Variety of experiences for St Illtyd’s students

Students at St Illtyd’s Catholic High School have been enjoying a very busy but productive few weeks as events included a visit to Oxford University, taking part in the Scribblers Tour and Women in STEM, a trip to a local pharmaceutical company and celebrating World Book Day.

Year 9 visit Catsci

Catsci is a pharmaceutical innovation partner who works with companies to help develop medicines and look at the safety of their medicines. They look into ways to make sustainable manufacturing of medicines.

Catsci is a fast-growing company that started in 2010. In February, 11 of our Year 9 set 1 science students had the opportunity to visit Catsci to find out more about jobs in science.

The trip was made up of two parts. All the students were given a tour of the labs and facilities which included what equipment they used and the different labs in which students could see scientists working on experiments.

The students were taught about how this equipment was used and why they used it. After the tour of the labs had ended, the students had the opportunity to talk to two PHD scientists about the company, jobs in science, A-levels, and university.

Isabelle Haines, 9YC

We would like to thank all of the staff at Catsci for their time. We would also like to thank Adrian Cole, Business Engagement Adviser at Careers Wales for arranging the visit.

Oxford University Visit

Some of our Year 11 pupils had the opportunity to visit New College, Oxford. It was a productive and informative visit. Pupils were given advice on how to apply and had many opportunities to find out what it is like to be a student at Oxford University.

A wonderful day was had by all with an interesting tour of the college culminating in a fabulous lunch in a 13th Century dining hall. Hopefully, it will not be too long before some of our pupils are there for real.

David Richards, Teacher of History and More Able and Talented Co-ordinator

Scribblers Tour 2023

In February, a small group of pupils in Years 7 and 8 had the opportunity to visit the Scribblers Tour at Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Cyncoed campus, an event funded by the Welsh Government.

The Scribblers Tour acts as a prequel each year for the Hay Festival. In interactive events pupils wrote stories, asked questions and expressed themselves through the power of writing. Authors and compères spent time with the pupils, on and off the stage, to encourage creative conversations throughout the tour. Award winning Young Adult and teen champion Jenny Valentine acted as compère.

This year pupils explored events from different characters’ perspectives with author Maz Evans. This was followed by a fun and interactive event with award-winning poet Matt Goodfellow where he encouraged pupils to use their own experiences to write poems.

Year 8 pupil Kiera Acton said of the day: “The Scribblers Tour was fun. We got to speak to authors and share our own stories. It was fun sharing ideas with friends and authors and getting positive feedback from people when we spoke out loud. Overall, I would love to do it again.”

We would like to thank the Hay Festival, Reaching Wider and Cardiff Metropolitan University for a fantastic event.

Luisa May, Community Focused Schools Co-ordinator

Women in STEM

At the start of the spring term, a group of ten Year 9 female pupils were invited to St David’s Catholic Sixth Form College for a Women in STEM Partner School Event.

The event began with an inspirational talk from Shinjini Ghosh from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Global Teaching Lab. Shinjini outlined her educational and career journey and shared advice on how to achieve success.

Following this, pupils took part in a coding activity. A competition took place against our fellow partner schools - Corpus Christi Catholic High School, Mary Immaculate Catholic High School, and Cardinal Newman Catholic High School. The team from Mary Immaculate were worthy winners.

The event ended with a tour of St David’s College, giving pupils an insight into the subjects available to study and the facilities available. We would like to thank Olivia McLaren, Destinations & Vocations Manager and Alexander Phillips, Marketing & Design Officer, for the organisation of the day and Shinjini Ghosh from MIT for sharing her valuable knowledge.

Luisa May, Community Focused Schools Co-ordinator

World Book Day 2023

This March we have celebrated another fantastic World Book Day at St Illtyd's. A fierce competition to dress the best door was held and Ms Cosslett's form crowned the winner once again! This time, the door was inspired by the Harry Potter series and judge, Head Teacher Mr Thomas could not help but be spell bound.

As well as this, throughout the day students enjoyed quizzes, wrote stories, read books and engaged in a range of activities promoting a love of literature within lessons! “Blind Date with a Book” was a success and many students dared to take a chance on a new genre. A special thanks goes out to Miss Rees whose Harry Potter inspired classroom was a hit at break times; everyone thoroughly enjoyed the day.

A huge thank you to all who participated and made the day special!