Admissions Update

A very warm welcome to our Admissions Update e-newsletter, designed to give you an insight into the Crescent and a feel for the richness of school life here. You will also find lots of practical information that will help you through the admissions process.

The first thing that strikes visitors to our school is the special sense of purpose that there is here, combined with a genuinely caring and nurturing atmosphere. Every child here is unique and everyone has their place in our shared community. 

Our wonderful teaching staff are determined to go the extra mile to help children achieve everything they are capable of. This was noted in our most recent ISI 'outstanding in all areas' inspection, where the parental feedback ‘praised the school’s preparation of former pupils who had successfully and easily transitioned into their new senior school’. You can read the full report in full here.

Throughout the challenges of recent years, we have continued to offer excellent provision both academically and pastorally. Our philosophy applies inside the classroom, on the sports field and in all of our extra-curricular pursuits as well.

We look forward to welcoming you to our wonderful school in the near future.

Joe Thackway
Headmaster

Following the sad news of the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the school, children and staff came together to complete activities to reflect on Her Majesty’s life and legacy and to give thanks for her devoted service to our nation. Children in the Upper School explored the Queen’s life in their History lessons. Some created thank you cards while others completed response tasks, helping to give them an insight into her life of duty. The younger children coloured pictures of flowers and symbols and the royal family has featured in their phonics lessons.

In the corridor Mrs Symons and Mrs Stapleton have displayed the children’s work along a timeline of her life, creating a beautiful board of remembrance. Central to that board is a particularly poignant letter, that the school received at the beginning of September, from the Palace, on behalf of Her Majesty, thanking the children for their wonderful Platinum Jubilee messages.

We have all been impressed with how the children have responded to the sad news.

At the end of the Trinity Term, our marvellous Reception children were exploring the topic of ‘Growing and Changing’ and studied the lifecycle of butterflies. Everyone enjoyed the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, had fun learning a super butterfly song and created beautiful butterfly life-cycle art.

The children also visited Stratford Butterfly Farm, seeing the most amazing butterflies first-hand and learning more about the life cycle stages of the butterfly.

They also got to hold one of our class butterflies carefully in their hands before we released all our lovely butterflies into the flowers at the front of the school.

So much fun and such lovely learning. Well done Reception you are all now brilliant lepidopterists!

Last year's Year 6 pupils have now moved on to a wide range of outstanding local independent and state schools including the Foundation senior school, Princethorpe College.

Over 50% of the children who took the 11+ assessments gained the qualifying score and six pupils have chosen the local grammar schools, Lawrence Sherriff and Rugby High School, as their future destinations. 14 of the 24-strong class have moved on to Princethorpe.

We also have pupils who have transferred to a selection of other schools including; Kingsley, Bablake and King Henry's and Rugby Free. We are especially delighted that a number of the 2022 Year 6 pupils have also been awarded scholarships, including all-rounder, academic, music and sports scholarships.

Sarah Webb, Assistant Head and Year 6 Teacher, said, “Our aim is always to do our best to help our pupils reach the destination secondary school of their choice. Despite the challenges of the last two years the children have enjoyed great success. We are particularly pleased with the range of scholarships offers they received. It’s an excellent outcome and everyone here is really delighted for them.”

Congratulations to all the children for their achievements – Crescent School is really proud of them.

Crescent School's KS2 Summer Concert took place on Monday 13 June.  It was well attended with the school hall packed with parents and family members eager to enjoy the end of term celebration of fine music and song.

As always, the school orchestra opened the concert performing the theme from ‘Coronation Street’ confidently. Then came the first of many solos with Dorrit performing ‘Singing in the Rain’ beautifully followed by Charlie carefully fingering the traditional ‘Sur Le Pont d’Avignon’ on his guitar.

Brass Group were next with two lively toe-tapping pieces starting with the theme from ‘The Muppets’ and then playing 'Oom Pa Pa’, the group included many different brass instruments, quite a feat for such a small school. Evie then performed the very fast ‘Wonka’s Welcome Song’ fabulously.

Wacky Music came next with an animated, noisy arrangement of ‘Junk Junk’ performed on all manner of instruments including a dustbin! 

Zahra then skilfully played ‘Portsmouth’ from her Grade 5 exam on violin. Chloe followed on providing the audience with a moment of quiet reflection with her beautiful song ‘Fall, Leaves, Fall’.

Next in the programme was Flute Group with a super performance of ‘Bells Across The Meadows’ and they were followed by Rohan who played the catchy theme from ‘Goldfinger’.

Year 3 Recorders delighted everyone with their finger perfect rendition of ‘Smelly Cheese’.

Charlotte then completed the solos playing ‘Tenor Trombone Rag’.

The concert concluded with a rousing performance by the Choir. Pupils sang four pieces starting with ‘Scenes From A Railway Carriage’, then ‘We Are The World’, followed by ‘Viva La Vida’ and finishing with the very timely ‘Leaver’s Song’.

After all the thank yous the children then happily performed one last piece as a finale, ‘Our Queen’ the Platinum Jubilee song.

All in all it was another outstanding afternoon of music and song. Our thanks and congratulations go to all Crescent School's accomplished performers who took to the stage in front of their proud parents, and of course to all their teachers and Director of Music, Julie Barnes who have helped them achieve so much.

Crescent School delightedly claimed victory in the U9 Hallfield Prep Cricket Sixes Tournament. The event took place on Tuesday 24 May at Hallfield Prep School in Birmingham with eight teams from the Midlands region taking part. Playing for Crescent were Shiv, Alex G, Alex T, Sam B, Timi and Edward GH.

The team played three matches using a Kwik Cricket format where everyone bowls and bats.

Crescent faced the hosts in their opening match but excellent bowling and fielding restricted Hallfield’s opportunity to score and the boys won by 91 runs to 65 runs taking six wickets along the way.

Match two was incredibly exciting. Crescent faced Abberley Hall School and both teams played well. At the end of the game the teams were drawn on runs and wickets taken, so there was a bowl-off to decide winner. Shiv and Sam B both hit the stumps, so Crescent progressed to the final.

There, Crescent faced West House School. The boys were focused and there was plenty of great batting and bowling in a very tight game. Crescent was ahead by one run with one ball to go and Alex G calmly defended the ball to take the tournament win.

It was an outstanding afternoon with boundaries scored by every player and wickets taken by four of the six boys. There was standout captaincy from Shiv, managing his field, showing great leadership and manners, but all the boys are to be commended as the children worked extremely hard at their cricket and deserved the success on the day.

Crescent’s Year 6 were simply magnificent when they performed Shakespeare’s tragedy, the Scottish play, Macbeth in June. In their final end-of-school production they superbly portrayed the dark story of treachery and corruption. Their rendition which included a modern twist just wowed their parents and teachers.

On the big night pupils were nervous but excited to perform having really enjoyed their dress rehearsal in front of the school earlier in the week.

The children had worked incredibly hard with Drama teacher, Kim Thompson, and Director of Music, Julie Barnes, to prepare the special performance and the talented cast rose admirably to the challenge.

It was clear the audience really enjoyed the show, their thunderous applause a testament to yet another super example of the school’s broad provision for the arts.

Headmaster, Joe Thackway said, "Huge congratulations to all the cast for learning their lines so well and delivering them with meaning, expression and great timing, what a multi-talented group of young people they all are."

Many thanks to all the staff and parents who helped with the production and to our wonderful Year 5 Chorus who accompanied the show.

On Tuesday 17 May local Rugby resident Samantha Melia, from Bwengu Projects Malawi, visited the Crescent School to receive a cheque for £1,110.00. The cheque was presented by Year 4 pupils, Maggie and James, in assembly in front of the whole school.

The Crescent School has been supporting the work of Bwengu Projects for fifteen years now. In fact, the school was one of the charity’s first supporters back in 2007 when they donated books for use in school libraries. Each year the Year 4 children at the Crescent School study Africa and in particular Malawi and the work that Bwengu Projects does. Studying the challenges the people in Malawi face helps the children to appreciate the similarities and differences in our societies.

At the end of their topic the children organise fundraising activities that the whole school participates in. For the first time, in 2022, Bwengu Projects asked Crescent School to support a whole project, the completion of a Nursery and Orphan Feeding Centre in Mleghu in the most northern part of Malawi. The children set themselves a target of £685 which would enable the building to be completed.

The Year 4s raised money in a number of enterprising ways including, a sponsored silence, guessing games and a non-uniform day and together they managed to raise a whopping £1,110.

Bryony Forth, Deputy Head, commented,

“Supporting the Bwengu Project is always a highlight of my teaching year, something which I personally am very proud to be part of. The children enjoy studying Bwengu and comparing 'A Village Less Economically Developed than Rugby'.  Over the years, we must have raised over £12,000 and helped pay for renovating schools, building a Women's Development Centre, sewing machines, a teacher's salary and nearly 60,000 meals for orphans.

“The children worked incredibly hard this year organising lots of events. They have smashed their fundraising target, having raised a great total of £1,110.00. As well as completing the building, the money will also now provide for furniture and toys for the nursery and cooking pots, bowls and a supply of food."

Samantha Melia was overwhelmed, and commented,

“This is really wonderful. There are so many different people in need across the world and we are so grateful that every year pupils at the Crescent help unlock the opportunity of education for the children of Malawi.”

In July Bwengu Projects shared some photos of the building work taking place which we shared on facebook. At the end of August we received a further update with the wonderful news that the work has now been completed. Bwengu Projects also told us that there are already 48 under 5s registered for feeding and daily lessons in numbers and letters.

As well as completing the building, the money raised has also provided for furniture and toys for the nursery and cooking pots, bowls and a supply of food.

Many, many congratulations to Stephanie who swam in the Midlands Regional Swimming Championships at The Alan Higgs Centre in Coventry in May.

Stephanie, who trains with Rugby Swimming Club six days a week, swam in the 50m and 100m Backstroke. It will have taken Stephanie such a lot of hard work and dedicated training to achieve the qualifying times and just qualifying for the event is such a super achievement.

In the 50m Backstroke Stephanie finished in 23rd place out of 34 swimmers in a time of 38.70 seconds then in the 100m Backstroke Stephanie pulled herself up the field to finish in 13th place out of 31 swimmers in a time of 1.21.05 minutes.  

We are really proud of Stephanie - what a fantastic effort!