Around three hundred students, parents/carers, staff and guests braved the snow on Thursday, 4th December to attend our annual presentation evening.

The evening was enjoyed by all as a special night in our school calendar where we celebrate the many successes and achievements of our students – young people who have made us proud as a school.

Nearly 130 students received awards for - ‘highest achievement in a subject’, ‘most progress in a subject’ or were nominated for Year Group awards by Year Leaders. As usual, the annual Joseph Swan School ‘Special Awards’ were presented as well. Entertainment on the way in and in the reception afterwards was provided by the excellent Joseph Swan School band and from the stage by Lauren (Year 13) who showed us what a talented singer she is (the ‘X’ Factor beckons maybe!).

We were lucky to have several excellent guest speakers. Our key note speakers were Mr. David Mitchell - Gateshead’s Director of Learning and Schools and Dr. David Hetherington PhD – a former Joseph Swan student and now a water engineering and management scientist – who had a lot of good advice to share with our award winning students!

It was also good to see Mr. Eric Morgan again (a former head of science) - who travelled all the way up from Lincolnshire to present his award for Science.

Well done to all our award winning students!

Players from Gateshead Thunder Rugby League Club teamed up with Staff and Sixth Form students from Joseph Swan School, Gateshead to take part in “Movember”. Movember is a charity event held during November each year, where men register with Movember with a clean shaven face. The participants then have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their moustache and along the way raise as much money and awareness about male health issues as possible.

Every year about 35,000 men in the U.K. are diagnosed with prostate cancer and about 10,000 men die from the disease. A British man has a 1 in 11 lifetime risk of developing prostate cancer. It is now the most common cancer diagnosed in men in the U.K. with at least one man dying every hour from the disease.

Over the course of the month the staff, players and students involved really took to the challenge of growing and grooming the facial hair. The group managed to raise over £650 worthy cause. All members of the Bunch of Beardos would like to thank everyone for their continuing kind donations.

This year’s production from the French Flying Theatre Group was based, somewhat loosely, on the story of the Three Musketeers. It was delivered entirely in French with some reliance on mime and special effects. There were the usual weather forecasts which resulted in some students and staff getting soaked, and there was also a lot of juggling going on. The students had previously been given a vocabulary sheet to study and some students even brought it along to the Main Hall to help them understand the action. Comedy and magic played a huge part in the play and many of us still don’t know how Athos was dismembered and reassembled before our very eyes!

As it took place on a Friday afternoon it was a really great way to end the week. A sign of the success of the play came the following Monday when some students continued talking about it and had noticed things even the staff hadn’t! A request was even made that they all see the play again the following year!

The school will remain closed to Students today, due to continued heating issues. It is expected the school will be open tomorrow, but should this change further announcements will be made.

The School will be closed from 11.00am today, due to a failure in the heating system, and will re-open as normal on Tuesday 16th December. Any further annoucements regarding the current situation will be broadcast on local radio stations or on this website.