This week at PGS: 4th April 2025

The last week of term has not been a quiet one, with activity across the school including a Maths Challenge, a day at sea for some Year 12 pupils, a German play and training for our new Prefect team. 

The Sports Hall was humming with excitement as PGS hosted the Team Maths Challenge (TMC) for Year 8 and 9 pupils. This is the first year that the TMC has returned since lockdown and we had really missed it. 19 schools had to answer four rounds of different challenging questions. One round saw the pupils running to their teachers on the other side of the Sports Hall to check their answer in a relay race. Each school entered a team of four pupils and teamwork was crucial, especially for the cross number round, where pairs had to solve clues independently and enter them on a grid hoping that they fitted with their teammates answers. 

One of the PGS pupils competing wrote, “I really loved the questions and especially enjoyed the crossword puzzle round, where we were split into twos to work on down and across separately but had to use the other answers to work out our own.” 

Overall, PGS had a strong team who seemed to really enjoy their day and worked well as a team but Chichester Free School were the overall winners going through to the national competition. A massive thank you to the Year 12 helpers who were really supportive and helped the day run smoothly. 

As a thank you for all the hard work our Year 12 volunteers had been doing on a Monday afternoon with the Tall Ships Youth Trust (TYST) they were treated to a day out on the Solent and what a beautiful sunny day it was. It started with them being shown the ropes - literally - learning how to do the clove hitch and other knots. When out on the water they learnt how to sweat the line to raise the main sail, and the jib. Without a huge amount of wind the TYST thought it would be fun to raise the boom and get our pupils, and staff, to shimmy up the rope, over the sea, to reach the boom itself. An experience that the pupils made look easy, but Ms Thomas can assure you is not! Thank you to TYST for the trip and well done to all of our Year 12 pupils for volunteering their time during the Community, Action, Workplace placements. 

Pupils in Years 8 – 10 who learn German enjoyed a 45-minute-long play in German, presented by the Onatti Theatre Company. The play was hugely entertaining, and allowed pupils the opportunity to practise listening to German for a sustained period, perfectly timed for the upcoming Year 10 exams. The actors also enlisted the support of two volunteers, so two plucky Year 8 pupils were involved, with lines being shown to them on hidden prompt cards! They did very well indeed, showing off excellent language and acting skills! 

We had a fabulous day of Prefect Training at sunny Hilsea on Tuesday with 30 Year 12 pupils.  Lessons on leadership style were delivered by Jo Cruse from 100andfirst and it was great to see the ideas and suggestions flow from our pupils.  The afternoon saw our new prefects work through a range of school-based scenarios in preparation for stepping into their new roles after the Easter break.    

Congratulations to Harry D, Year 12, who has been awarded the Concerto Prize as part of the Portsmouth Festival of Performing Arts, having played in the preliminary rounds on Sunday 23 March, and will have the chance to perform a piano concerto of his choice with the Solent Symphony Orchestra in March 2026.  

After being selected for the last 2 years for the England Team, Tash D in Year 11 got selected for the U16 Team GB for Ice Hockey. She will compete for a week at the beginning of May, in Hull against The Netherlands. We wish her and her team luck!