St Aidan’s Catholic Academy

Some important news items from this spring term:
We all enjoyed the Annual Piano and Orchestral Instrument Recital. You can watch and
listen to some of the performances too by visiting the YouTube link. (454) St Aidan's Piano &
Orchestral Instrument Recital – YouTube

We celebrated the Holocaust Memorial Day with assemblies and spent time discussing the
theme: One Day.

We have been working towards becoming plastic free school, by removing many single use
plastics in all areas of the school and finally got our award. We also had a visit from local MP
who heard about our achievement. Sunderland MP Visits Plastic-free Sunderland School –
Sunderland Magazine – Sunderland Deserves Good News

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We like to keep our parish community involved in our eco-friendly initiatives; therefore we
tell them at the end of Mass about our achievements and plans.
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Our next challenge is to become sustainable school and to reach our goal we began to
create an allotment with view to have it available to our local community too.
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On 15 February Bishop Robert Confirmed 18 of our year 9, 10 and 11 students. Their
journey throughout Confirmation preparation has been filled with joy and challenges caused
by lockdown rules, but they never gave up and we were privileged to witness their
confirmation. It was most amazing to see them make mature decision to accept the
Sacrament of Confirmation.

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We are so proud of our students, many of whom come from diverse backgrounds. They are
always happy to invite us to participate in their special days. This time we were celebrating
National Day of Kuwait with chocolates.

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National Day of Kuwait

We always talk about school’s core values of hard work, trust and fairness and encourage all
of our pupils to be the best they can be through the analogy of the mountain. We want
them to climb their own mountains to reach the summits. Year 8 students took a break to
travel to the Lake district and climb the real mountain in an attempt to relate the physical
challenges of climbing to their own mountain climbs.
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We celebrated Ash Wednesday via the distribution of Ashes and held Lent liturgies, we took
inspiration from Ash Wednesday Mass readings and focused on the following verse. ‘We are
ambassadors for Christ.’ 2 Corinthians 5:20
We are still collecting crisp packets and sending them away to the charity who makes them
into blankets for the homeless.

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Our pupils collected and donated Mothers Day gifts to local charity, Love Amelia.
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We have been developing links with local care home. The residents made a notice board for
our students where they included their ‘advice for the youth’. The heart-warming words of
wisdom from people with meaningful life experiences were truly inspiring.

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We are very proud of our year 10 pupils for taking part in the Intermediate UK Maths
Challenge.

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Our parish, St Mary’s opened Soup Kitchen for the parishioners throughout Lent. University
Chaplaincy serves soup and tea/coffee every Friday and we took the opportunity to manage
the Soup Kitchen too. Year 11 and 9 pupils working towards Faith in Action Award loved
every moment and want to go back to support the parish again.

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