We Won!!

Music Department of the Year

Music and Drama Education Awards 2025

Our Music Department has been named Music Department of the Year at a glittering ceremony, in London, on Thursday 30th January 2025.

The whole team were present, Mr Drake, Ms Antony, Ms Shlackman, Mr Elliot and Mr Mealin and were supported by Mr Harrington-Tucker, one of our governors, Mrs Roddan and members of the senior team.

It was a fantastic moment, when we were announced as the winners and the team went onto the stage to receive the award.  This recognises years of hard work, determination, investment and innovation and has met the target that I set for Mr Drake, when I appointed him, to ensure that our Music Department achieved a local and national profile.  Images below!

Just consider below the full range of opportunities that our children and those in our feeder primary schools have at Winston.

In this large but fully comprehensive school the department has developed:

Children who love music making

An orchestra of 120 students

A choir of 140 students

A flute choir

Senior Session Band

Junior Session Band

Brass ensemble

Wind Band

A brass quartet plays the last post on the playground, surrounded by 1500 students every year.

String ensembles

35 - 45 students taking GCSE Music each academic year

50 students taking a level 2 Music Tech qualification each academic year.

Introduction and use of Macs and the appropriate software in lessons.

The teaching is inspirational, evidenced by the results

Winston has developed a team of 5 full-time music teachers

We develop/coach graduate music assistants/tutors to become a full-time music teachers

Introducing a Year 7 music scheme, encouraging every young person to try learning to play an instrument, with a focus on children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Huge concerts twice a year.

Recital evenings for both KS3 and KS4.

Introduced a Young Singer of the Year competition.

Older more experienced students teach instrumental lessons initially to Year 7, so that they are able to have free lessons!

Working with local primary schools to help them to inspire children to engage with music making

Leading the pit band, producing live music for huge musical productions

Introducing a Young Musician of the Year Competition

Helping young people to form bands and running a Band night

Ensuring that musicians play in assemblies and for parents' evenings

Creating the living advent calendar during the month of December

Introduced and ran Music Tours abroad for up-to 80 children, playing in town squares.

A Primary Pupil Orchestra

A Primary Choir Day

A Primary Music Day

Playing in the local community for special events such as fetes or turning on the Christmas Lights

Manages a team of over 20 peripatetic instrumental and voice teachers

 

Legally Blonde

 Will You Be There? 

Since our initial cast meeting in October, students have been working flat out on producing and rehearsing the main school production of 'Legally Blonde'. The show has been a fantastic experience to work on and as we enter the final weeks, the excitement amongst the cast and crew, who cannot wait to share their work, is building. 

With each new year students are brilliant and taking on multiple aspects of the performance. Undertaking leading roles or working behind the scenes in wider teams. Everyone has shown an amazing level professionalism and drive to make this show a success. 

The ensemble has been working hard to learn the bigger numbers in the performance. On Thursday, they finished a piece inspired by a 90s workout DVD. This number involves incredibly complex logistics and asks a lot of our advance dances, who must use skipping ropes in tandem, dance and sing, all at the same time! The end result was mind blowing and I felt incredibly proud of the cast for working on something so challenging. 

The dance captains have worked hard to make the choreography more accessible that ever, live streaming the dance moves to the largest Ensemble we have ever had and providing additional videos to the whole cast so they can attend intervention and other academic commitments. 

On Tuesday, the whole cast have been coming together to learn the songs with Mr. Drake and the music department. This year has seen the return of the Golden Tickets for excellent effort throughout a long rehearsal process. These students are welcome to perform in every single showing at the Rhoda McGaw Theatre. We have also issued more Platinum tickets than ever. These have given many members of the ensemble a chance to take on a leading role. 

Named cast have been coming together to undertake the exceptionally tricky task of blocking complex performances and musical theatre. I can safely say that the talent they have displayed will not disappoint in February. Principle cast have also been attending workshops with some West End professionals in order to improve their own practice. With one visitor playing a current leading role in a popular west end musical and another on the way! 

I consider myself lucky to be working alongside a cast of such amazing young people. I cannot wait to share their efforts with you in February when the show opens. Tickets are available via a link on the school website but are going fast, most evenings have sold out. I would like to take a moment to thank you, as our community, for the incredible support you show us at these events. 

Mr Harrington-Tucker

Head of Drama

Resilience Leading to Success

 

A Busy Week for Chelsea Provision at Winston.

It has been a very busy week for the students involved with the Chelsea provision at Winston.

Firstly, a girls and boys team represented Chelsea on Monday at Motspur Park which hosted the Premier League Inspires London Tournament. This special event welcomed participants from six clubs: Fulham, Arsenal, Brentford, Chelsea, QPR and Charlton. It was a day dedicated to fun, inclusivity and celebrating the Premier League values. The two teams played well in the tournament picking up more wins and draws that loses. The boys team made the semi-final but sadly lost by one goal. There were so many brilliant performances from Mason and Sam. The Girls team also made it through to the plate final and won it on penalties. A massive shout out to Hasina for saving the penalty and then scoring the winning penalty.

 

Fulham Under-18s duo Quinn Schutter and Ruban Khan attended the final games of the tournament. They also presented medals to players and handed out the prestigious PL Values awards. These awards recognised some of the individuals and teams that exemplified the spirit of the day by embracing sportsmanship, inclusivity, and positivity. Alfie was recognised as an individual that showed these skills and received a goody bag of Fulham items. Then finally the boy’s team were awarded a trophy for Team sportsmanship across the whole tournament.  Well, done to the boy’s team!!!

Premier League Inspires Winston Final

 

On Thursday last week all those in the Premier League Inspires Challenge presented their projects on gender equality.  The 11 different groups have spent the last 6 weeks working on this challenge. They have discussed ideas and challenges around gender equality, and each come up with a unique project that they then had to pitch to a panel of judges.  There was so many good ideas and concept that’s had been really thought out. We had support groups, gender equality sport tournaments and even an idea around developing gender neutral uniform. The judges had a difficult decision in picking a winner to go on and represent Chelsea in the next round of competition.  The judge finally chooses the group with Megan, Annabelle and Hasina. The girls aim to produce a podcast where they interview females and males about their experiences of gender equality in their lives.  They plan to record their first podcast this week and will be going to Stamford Bridge on the 7^{th of} February to present their idea to another panel of judges.  Good luck girls with your idea!

Year 7 in Design Technology

I am amazed at how resourceful my Year 7 class has become in the space of 15 Design Technology lessons. Our latest project has given them a chance to be super creative; they were given a small cube of wood plus "scrap" and they had to create a mini figure of their own design!  They have been using all sorts of equipment and materials and the results are outstanding! What has impressed Mrs Smith and Mr Antony the most, is the development of resilience and confidence to explore a way to overcome 'stuckness' before asking for help directly from us.  When asking questions they are asking more for reassurance rather than direct help.  We are both very impressed and proud of them. 

Mrs Smith 

Year 8 Leader

Battle of the Bands

 Will You be There?

Excellent Work

 Excellent Work in Art Lessons

Year 10 Geography

Year 10 have been learning about development around the world and produced these amazing information boards, with maps and graphs, looking at different indicators of the UK, China and Mozambique.

Influencer Assembly

 The value of an Influencer!!

Mr Parsons and Mrs Harnett wrote a highly engaging assembly about the role of social media influencers.

On each day this week, as the form tutors and Year Team arrived they asked five team members to perform the unseen script, to much amusement from the audience of students.

The three influencers were being interviewed about their role and what they actually do.  Giving students an opportunity to ask key questions about the value and the quality of this 'new' role in the world of social media.

The images show Year 7 in their assembly, with the staff participating on the stage.  The influencers were given props and they played their roles exceptionally well!

Thank you to everyone involved.