Dear Parents/Carers, 

As we approach the end of this academic year, I wanted to thank you for supporting your daughter and our school, the girls are a credit to yourselves and to Sacred Heart and we wish our students, their families and all our staff a restful and relaxing holiday. 

July has been the busiest month; I hope you enjoy reading about all the amazing things our students have been getting up to both in and out of school. A special mention about two huge events that have taken place in school this term:

Firstly, a huge thank you to the students and staff who made up the cast, crew and front of house for our school show ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ - they had the most incredible three-night run of performances, delighting their audience with their amazing singing and acting. We have such talented students and dedicated staff! Thank you to everyone who came along and supported our show.

Secondly, we have had the final of our Lip Sync Battle 2024 this week. Congratulations to this year’s trophy winners, Year 8 students Eva, Fatima, Alexa, Emily, Evangelina, Goodness, Beatrice, and Jerice who were simply stunning in the final! A big thank you to Mrs Mason and Mrs Craig who have coordinated all of the Lip Sync shows – a lot of hard work goes into making this type of event a success. We are very proud that Lip Sync has raised just over £1100 pounds which will go to our chosen charity, St Cuthbert’s Care.

School Website

I am taking the opportunity to remind you that every important piece of information for parents and students and any upcoming event is put on our website. We would be grateful if you could access it regularly to ensure you see any updates.

Summer Reading Challenge – BOOK ISLAND

We know there is a direct link between reading for pleasure and increased academic progress, we cannot stress enough the importance of reading to our students. The Year 7-10 Summer Reading Challenge is now accessible through the LIBRARY tab on our website and we encourage all our students to take part. This has been shared with your daughters in English lessons, so they know what is expected of them. Both our e-platform Library and Accelerated Reader quizzes are available online over the holidays too. It is really important for students to maintain their reading levels over the Summer break, and our Book Island Activity gives added incentive with the chance to win prizes in September!

Best wishes for a lovely summer,

Mrs Howell  

Headteacher 

This month, Newcastle World reported on the success of our amazing school show when they ran a story on our ‘tasty treat’ of a musical, Little Shop of Horrors. The show ran for three nights in the penultimate week of term, with over 70 of our talented students from Years 8 to 12 taking part both on and off-stage, as cast and production team members.

We are thrilled to announce that Sacred Heart has won an attendance award again, this time for being in the top 10-25% of schools nationally for attendance in the Spring term (2023/24). This award is further acknowledgement of the hard work and dedication of staff, pupils, parents, and carers in achieving excellent attendance during this time.

The 2024 Lip Sync talent show was a resounding success due to the incredible enthusiasm and dedication of everyone involved. We officially have our Lip Sync winners of 2024! The Lip Sync trophy was won by our fabulous Year 8 students: Eva, Fatima, Alexa, Emily, Evangelina, Goodness, Beatrice, and Jerice.

Our school is represented by many different cultures, and we wanted to celebrate this diversity in our community as the academic year was ending. Wednesday 17th July marked the first KS3/4 Culture Day in the main school, following the huge success of the Sixth Form Culture Day back in February.   

This year, Newcastle’s Royal Shakespeare Company Playmaking Festival 2024 saw 150 young artists and their directors perform an abridged version of Hamlet. Young actors from St Oswald’s Primary School, St Catherine’s Primary School, St Michael’s Primary School, Corbridge Middle School, Star of the Sea Primary School, Kenton High School, and Sacred Heart High School worked extremely hard to bring this performance to life.

Year 12 Economics students have entered the Young Economist of the Year 2024 competition sponsored by The Financial Times and KPMG. Mattea Ariss and Millie Gibson have launched their own podcast, 'Money Talks' and have submitted an episode discussing the pros and cons of government subsidies for electric vehicles as their entry to the competition. Good luck girls and fingers crossed for September when the shortlisted entries will be announced.

This month, Year 10 took a trip to Mathsplosion at the Life Centre. This event aims to give students an insight into some topics taught at A level and the opportunity to explore careers that involve Maths and Science.

Congratulations to our KS3 LAMDA students who passed their exams with flying colours this month. All students secured merits or distinctions in their Grade 1 – 4 exams, performing extracts from a range of plays and adaptations including Fantastic Mr. Fox, Annie and Disney’s, The Lion King and Tangled.

This month, Sixth Form students celebrated their last paired reading session of the academic year. Since the Autumn term, they have been working with Year 3 readers from Sacred Heart Primary and as the final session took place, they took some time to reflect on all the progress that has been made...

At Sacred Heart, we embrace five core goals that guide our educational mission. This year we have celebrated Personal Growth, which encourages students to become the best version of themselves.

On Thursday we came together as a whole school community for our annual Big Mass.

We recently welcomed students and their families to join us for the Year 7 and 8 Celebration of Success. There was a lot of anticipation and excitement in the air before the event, with students eagerly anticipating which awards they had been nominated for. The evening was to celebrate our current Year 7 and Year 8 students and their achievements of this academic year.

What a day to have an Education Officer visit your school to deliver PSHCE on Parliament and British Values.

As part of their work experience, six of our Year 12 students went to a Psychology Services Careers Event hosted by Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear (CNTW) NHS Foundation Trust at the Jubilee Theatre at St Nicholas Hospital in Gosforth.

In June, we went to St Omer in Northern France to spend 4 days immersing ourselves in the French culture and language. Our accommodation was at Château d’Ebblinghem, a converted 19th century country house which now hosts school groups, located just 45 minutes from the port of Calais.

Our annual Relationships and Health Education Day for all year 9 students took on Monday 24th and Tuesday 25th June, and for Year 10 on Wednesday 26th June.

On Monday 24th June, 3 of our students attended the Newcastle Schools Achievement awards at the banqueting suite, Newcastle City Centre.

Mrs Perry was absolutely over the moon with 8R's Accelerated Reader results this year - we have 27 Word Millionaires (a school record), the most quizzes passed and the most words read as a class (47 million words in all).

Miss Milburn held the final of the Year Seven Spelling Bee on our final day of this year's Festival of Reading. The girls were tested on Key Vocabulary from across the curriculum.