Year 12 students have recently attended the Tees Valley UCAS Convention, which was held at Teesside University, to investigate the range of courses on offer at universities across the UK. The market-place style conference allowed students to talk to representatives about the courses and facilities at over 100 campuses and access a host of valuable additional information in one venue.

Forty of our Sixth Form students will soon have an additional qualification to add to their CV thanks to our Health & Wellbeing Coordinator, Dawn Hindmarch.

Music students in Years 11 and 12 have been reviving the sounds of the "80s in preparation for a themed concert, which will be held at Bishop Auckland Town Hall in May. "Back to the "80s' will feature classics such as Madonna's "Get into the Groove', Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give you Up' and Womack and Womack's "Footsteps'; combined with a themed disco it will certainly be a night to remember!

Following last year's harvest, our 'Incredible Edible' fruit and vegetable garden is now fully prepared and ready to be re-stocked thanks to a dedicated team of students gardeners.

Our students have enjoyed considerable success in the UKMT Challenge over the past two years and last term saw even more join the ranks of the top Maths students in the country.

Last term, 11 students in Years 9-13 took the ABRSM Grade 1 Music Theory exam for the first time at King James and all passed with flying colours

This year, eleven of our Year 13 students will be working at Glastonbury Festival thanks to a new initiative by Mr Longstaff, our Assistant Head Teacher and Director of Learning for Business Studies.

Earlier in the year, our Sixth Form and Year 11 Physics students visited the Observatory at Durham University as part of the university's outreach programme. The thought-provoking experience was so popular that Mr Lawton, our STEM Co-ordinator, working with Durham University's "Physics into Schools' Ambassador, Sam Watson, organised an in-school event which saw a portable planetarium erected in our gym.

This term, an exciting competition will be taking place in school for ice-cream lovers. The Flavour Wars competition will see four staff-led student teams, including ones led by Mr Grieveson and Mrs Babington, compete to invent a unique flavour for homemade ice-cream.

The groundworks for our multi-million pound new building are now complete and every day sees rapid progress as the steelwork emerges and our state-of-the-art academy takes shape.