THE SKINNERS’ SCHOOL Newsletter – October 2015

Headmaster’s introduction

As Term 2 gets underway, a look at some of the highlights of what has happened so far since we returned to school in early September. As debates continue about the merits of grammar schools, of single sex education, of the impact of smartphones on academic attainment, of the danger of inadequate school diets, it is pleasing to see that the students at Skinners’ just get on with it, in and out of the classroom. Furthermore, whilst some significant employers intimate that they will look more at ‘character’ than A level results when recruiting students, it is also good to see that boys here do character in buckets. Learning outside the classroom is as critical as ever, so thank you very much to those staff who arrange such a rich co-curricular programme. Indeed, as the term finished, Year 11 geographers were in Sicily, Year 13 historians were in Germany, the CCF were on Field Day and Year 7 were completing three nights camping and learning bush craft skills. More on those trips in the next newsletter. In the meantime, enjoy this taste of the achievements of the entire school community.

Edward Wesson

Chae Macdonald-Gay is pictured above, left, with Adam Ball, Kent cricketer and former captain of England U19s., at Lord’s Cricket Ground where he receive his Young Leaders in Cricket Award. The Programme is open to people aged between 14 and 16 and offers a complete training programme to include a Young Leaders Cricket Coaching Award, an introduction to umpiring and scoring, a course in groundsmanship and training in basic First Aid. The event closed with a tour of Lord's Cricket Ground for the Young Leaders. The Mayor and Mayoress of Tunbridge Wells assisted the Tour Guides as chaperones for these tour parties.

CHAE IS A ‘YOUNG LEADER IN CRICKET’

A group of Year 11 students is pictured at the ‘Physics at Work’ Exhibition at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratories. This was a fantastic experience which allowed them to see what a career in both Physics and Engineering has to offer. We spent the morning having a look around the city followed by a tour of Fitzwilliam College. Here the boys were shown round the accommodation and given an insight into the application process for Cambridge. We also attended six different seminars on the current research at the University. These ranged from Semiconductor Physics to Earth Sciences and how scientists are searching for oil.

Rob Hardy

Lower Sixth Biologists enjoyed a day of total immersion in their subject at the end of the summer. The day began with a talk from a University of Sussex PhD student, Aimee Eckert, on the Genetics of Cancer. This talk allowed us to gain an insight into the laboratory work Aimee undertakes on a daily basis. A highlight of the talk was the extraction of DNA from a strawberry, which showed us some basic practical skills needed in the industry. If you look at the picture of the specimen tube (left) you can see the DNA Aimee extracted as white strands above the Strawberry pulp. Later Dr Bryce Dyer explained his role in the success of Team GB's Paralympic team. Dr Dyer has worked with many athletes, creating lower limb prostheses made out of cutting edge materials. He also explained the importance of aerodynamics, in cutting valuable seconds for the athletes during races. His many experiences included work with Oscar Pistorius and Chris Froome. In the afternoon we undertook a practical revolving around Daphnia, living water fleas. We studied the specimens under microscopes, looking at their anatomy in detail. After locating the heart, we investigated the effects of ethanol on the heart rate and tabulated the results. Additionally we fed the Daphnia with a yeast suspension, and followed the intricate feeding pattern through their colourless bodies. Overall this day was a huge success, with everyone enjoying themselves! Thank you to our two speakers, and Miss Montoya and the rest of the Biology department for organising this day.

Max Bennett

Marcos and Andreas Purse are pictured representing Guatemala in the RS Feva World Championship in Travemunde, German. They achieved second place in the Bronze fleet, comprising 53 boats. In addition Marcos was featured in the promotional video for the RS Tera World Championship in Bruinesse, The Netherlands.

Backed by the Government and the business community, The Student of the Year Awards is a UK-wide, annual programme which recognises students who burst with talent, achieve outstanding results give back to their school or college and their community. Working with every secondary school and FE college in the UK, almost 5,000 institutions, The Student of the Year Awards holds up examples of young people’s excellence and shows the public talented individuals they can be proud of. Skinners’ students won three of the 8 awards on offer, a huge recognition of their outstanding qualities.

SKINNERS’ STUDENTS WIN STUDENT OF THE YEAR AWARDS

James Dean (left) won in the category of Arts, Design and Creativity. Fraser McDonald Lister (centre) won in the Leadership category and Conrad Will won in the Inspiration Category. A special mention too for Theo Merchant who was shortlisted for English.

The Sixth Form was enthralled and challenged in September by renowned philosopher of religion, Dr Peter Vardy. The lectures examined the relationship between and religion and the history of hostility and compatibility that has prevailed for centuries between the two discourses. Vardy presented Aristotle’s assertion that the universe had no beginning and will have no end, then moved on to Isaac Newton who saw the earth as a sphere in orbit around the sun within an empty space that extended uniformly in all directions to immeasurably large distances. In his Principia Mathematica (1687) Newton showed, through a series of mathematical proofs, that the motion of the planets could be explained by "universal gravitation", a principle which applied equally to all bodies in the universe. Newton asserted the equivalent material nature of all bodies within the solar system. Vardy then noted that until 1928, when Einstein learned of Edwin Hubble’s observations, which suggested an expanding universe, he assumed that the universe exists in a steady state. He imported the so-called cosmological constant (Λ), a consistent value for the energy density of the vacuum of space, in order to make his calculations on relativity yield a static universe, such as fitted the scientific paradigm of the time. Being within this paradigm made Einstein reluctant to engage with Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven, who was the first person to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe. Vardy then explained that by the mid-1960s further observational evidence had emerged which confirmed what came to be known as the “Big Bang

Theory”. Edwin Hubble’s observations had proved that (1) all objects observed in deep space are found to have a Doppler shift (red-shift) observable relative velocity to Earth, and to each other; and (2) that this Doppler-shift- measured velocity, of various galaxies receding from the Earth, is proportional to their distance from the Earth and all other interstellar bodies. Dr. Vardy added that in 1964 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered evidence for the Big Bang while measuring Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation and testing the predictions made by Alpher and Herman back in 1948.

Kevin A. O’Brien

Head of Religion & Philosophy

Philosopher Peter Vardy Challenges Skinners’ Minds

Josh Wakeling completed the dry slope skiing season with a fine third place finish in the U14 LSERSA race at Brentwood last month. This means that he has finished second overall in London and the South East in his age group for the season - a superb achievement.

SPORTS SUCCESSES

David Fullbrook, pictured left in the blue vest,

competed for the Kent Junior Boys’ Pentathlon

team at the English Schools Combined Events

Championships at Bedford International Stadium

on 20th September. The Kent team came 4th overall.

Considering this is his first year competing in the

pentathlon, this was a great success and one David

hopes to build on in the future.

Joshua was also selected to compete in a team event representing the LSERSA region in mid-October. In all, his team completed 18 runs competing against teams from Southern and Eastern regions The end result was that Joshua's team came third in the shield event.

CLUB 2000 WINNERS

June

1st £120 E Marjoram

2nd £80 C Van Der Zanden

3rd £40 B Harrison

July

1st £120 S Murphy

2nd £80 M Sinclair

3rd £40 W Halligan

July Accumulator

1st £225 A Corner

2nd £150 N Gibson

3rd £75 V Marriott

August

1st £120 J Thallon

2nd £80 N Bourne

3rd £40 G Howell

Pictured left: a snip from the Eco-Schools’ website. The school has held a green flag continuously since 2008.

Pictured right: a snip from the National Rugby Merit table which by the end of October was headed by our own U15B team!