Students from Birkenhead School are coming back down to earth after being one of a small number of schools chosen to present to Astronaut Tim Peake at the Principia Mission’s Schools’ Conference that took place recently at the University of York.
The conference was run by the UK Space Agency to celebrate the imaginative work that children across the country have done linked to Tim Peake’s Principia mission to the International Space Station.
The School beat competition from schools across the UK to meet Tim. Students from Year 4 to Lower Sixth presented on how his mission had inspired their studies which ranged from analysing seeds that had been in space to observing the transit of Mercury moving across the Sun through the School’s telescope.
Mr Paul Vicars, Headmaster, said “We are extremely proud of our students being selected to present to Tim Peake at the Principia Conference in recognition of the range and quality of work that they had completed. Mrs Sharon Tharme and Dr Sue Jarvis worked closely with them and have truly inspired an interest and passion in Space. I am confident that this exceptional opportunity will stay with them for the rest of their lives”.
The opportunity to meet Tim Peake was just one of a number of space related activities that the School has on offer for students. The School runs a weekly Astronomy Club and in February, a group of 20 girls will be visiting NASA in Texas, US, as part of a STEM Sisters trip and will be taking part in an engineering mission to land a rover on Mars.
Birkenhead School has been recognised nationally as being one of the top performing independent schools in the Sunday Times Top 250 Independent Secondary Schools for 2016. The School was ranked 84th and recognises the School’s strong performance in the summer examinations where the school achieved 100% pass rate and 88% A* to B grades at A Level. To find out more about Birkenhead School, visit www.birkenheadschool.co.uk
