News

We have had a very busy month of December, with lots of exciting activities taking place.

Our School Choir raised over £600 for charity with their Carol Singing event at Stratford Station. We raised money for HCPT, a charity that takes children to Lourdes at Easter.

Our pupil representatives took part in their first day at Newham Pupil Parliament held at the Old Town Hall in Stratford. They listened to some debates, as well as preparing their own arguments to put forward to the panel.

The local residents wanted to prevent fly tipping on our streets and together with Newham Council, decided that creating an art mural would be a good way to do this. A few children from St Helen's spent two days helping the Street artist ‘Otto Schade’ to create a beautiful elephant mural in the local area. The children worked hard to scrape the old paint off the wall before painting it black.

The Head Boys & Girls, along with the School Council, represented our school at the annual Remembrance Day Service at the Memorial in East Ham. We joined pupils from schools across the Borough as well as the Mayor of Newham and representatives from the local branches of the British Legion.

We have appointed our new teams of various leaders for the year. Our School Councillors were voted for by their classmates and the Prefects, House Captains and Head Boys & Girls were nominated and voted by staff. They will be working hard this year to organise events and represent the school.

During the month of October, we were thinking about how to help others in our community and around the world. For our Harvest Assembly, we collected some food to donate to our local food bank at St Margaret's Church, as well as bringing in our small change for our collection boxes to send to CAFOD for the work they do around the world. The School Council will be taking our donations to the food bank this week.

We were delighted that Tim was able to visit us in July. Tim is an ex pupil of the school and was in Miss Doherty's class back in the 1980s when they attended St Helen's. Tim was the first winner of The Apprentice and has gone on to be a hugely successful business man. He was awarded an MBE in 2012 for Enterprise Culture on the New Year's Honours List. Tim really enjoyed visiting the school and reminiscing on his school days, the building has changed since Tim was a pupil, but some places he still recognised. This video shows his reactions on his tour.

In July we said goodbye to our year 6 pupils. At their memories assembly, the children shared their favourite memories of their time at St Helen's. We are so proud of all of them and wish them well on their next journey through secondary school. Click on the link to read the memories.

This weekend, pupils from St Helen’s received the Sacrament of the Eucharist as they made their First Holy Communion. They children have been preparing for this special day, and we hope they had lovely family celebrations.