We recently shared on our Facbook page a link from Milford Haven Port Authority regarding their scholarship scheme. The Port of Milford Haven’s annual Scholarship Scheme is offering four Pembrokeshire students the chance to win £1,500, plus work experience at the UK’s largest energy port. Almost seventy undergraduate students have received support from the Port over the past sixteen years and completed placements across the organisation including the Engineering, PR, Environmental and HR departments. There are four awards on offer; to be eligible applicants must have attended a Pembrokeshire secondary school and be enrolled on an undergraduate course at a British university. We strongly advise our pupils explore this fantastic opportunity.
We have our last few stalls remaining for our annual MHS Christmas Fayre on Thursday December 5th. If you are a local craftsperson and would like a stall at this fantastic festive event, please contact Ms Mansell at Milford Haven School to make the necessary arrangements.
Wednesday October 9th marked ‘Show Racism the Red Card’, and here at Milford Haven School we celebrated in style. Show Racism the Red Card is the UK’s leading anti-racism educational charity. Established in January 1996, the organisation utilises the high-profile status of football and football players to publicise its message. Across Britain, Show Racism the Red Card delivers training to more than 50,000 individuals per year. Here at Milford Haven School pupils wore red items in support of this anti-racism event, and cheered Wales onto a victory at fan zones around school. Together we raised over £600 on the day, da iawn pawb!
Thursday October 10th was World Mental Health Day. When we talk about mental health at Milford Haven School, one of the key messages we consistently promote is kindness. Being kind to yourself and others is an important part of life, the world is full of kind people and if you can’t find one then be one. We shared a lot of resources and sign posted to some of the vast support that is now available for people who are concerned about their own mental health or the mental health of someone they know. For the second year running we have asked our sixth formers to take part in the ‘I cry because…’ campaign. You can see a full album of the images created on our Facebook page, but below are some examples of the kind of things our young people are concerned about or the challenges that they face. The reason we take part in this campaign every year is to demonstrate that we can all be affected by different things and some people may never openly discuss or share their struggles, but at some point in our lives we will all find something difficult and in that we are all the same. We will all need different support at different times in our lives, and if we all treat each other as we would like to be treated i.e. with kindness and respect, what a huge and positive difference we could make to the world.
Following in from World Mental Health Day yesterday, Milford Haven School took a break today from all our social media. Social media can be a fantastic tool when used correctly and helps to spread positive messages across our communities, but if not used responsibly social media can also have damaging effects.
We took a short break from being online today, and if you feel like a digital detox would benefit you too please feel free to join us. Even an hour away from devices and social media could do you the world of good…
Da iawn to our drama club, who this week raffled of a giant box of sweets to help raise funds for their upcoming production of Grease. The raffle raised over £30 and drama club have lots more in the pipeline to help raise further money to purchase costumes and props to make this the best production yet!
A reminder that next Wednesday is our MHS Trailathlon 2019. The event has again sold out like last year, and we would like to thank everyone who has signed up to get involved. Pupils will need to come to school in full uniform as they will be attending lessons 1 and 2 as normal. All participants need to bring clothes to change into to wear whilst completing the event, please remember that this is a woodland based obstacle course that will be extremely muddy so we will not be returning clean children to you at the end of the day! Pupils will need to either bring a packed lunch or get food from the canteen at break 1 to eat before we leave school. Pupils will be back in school before the end of the school day so no special arrangements need to be made for transport home.
Thursday October 17th a large group of our drama students are traveling up to Cardiff to see the West End production of Grease. For anyone who may have missed out on this show fear not, our drama group will be putting on their own production of Grease in the new year! For any pupils attending the trip please remember to wither bring a packed lunch or get food from the canteen during break 1. Pupils will not return to school till approximately 7-7.30pm so will need to bring an appropriate amount of money for food after the show. We hope all who attend have a fantastic time!
Below is a super talented MHS pupil competing at Horse of the Year Show on Sarum Phoenix. Impressively she finished 9th place in the 122 mountain & Moorland working hunter championship of Great Britain! What an incredible achievement, da iawn.
Wednesday afternoon we welcomed Penrhyn Dewi to the school for two fixtures, Year 11 football and Year 9 rugby. The Year 11 boys came away with a 3-0 victory. The boys played some really nice football and deserved the victory. MVP was Ethan Bateman.
The Year 9 boys turned out 23 players which was the most amount of players this year group has ever had for a rugby fixture so a huge congratulations to all that played. For some of the boys it was their first time playing for a couple of years. Penrhyn Dewi were comfortable winners in the end, but our boys gave it their all to the final whistle and deserve massive credit for their effort. Da iawn pawb. MVP Tommy-Lee Davies.
Last week we held a ‘Bloody Big Brunch’, this was as part of a national initiative to raise awareness of period poverty and also implement support for those affected. Our event was the first of its kind in all of Pembrokeshire, with over 20 guests attending and paying for their brunch with a donation of sanitary products. All products collected will be used to top up our ‘Red Boxes’ around school, which are free supplies any of our girls can access when needed. We also used the event as a platform to discuss our plans on how we intend to spend our period poverty grant. Welsh Assembly Government have allocated a pot of money to all secondary schools in Wales to help address period poverty in our own communities. For us, the grant spend will occur in waves, with the first phase being focused on reusable items for our sixth form girls. We have informed our sixth form girls about some of the many options available to them in terms of reusable sanitary products, and shared with them the potential environmental and financial benefits of using reusable sanitary products. We have offered to absorb the cost of purchasing reusable sanitary products for our sixth form girls should they want to try such items, including menstrual cups and period pants. This could make an immeasurable impact for our young ladies, potentially resulting in a cohort of pupils not needing to pay for a period for up to ten years. There is a lot more great work being done around period poverty at Milford Haven School, and we will be sure to keep you up to date on them all.
Thank you to everyone who attended, your support and donations are very much appreciated.
Here is some feedback we have received form some of our sixth form girls who will all benefit from our period poverty grant money: “All MHS sixth form girls support the proposed use of our period poverty grant money, and are happy that the conversation on a topic typically shunned has been comfortably opened. Some are thrilled to finally have the financial access to environmentally-friendly products, some are only just hearing about reusable alternatives and some are happy continuing with what they already use. The educational content and relaxed atmosphere of the brunch helped open people’s minds to an issue that is unfortunately often ignored due to stigma. It was an incredibly valuable community experience that helped establish the beginning of a positive change here in Milford Haven. We were pleasantly surprised with the warm welcome the unconventional topic received and the discussions it has started. We hope that this change continues to improve the lives and education of Milford Haven’s girls, and we anticipate that this will positively impact the school and community in turn. We are aware that it may not be easy battling both poverty and social stigma, however it is vital that we have now taken this first step towards a fairer and better educated society. Here at Milford Haven School, the comfort and safety of our students from all backgrounds is paramount to their education and well-being, this scheme enables us to continue to progress and benefit our pupils and community.”
Don’t forget to follow our school facebook page to keep up to date with announcements, important school information, and most importantly photos of your wonderful children doing amazing things! We have a school app, WEDUC, which we also use to effectively communicate messages between school and home. At the present time we have not yet generated login codes for parents and carers of Year 7 pupils, but we are working hard to get these codes to you as soon as possible. Please rest assured though that anything we post on WEDUC also gets posted onto our Facebook page so you don’t miss any updates.
