December 2017

UCTC newsletter
Uckfield Community Technology College, Downsview Crescent, Uckfield TN22 3DJ
01825 764844 www.uckfield.college
December 2017
Performance 2017 Beauty and the Beast.
College Production 2017
UCTC's Performing Arts departments
have done it again
with this year's stunning show
Beauty and the Beast. On
Thursday November 23 rd,
220 children from our feeder
primary schools enjoyed a matinee
performance and two further
shows wowed audiences
on Thursday and Friday evenings.
The music was beautifully performed
by a live orchestra
made up of staff, students and
other talented musicians conducted
by Mr Gower, with Mr
Ormsby and the Startech team
running the technical aspects
of the show. Gladrags Brighton
provided the costumes and the
show was seamlessly coordinated
backstage by Mrs Harriyott,
Miss Tomaszewska, Miss
Cooper and Miss Chilvers who
also spent the past 3 months
directing and choreographing
the show.
Audiences laughed at the antics of Gaston and Lefou
played by Chris Wadlow and Jonny Rowland
and were moved to tears by the love story between
the Beast and Belle played by Harry Fishlock and
Aoife McAteer. The ensemble and teams of dancers
dazzled with their slick and focused chorus
numbers, one of which involved bringing three different
sets of props on and off the stage!
One proud parent said 'I see the constant and ever tightening
squeezing of school budgets and the diminishing chances for the
arts in school and feel extremely lucky that my daughter attends UCTC. The
whole process was such a rewarding one for the students and the positive effect
of a collaboration of this kind on the young people involved is priceless' with Mr
Hennebry describing it as 'fantastic' and 'utterly brilliant'. Well done to all
involved!

Beauty and the Beast continued
Images by Mr Wakeling. For a gallery of many more images, please see the Beauty and the
Beast News item at uckfield.college

​
​The annual ​UCTC Masterchef
competition​ took place this again
week with a selection of chefs
from across​ multiple year groups​
taking part in a bid to show off
their culinary skills​. ​With a
wonderful array of ingredients
being provided ​by the Rotary
Club, the standard ​of dishes this
year was very high​.
The professional chef judges​, Matt
Ridley of the Highlands and Martin ​
Doyle ​were extremely impressed​
with the amazing food our
students produced. Over the two
hour cooking session ​every
student​ that took
part performed ​very
well ​to
professionally
produce their two
chosen dishes​. The
winner was Holly
Roberts in Year 12,
with runners up
prizes being given to Kaelin Brand
(Year 12) and Rosanna Walker-
Smith (Year 8).
Until next year -
keep up those
cookery skills!
Thank you to
Jonathan Cornish,
Y13 for the
pictures.
Masterchef

Christmas Indulgence 2017
Photo Credits: Ron Hill
On behalf of the entire College
community, a very sincere thank you to
all those who organised, helped at and
visited our Christmas Indulgence on
Saturday 18th December. I have
personally thanked our army of
dedicated PTA volunteers but know that
there will be many more of you who
helped who I have not been able to
thank personally. The Christmas
Indulgence is our biggest fundraiser and
is an enormous event to organise and
run. Once again it was tremendously
successful and everyone involved should
be incredibly proud of themselves. We
hope that all of you who came along on
the day had a great time.

UCTC Carol Service 2017
UCTC Carol Service at Holy Cross Church, Uckfield, at 7:00 pm on Tuesday 19th December 2017.
It is with great pleasure that we invite you to join us for the College’s annual Carol Service. Continuing
tradition, this year’s service takes place in the lovely surroundings of Holy Cross Church, Uckfield. Free
tickets are available through Student Services at lunch time only or through the Music Department.

Open Doors initiative
Uckfield College took part in the ESCC Open Doors initiative to inspire career choices by enhancing
students’ knowledge of the workplace.
We took Year 11 students who are studying GCSE Engineering and Resistant Materials to Metaltech in Hailsham. They
gave us a tour of their engineering workshops, the quality control area and their cutting tools. We looked at the
process of how the drawings are entered onto the computer then watched the cutting machines being programmed
and set up. From concept to finished product - we saw the key rings being cut and then got to take them home!
Open Doors is being run by East Sussex County Council in association with Love Local Jobs and STEM Sussex. It is
part of the Skills East Sussex Progress Project, which is funded by East Sussex County Council, CXK and The Careers
and Enterprise Company.

Holly is Volunteer of the Year
Earlier this year Holly Richardson in 9D swam 3 miles and ran a 12 hour squashathon to raise money for the
Evelina Children’s Hospital and children with heart disease. As a result of all of this fundraising Holly has won
the community award for Charity Fundraiser of the Year organised by Uckfield FM and sponsored by Chec.
She was interviewed on the radio on Friday 17th November
by Mike Skinner and presented with the award live on air.
Below is the write up from Uckfield FM:
“Holly Richardson receives her reward live on air.
Fundraiser Holly Richardson, received an award live on
Uckfield FM this afternoon.
At the age of 13 Holly is totally dedicated to raising
money for the Evelina Children’s Hospital and children
with heart disease. Since the age of 7 she has been
raising money with sponsored swims, a squashathon and
cake sales raising so far over £4,500.
As Holly was unable to be at the Uckfield FM Community
Awards last Saturday so was invited to the Uckfield FM
studio to be interviewed live on air with Mike Skinner.
She was presented with her trophy as Fundraiser of the
Year. A prestigious award for such a lovely young lady.
Congratulations Holly, we are very proud of you!
Water Aid Concert at the Albert Hall
On November 12th Daniel Atherton-Palmer (9C) and Marcus
Atherton-Palmer (7M) took part in a special performance of the
‘Messiah’ by Handel in the Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Ben
Parry. The concert was in support of Water Aid, and featured a
choir made up of 1500 school children from across the UK, and
also a school from Torino in Italy. The East Sussex Youth Choir
were invited to sing as part of the chorus, and several students
from UCTC were part of the group.

Area Schools’ Badminton
Thursday 16th November saw us host the Area round of the National Schools Badminton
Competition against Heathfield.
Our Key Stage 4 Girls took on
a team from Heathfield
featuring the County number
1 player and we lost 2-3 in
some well fought games.
Katie Crouch took 8 and 15
off their number 1. Lucy Meacher beat their number 2 comfortably 21-6 and Leesha Daniells &
Emily Sweet (making her first appearance for the school) battled in some really long rallies in
both their doubles games.
The Key Stage 4 boys also went down 2-3 again against some strong club players from
Heathfield. Johnrod Espejo won a really hard fought battle in his singles. Jacob Doherty lost
out to an experienced number 2 singles player and Harry Coldbreath & Alex Dunn had to face
a pair that play regularly at an adult club. They fought well but couldn’t quite get fully into
the games. Some long rallies and a couple of more close doubles games lead to the 2-3
defeat.
The Key Stage 3 boys again had strong County opposition to face. Troy Southall took on their
number 1 singles player who has a regular Under 16 County team position and was a point or
two behind him all the way and played some fabulous rallies, but unfortunately just the
experience of the Heathfield player came through for Troy to lose 15-21. Charlie Crouch had
a great win against their number 2 player 21-10 and Oliver Fake & Evan Lester had 2 close
fought doubles games each only to finish on a 1-4 loss. All the games had great rallies.
The Key stage 3 girls have qualified automatically as Heathfield didn’t have a team for this
age group so the girls will be travelling to Haywards Heath in February for the County Round
of the competition. Good luck to Phoebe Shorter, Alice Constable, Tiger Innes, Felicity
Woodiwiss-Reid, Isabel Nyren & Elenor Nyren.
We are delighted with the numbers of students attending the Thursday morning club, so much
so we have opened up a second session in the week so that we can continue to push and play
at an even more competitive level:
Wednesday mornings at 8 am is now for years 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
Thursday mornings at 8am is now just for year 7 & 8

News Snippets
We are pleased to bring you more great
news from our chess club! Lydia Munn
(3/5), Anna Sherriff (2/5) and Zoe Mileman
(2.5/5) saw off Burgess Hill Girls in the U18
girls School championships on Sunday in
another great day for the Uckfield College
Chess Club. This a prestigious trophy that
Burgess Hill Girls have held since 2011,
and Uckfield last won in 2004!
In addition to this Lydia was named as
joint winner of the top U14 girl trophy.
Again, another great achievement.
Congratulations and very well done!
Design Museum Trip: Year 10 and A
Level Design & Technology students
enjoyed a great day at the new Design
Museum in London, exploring design
classics and the impact of design on
our changing world including a great
hands on workshop looking at new
smart and sustainable materials. All
our students were a pleasure to
accompany on the trip and as always
represented the school with a positive
and engaged attitude throughout the
day
The Media Department were able
to take 10 Year 12 students to the
new cinema at Lewes Depot for a
screening and discussion of the
Oscar winning film (though not
best Film!) La La land. The day
started with a screening of the film
and was followed by a fascinating
discussion on whether La La Land
is truly a film told from the female
protagonists point of view.

Fashion Show 2017
Images from our very successful Fashion Show in October. Pictures by Jon Cornish

News Snippets
Camilla Compton, an ex student of UCTC,
graduated with a first class MSc from Imperial
College, London, in physics. This term she came
into college to talk to both Year 12 and Year 13
physics students about her experiences at
university and answer the many questions that
they raised. One of the projects she worked on
during a vacation was the LIGO project in
Washington state USA. This is a laser
interferometer project which detects gravity
waves and has just in the last few days been
awarded the Nobel prize for physics. The students
were very interested to hear first-hand news of
this cutting edge physics from a past student and
we are very grateful to Camilla for coming in, and
of course also congratulate her on her academic
success.
Enormous congratulations to Georgia
Allison in Year 12, who has been
awarded Lord Lieutenant Cadet for
East Sussex for this forthcoming year.
This is a tremendous achievement for
her and is in recognition for all the
hard work she has given to the ATC.
Georgia will be accompanying the
Lord Lieutenant for East Sussex on
ceremonial events over the year and
we look forward to hearing more
about her duties in this prestigious
role.
Geographical Association lecture at the University of
Brighton:
After school on Tuesday 17th October, a minibus full
of A level Geographers headed down to Brighton for
the first talk of this season's Geographical Association
lecture programme. There was an impressive turn
out and the students enjoyed an interesting talk by
Professor Chris Joyce on wetlands, their importance
and how they might be under threat from climate
change. Although in the past seen as a barrier to
development and a source of malaria, wetlands offer
huge benefits to society, for example as a source of
food and biodiversity, a carbon store and a protector
from flooding. At Medmerry in West Sussex, the UK's
largest 'managed realignment' scheme has recreated
salt marsh habitat in order to protect nearby
settlements from coastal flooding.

Edited and produced by Roger Ward, Communications Officer, UCTC
Uckfield Community Technology College, Downsview Crescent, Uckfield TN22 3DJ
01825 764844 www.uckfield.college