Newsletters

NEWS AT WES - 7th March 2025

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Spring Term - 7th March 2025

 

Welcome to our latest news update, including highlights from the Camden Youth Dance Festival and the Year 10 STEAM Trip to the Williams Formula 1 Race Team. This week, William Ellis has been celebrating and reflecting on International Women's Day, and what it means for a school where most of the students are male.

How Our School Supports Your Son During Ramadan

Ramadan is an important month in the Islamic calendar when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. This is one of the five pillars of Islam and a time for worship, community, and devotion to Allah. We know that it is an important time in the calendar for many of our students and their families.

What your son might experience

During Ramadan, your son might:

  • Feel more tired than usual due to changes in when he eats and sleeps
  • Find it harder to concentrate in class
  • Have less energy for sports and activities
  • Sometimes feel worried or upset
  • Feel bad if he's finding fasting difficult or can't fast

Despite this, it is important that students are still able to attend school every day during Ramadan, up until Eid.

How we support your son

  1. Being flexible with schedules to work around different eating and prayer routines - for example, prayer facilities each day and ensuring that after school events finish before sunset.
  2. PE activities with adaptations to be less physically demanding when students need it.
  3. Making sure school events don't focus on food during fasting hours, and that students don't need to be around others who are eating.
  4. Training our staff to be respectful and supportive.

We respect your son's commitment to his faith during this special time. Our teachers understand that Ramadan can be challenging and will be patient and supportive. We also know that it helps to build the attributes that are so important at William Ellis.

Year 9 options update

It was great to see so many Year 9 students and families at the Options and Pathways event yesterday, and to talk through possible choices. These need to be made by 20th March. Full details are in last week's newsletter, but you can find a digital copy of the options booklet here, which explains the course structure for each subject. We've also prepared a video presentation here that walks you through how our options process works. 

We celebrate International Women's Day at William Ellis because it helps our students understand why gender equality is important, reflecting on some of the challenges women face and female achievements that should be celebrated, and the amazing things women have achieved throughout history. Assemblies this week, led by Heads of Year, looked at  inspiring achievements by women from all countries and cultures, including Malala Yousafazi, Rosa Parks, Frida Khalo, Greta Thunberg and Serena Williams. They also considered how boys can be supportive friends, classmates, and future coworkers to the women in their lives. Understanding these issues now will help them become men who treat everyone with respect and fairness, making the world better for everyone.

This week, the Camden New Journal published a column by our Headteacher, Izzy Jones, about the responsibility we have to boys to help them contribute to a fairer and kinder society. This was inspired by the positive sentiments of boys who want to do exactly this:

“The way [Andrew Tate] speaks about females isn't right and I think it's negative to hear as a 13-year-old boy…. I know for myself not to go with that because that's wrong and I think that yeah, it's too much.” William Ellis Year 9 student, 2023

“It's not ok to make sexist comments…to touch without permission…..to treat women like objects……to catcall. It’s important to educate…..to call this out and reduce it” William Ellis Year 9 students 2024

To read the article in full, please see page 9 of the e-edition of the CNJ.

Camden Youth Dance Festival

Friday night saw this annual event at The Place in Kings Cross, a professional performance venue. The William Ellis dance company, with 20 boys from years 7, 8 and 9, gave a first-class representation of how powerful male dance ensembles can be. The excellent preparation paid off in a polished and complex performance that raised cheers from the crowd and left the boys elated by their experience. It gave a powerful message about how important it is for boys to talk and express their feelings, and treat each other with kindness. Thank you to all the parents and families who came to support.

Year 12 Business & Economics 'Turning Pro' Marketing Workshop

A group of Year 12 Business and Economics students participated in the Publicis Pro 'Turning Pro' workshop on 26th February. Students were given a brief and, with the support of corporate volunteers, had to consider solutions to the brief, as well as planning a marketing campaign for their product.

Each group then pitched to the corporate judging panel.

Well done to the winning group who will be invited to meet corporate partners to tour the offices and develop their workplace-based skills even further!

Year 10 STEM Trip

Year 10 students visited the Williams Formua 1 Racing centre in Wantage last week as part of a STEM careers initiative. They had the chance to see world-class, precise engineering and the advanced, digitally intelligent way that cars are designed and manufactured when every tiny adjustment in both matters. We hope that this will inspire the boys to think about where they will apply for their work experience placements, which are coming up in the summer term. Thank you to William in Year 10 for these great photos.

     

 

World Book Day

World Book Day at William Ellis School

6th March 2025

William Ellis School celebrated their love of reading for pleasure on World Book Day this week.

As part of our celebrations:

  • Staff dressed up as well-known book characters for the day. Students were challenged to identify each character correctly and have a conversation with staff about books.
  • KS3 were invited to dress as a book character and we noticed Alex Rider, and Oompa-Loompa and Spiderman among others making their way to lessons! Prizes for costume efforts will follow for KS3 students.
  • We had various activities and competitions throughout the day. Students were invited to identify the staff costume or match the teacher to their favourite book by following a poster trail throughout the Humanities and Maths corridors. In the library we signposted students to a range of our new books in stock and some students spent some mindful moments decorating a bookmark.

How can you support your child’s reading at home?

Students with high levels of literacy read at home for pleasure. At William Ellis School we give your children the tools to be successful readers, but we advise students also read regularly at home.

To help your child, you can:

  • Make sure your child reads everyday for at least 30 minutes.
  • Check new vocabulary with your child so they understand the meaning and use of new words.
  • Ask questions about what your child is reading.
  • Make sure there is a balanced diet for reading and encourage your child to read non-fiction and fiction as well as different genres.
  • Encourage your child to check out a book from the school library. We have added over 60 new books of various genres in the last year, and we have categorised the space into genres so that books are easier to locate.

 

Coming soon…

Does your child enjoy a particular subject?

We will shortly be sharing a suggested reading list for subjects across the school with parents to encourage students to read wider around the subjects they enjoy.

Information from the local community

Families for Life Champions – free volunteer training 

Camden invites parents and carers to become Families for Life Champions with free six-week volunteer training, starting from 5 June 2025 at Edith Neville Primary School. Improve your skills and CV, while helping other families with children aged 2 to 11 to improve their health and wellbeing by signposting them to services and support. Travel and childcare costs are covered and refreshments provided at the weekly sessions. Please email Syria.Chowdhury@camden.gov.uk to find out more and sign up.

Mainstream inclusion workshop for Camden SEND parents and carers, 19 March

The new government wants to improve the way children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are included in mainstream schools. All parents and carers in Camden who have a child or young person with SEND are invited to attend a free workshop on mainstream inclusion within schools, which is taking place in-person on Wednesday 19 March, from 9.30am to 11.30am, at the Crowndale Centre, 218 Eversholt Street, London NW1 1BD. To join the two-hour session, please reserve a spot here – you need to register in advance. See more infromation.

Yours faithfully,

Izzy Jones

Headteacher

This Week's WESPA Round-Up:

Dear families,

What a lovely evening at the quiz on Tuesday. A packed hall, some fantastic questions from WESPA Trustee and Quizmaster Caroline and bountiful pizzas from Rossella. Thank you to everybody who came and to all those who helped out. Coordinating that many pizzas is no easy job - thank you Vicky! And of course a huge congratulations to our winners! (pics below).

WESPA General Meeting - Monday March 10th at 7pm

Online meetings are proving more popular at the moment and so our next meeting will also be online. We can save our in-person get-togethers for things like the quiz and socials! All parents are members of WESPA and are welcome to attend. If there is anything you would like to discuss please email williamellispa@gmail.com in advance

Monday 10th March 2025, 7pm 

Online: https://meet.google.com/bru-evgc-aqs

WES Bands taking Camden by storm

Congratulations to all the WES musicians (past and present) who performed so amazingly at the Camden Club on Saturday. Next up for them is the Jazz Cafe on the 30th March! If there are any other bands who would like to participate at these events, check out www.intramusic.org

German Exchange student event - 17th March 2025

Last term some of our students were fortunate enough to go on a German exchange and stayed with and visited the Dietrich-Bonhoeffer Gymnasium (DBG) in Wiehl. They had an amazing time and the families of the school were incredibly kind and welcoming to our boys. We would love to help return the favour and give a big welcome to the German students on their return leg. On Monday 17 March, there will be a late morning welcome event at school and we need you! Very specifically, we'd love some contributions for an early lunch and especially some volunteers to welcome the children and make them feel at home. They'll have a great time but school is certainly a lot more friendly with some mums, dads and family members too. From my experience it is also lovely for our sons to see us in school too. 

If you would like to make a contribution, these can be brought in on the day (before 8.30am) and left at the Front Office FAO Miss Pritchett. We are aware that this event falls into the month of Ramadan and we are fully committed to ensure all members of the school community observing Ramadan feel welcome if they would like to attend.

If you are able to help, please email williamellispa@gmail.com 

so we can link you to Holly and Mirzeta who are coordinating. 

Have a great weekend.

Al

Chair WESPA

Coming Up...

International Women's' Day
All Day
08
March
Year 13 Mock Exams
All Day
From 10 Mar until 14 Mar
10
March
Year 11 Urban Fieldwork Trip to Kings Cross
11:00am – 3:15pm
10
March
Year 11 Urban Fieldwork Trip to Kings Cross
11:00am – 3:15pm
11
March
Year 10 Parents' Evening
4:30pm – 7:00pm
13
March
Year 11 Art & Graphics Trip to the National Gallery
12:15pm – 3:15pm
14
March
Visit from German Exchange Partner Students
All Day
From 17 Mar until 21 Mar
17
March
Year 10 French theatre workshop event
10:00am – 3:00pm
17
March
KS5 'Hamlet' Theatre Trip, Stratford-Upon-Avon
All Day
18
March
Welcome Event for New Year 7 Families
5:00pm – 6:30pm
19
March