9 October 2018

We are thrilled to announce that we have been recognised as the UK’s tenth Quality Mark Beacon School by UCL’s Centre For Holocaust Education. The Quality Mark award recognises excellence in learning and teaching about the Holocaust, and follows a rigorous inspection process which involved lesson observations, interviews with staff and students and a scrutiny of pupils’ work as well as other data gathering. The detailed report, which can be read in full HERE notes a number of key strengths of learning and teaching about the Holocaust and human rights throughout the school. The report also recognises the strengths of our students, describing Newport girls as ‘articulate, thoughtful citizens; keen to learn, respectful and are the school’s best advocates’ and praising their literacy levels.

The Centre’s Nicola Wetherall MBE remarked: 

‘The quality of Holocaust education at Newport Girls High School is excellent and forward looking. The girls are fortunate to have such passionate and engaged teachers whose concern for age appropriate, research informed, innovative teaching and learning about the Holocaust, results in rich and varied academic and personal development outcomes. Student voice offered informed, empathetic and reflective insights as to provision and practice at the school – their articulate and perceptive remarks revealed the impact of Mrs Seys, Miss Davies and Mr Scott’s efforts. Newport girls have experienced a quality provision for and experience of Holocaust education that is unlike many of their national peers and the school community should be hugely proud of all that has been achieved to date in collaboration with the UCL Centre.’

The achievement of the Quality Mark is an exciting recognition of all of the staff and students’ hard work in this area and Mrs Seys would like to extend her personal thanks to all the students who were involved in the Quality Mark Review process.

We are now building on our work through a newspaper project with the Hampton School, which a group of students will be presenting in parliament later this year as well as a legacy project regarding the 1995 Bosnian genocide which a group of six students from years 9-11 were given the opportunity to be involved in. Look out for more details over the next few months!