gil Cowlishaw, the soiree took place in a chilly College Chapel but the wonderful acts soon warmed everyone’s hearts.

The soiree saw some 30 plus acts across a range of instruments and styles, modern and traditional, some serious, some silly, but all fabulously festive and accompanied by plenty of Christmas jumpers. A huge thank you to all of the pupils and staff taking part and all who invested so many hours preparing them. Our lovely informal musical soiree offered everyone a slice of something special this Christmas time.

Our annual Christmas card competition has two winners this year with the Foundation Principal, Ed Hester, and Headmaster, Grove du Toit, both choosing designs from the many stunning entries submitted by pupils.

For the College, Mr du Toit selected, Lower Sixth Former, Héloise Clark’s super drawing featuring the iconic Princethorpe tower on a dark Christmas night. While for his Christmas card, Mr Hester chose, Year 7, Flora Patey’s striking silhouette of Mary and Joseph approaching Princethorpe under the light of the stars.

Head of Art, Paul Hubball, commented, "We had a strong field of entries this year, with plenty of original ideas, bright colours and lots of attention to detail. Both designs were worthy winners and are great choices for this year's Christmas cards."

This year, the designs have been turned into eCards supporting the Foundation's drive for sustainability. We hope everyone enjoys the gif animations of the designs.

Our congratulations also go to the Highly Commended entries, whose designs feature as cameos on the reverse of the cards: for the College card; Year 8, Rosie Russell, Year 7 Flora Patey and Lower Sixth Former, Bea Taylor and for the Foundation card; Crackley Hall's Junior Six pupil Evie and Crescent School's Year 6 pupil Lewis.  

We hosted our Christmas Science Lecture at Princethorpe College on Tuesday 10 December.

As a warm-up, families 'mulled' over a Science and Christmas themed quiz with a glass of hot spiced wine and a mince pie, whilst our Lower Sixth Formers carried out close-up demonstrations that provided plenty of excitement. Congratulations to the Frith family who won the starter challenge.

The lecture itself explored 'the revolutionary science inside our bodies when we eat' and was based on this year’s Royal Institute's Christmas Lectures. Some highlights included how flammable different powdered foods are and the digestion simulation, where volunteers from the audience were involved as two mince pies were subjected to being broken down by physical and chemical processes inside the body.

The evening concluded with an audience participation online quiz which was closely contended and tested our guests on the content of the lecture. Well done to the Wilcox-Smith family who won the Kahoot challenge. Both our winning teams received edible prizes in line with this year's theme of food.

We would like to thank parents and pupils for attending the evening and the staff and STEAM Ambassadors, Evie, Emmi, Zach, Sam, Sophie, Alex, Nika, Isabel and Ruby, who made it possible.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the Princethorpe College Science Department.

Princethorpe College’s Computer Science pupils, from Year 8 through to the Sixth Form, demonstrated their exceptional skills in the UK Bebras Computing Challenge, held at the beginning of November. The challenge, highly regarded for its emphasis on computational thinking, tasks participants with solving a variety of complex logic problems under timed conditions.

This year, an impressive 187 Princethorpe pupils from across the age groups earned recognition, with 46 achieving a ‘Merit’ and another 46 earning a ‘Distinction.’ A Princethorpe College record of 33 pupils ranked in the top 10% nationally, earning themselves a BEBRAS Gold Award, as well as an invitation to take part in the prestigious Oxford University Computing Challenge (OUCC) in March.

Additional recognition goes to Year 9 pupil, Dillon Horan, Year 11 pupil, Daniel Ovens Gibbs, and Lower Sixth student, Emile Gibrat, (pictured) who were each awarded ‘Best in School’ for their respective age groups.

Head of Computer Science, Ed Musson, shared his pride in the pupils’ achievements: “Well done to all who took part! These are superb results. This year, we entered many Year 8 pupils as well as all pupils opting for Computer Science from Year 9 onwards into the Bebras competition. We are delighted with the significant increase in the number of qualifiers for the OUCC. We’re excited to support pupils as they take on this next challenge in March.”

Our congratulations to all the participants and the best of luck to those competing in the OUCC.

The Christmas tree in the College Chapel has been lovingly decorated with carefully hand cut stars. In what has become an important Christmas tradition here at Princethorpe, the College community were invited to write the names of those who have touched their lives with love on a star. Each individual handwritten star was then carefully positioned on the tree.

The message of Christmas is one of love and the decorated Christmas tree in the Chapel is our College’s symbolic representation of that message. The many stars on the tree a testament to the presence of love in the world.

Standing outside the Chapel this year is our ‘Dove of Intergrity’ which has also been decorated beautifully with chains of brightly coloured paper Christmas trees. In their Advent Reflection, pupils in Year 7 and Year 8 were encouraged to share how they are living up to this year’s Chaplaincy theme of ‘Integrity’ by writing an example of how they have shown integrity on a miniature Christmas tree. Their thoughts were then joined together in a chain and displayed for all to see.

Our thanks go to our Year 7 pupils, including Sienna, Lucile and Sofia, who, alongside their peers, have helped with decorating our tree.

On Tuesday 10 December, the College celebrated Feast Day, honouring the date, 8 December 1854, when the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart was founded. This year is the 170th anniversary of the founding of the order so at Tutor Time pupils were treated to a legendary Princethorpe cookie. At lunchtime the school came together in the Sports Hall to give thanks and the assembly began with Father Alan Whelan MSC explaining the reasons why we observe Feast Day and reflecting on the history of the College.

That was followed by the presentation of awards for pupils receiving House Progress and Achievement Prizes for the last academic year. Then it was time for what has become an important Feast Day school tradition, the much-anticipated House Singing Competition. In turn the Houses rose to their feet to perform their House colours themed pieces. More House belted out Yellow, Benet delivered a lively Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer, Austin sang Green Green Grass and Fisher sang Mr Blue Sky.

The competition was judged by OP John Dawkins (Class of 1998) and Founder Director of Various Artist Management. A huge well done to all the staff and pupils for wholeheartedly entering into the spirit of the day. The results were for Years 7 to 10: 1st Fisher, 2nd Benet, 3rd More and 4th Austin and for Years 11 to Upper Sixth: 1st More, 2nd Benet, 3rd Fisher and 4th Austin.

Many congratulations to Year 8 pupils Emily Divers and Chloe Iley, who competed in a hotly contested Springboard Futurechef Regional Final at the Heart of Worcester College on Wednesday 4 December.

Eight future chefs from across the Midlands had qualified for the event and were tasked with producing one course in 60 minutes for a budget of just £5. Both girls had prepared thoroughly and their finished dishes were of the highest standard and beautifully presented.

The competition was fierce, with the judges complimenting the contestants for the standard and talent demonstrated and we were delighted when Emily was announced as the winner.

A huge well done to Emily and to Chloe, we are very proud of you both.

The 2024 GCHQ National Language Competition (NLC) ran from Monday 18 to Friday 22 November and over 25 of our Year 9 Princethorpe linguists gave up their break and lunchtimes, keen to become the next generation of code breakers.

The NLC is a virtual competition where teams from around the UK compete against each other to solve language-based code breaking challenges.

Over 2,000 teams participated nationwide, and the competition was fierce with pupils really putting their language skills to the test. The College had some excellent results and the MFL department was really impressed by the teamwork and dedication shown by our Princethorpe pupils. Many congratulations to all who took part.

Three of our teams made it into the top 200 an amazing achievement. Special congratulations go to:

Finishing 126th nationally - Krishan Patel, Isaac Fowle, Noah Walker and Erik Windham
Finishing 175th - Dami Ajagunna, Martha Coburn and Lucas Ross
Finishing 182nd - Isaac Frith, Drew Ovens Gibbs and Arthur Reid

Also participating were: Evie Johnson, Olivia Burley, Charles Packe, Bohdan Nicholl, Kian Thandi, Noah Thompson, Oscar Rexton-Watts, George Wilcox, Charlie Leech, Nathan Oseji, Edward Evans, Sam Eynon-Hill, Jake Mainwaring, Jake Swords, Victor Ball and Lucas Pawlowicz.

Fancy taking on the challenge yourself? Then have a go at these puzzles from the last few years’ Christmas Challenge to see the sort of problems our Year 9 sleuths solved. The GCHQ Christmas Challenge - Archive - GCHQ.GOV.UK

We hosted a Christmas book swap at Princethorpe College in the first week of December in honour of the fabulous Icelandic tradition of Jolabokaflod, in which families all exchange books on Christmas Eve. It took place in the Limes foyer at lunchtime every day and there was a wide variety of pre-loved books to choose from.

In return for donating a book, pupils were allowed to choose a new one and the book swap proved very popular. In fact, the books just flew off the table as pupils jumped at the opportunity of taking a new book home for Christmas. The books that were left over will now be donated to the Children’s Ward at Coventry Hospital.

Many thanks to all who swapped and to our Library volunteers who manned the stand. We hope you enjoy your reading everyone.

Our 2025 Princethorpe College Calendar, featuring 12 superb images of the College and its grounds is available to purchase through our online shop.

Priced at £7.50, visit Princethorpe Connect to get your order in today and enjoy fabulous photos of Princethorpe throughout 2025.