Bolton School girls come from a diverse range of backgrounds, with one in five in receipt of a Bursary, and their successes are multi-faceted. The Sunday Times’ Parent Power guide ranked the Girls’ Division in the top 10 schools in the North-West and as the best independent school in Lancashire and North Manchester. A Year 9 pupil’s artwork won the national ‘Show Racism The Red Card’ School Competition; another pupil won the national Namedropping Poetry Competition; a promising actor appeared in Coronation Street; two Year 7 girls were one of only 12 teams to reach the national BP Ultimate STEM Challenge; two students were awarded Arkwright Scholarships for engineering; a girls’ team won Silver at the Salters’ Chemistry Festival whilst another team won the RSC Manchester and District Chemquiz. Girls represented their country in water polo, gymnastics, tennis, lacrosse, dressage, free and dance roller skating, participated regionally at badminton, swimming, netball and lacrosse and enjoyed victories in town athletics, swimming, netball and cross country competitions. They sang as finalists in the National Choral Competition at the Royal Festival Hall, London, and led local primary school children in a concert at Bolton’s Victoria Hall celebrating Fred Dibnah. Year 10 and above performed in ‘The Tempest’ whilst Years 7-9 staged ‘Daisy Pulls It Off’.
Last year we became the first school in the country to win the prestigious Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. Our pupils serve local, national and international communities. All Year 9 girls undertake the Bronze DofE and dozens more achieve Silver and Gold Awards. Almost one third of the Girls’ Division Year 11 cohort took part in the National Citizen Service. Year 12 students’ volunteering amounted to over 5000 hours. Initiatives included ‘Tea at the Riley’, a monthly tea party for elderly members of the wider Bolton community, and weekly Saturday lessons for 43 local Year 5 children. Charity fundraising included the annual Year 7 ‘Sponsored Silence’, and Harvest and Christmas hampers’ projects plus an initiative by the Maths Department whereby the girls were sponsored to complete maths tasks online, the proceeds going to build wells in India.
Bolton School opens its doors to the wider community. Pupils and the public were entranced by nationally-recognised speakers including Dr Michael Scott, Tomasz Schafernaker, and Simon Armitage. The School also hosted monthly History Association lectures, a Science Festival, the Royal Statistical Society Annual Lecture, a Careers Fair, Languages Day and STEM Racing Challenge Day. Travelling theatre productions, Antigone and Penguins, were open to local state schools, as was an English Civil War battle re-enactment on the school site. The first trainee teacher passed through the Girls’ Division as it became the Northern hub school in a new DfE drive to recruit MFL teachers.
The year culminated in the Bolton Children’s Fiction Award, with all six shortlisted authors and over 700 pupils coming together to celebrate reading, and the Year 7 and 8 Celebration Evening whose theme ‘This is Me’ highlighted the School’s continued commitment to encouraging every girl to cherish her unique spirit.
