Congratulations to Year 9 student Max Oram, who received his Gold Chief Scout award at a ceremony attended by the Mayors of Corby and Kettering.

He needed to complete nine challenges in categories including teamwork, adventure, skills and community, which involved him spending two nights at the Millennium Green in Desborough planting new trees and shrubs.

Brooke Weston students had a great team building residential at Fairthorne Manor with a wide range of sports and evening activities. Nearly the entire cohort of students attended the four-day trip to Southampton. It was a fun and interactive way of tutor groups to bond and spend time with their tutors.

Explorer and adventurer George Bullard is a world record breaking explorer and endurance athlete who has covered more than 2,000 miles on foot in the polar regions. He has spent more than 10 per cent of his life under canvas and, most recently, kayaked from Greenland to Scotland.

At the age of 19 he completed the world’s longest fully unsupported polar journey, a feat that exploere Sir Ranulph Fiennes described as ‘genuinely groundbreaking.’ As well as polar exploration he has taken part in the Transatlantic race, led youth development programmes in the Amazon and facilitated research expeditions in Antarctica.

Brooke Weston Sixth Formers who were specially trained to mentor younger students with their reading have been presented with accreditation certificates in recognition of their work. The students underwent a Reading Matters training course and completed a series of assessment tasks before completing a minimum of five hours’ worth of one-to-one reading support with a reading partner.

The scheme has been running successfully at Brooke Weston for several years and is administered by Reading Matters and co-ordinated by Mrs Childs. She presented the students with their Level 2 accreditation in ‘Supporting Reading Skills’.

Taking part in a jungle camp and learning to dive were just a couple of the highlights of this year’s expedition to Borneo. A handful of intrepid students made the month-long trip which had been two year’s in the planning.

They learned junglecraft skills then climbed Mount Kinabalu, which was an 8km trek to the summit. They also constructed a wire mesh fence as part of their community project before learning how to scuba dive in the TAR islands, gaining their PADI Open Water certificates.

IT Teacher Ray Chambers has been accredited as a Microsoft Innovative Expert Educator so he will network with other teachers in the area and share best practice.

Microsoft said: ‘MIEs are educators that are using Microsoft tools in the classroom and have learned the fundamentals of some of these tools. This is the first step on a journey of joining a professional learning network of enthusiastic educators who come together to learn, share and grow.’