Wellacre Student Wins Poetry Competition

Posted at 11:24 am on 15th December, 2020

First Prize for Jake's Poem about Covid Community Spirit

Wellacre student Jake's writing has been recognised by GM Mayor Andy Burnham and CEO of the Chartered College of Teaching Alison Peacock, winning a regional poetry competition about Covid and the community.

The competition was organised by Altrincham-based The Alliance for Learning Teaching School, part of Bright Futures Educational Trust, and invited schools from across the North West to submit poetry around the theme of ‘Coming Together’.

Jake, Year 7, from Wellacre Academy was voted best entrant by judges Burnham and his fellow judges Adrian Bethune, Deputy Chair of Well Schools Strategic Board and Founder of Teach Happy, and Hannah Wilson, Director of Diverse Educators - for his poem, entitled: NHS.

Lisa Fathers, Director of Teaching School at The Alliance for Learning, part of BFET, says:

“Since the outbreak of Covid-19, we have seen people from all walks of life ‘coming together’ to provide support; through charitable donations, birthday wishes, help for struggling businesses and of course the weekly coming together to recognise our keyworkers and NHS.  It’s been quite inspiring and so it felt right to recognise this as the topic for our annual poetry competition.”

Andy Burnham adds:

“The North West has seen its fair share of restrictions over the last year - we have had to ‘stay apart to come together’ so it was very fitting for The Alliance for Learning to invite children from across the region to create poetry around this theme - be it collaboration, relationships or teamwork. The entries were so impressive, it was difficult to choose just three winners.”

Hannah Wilson adds:

“I was delighted to help judge and found the entries to be original, inspirational and very moving. Congratulations to all the winners and a huge thankyou to the schools who took part.”

Second and third prizes were awarded to Abigail Bennett, of Birchwood Community High School and Eva Rothwell of Longdendale High School.

More than 100 schools entered the competition, with the winning schools all receiving book tokens as prizes.

Alongside Jake, Mr Magdzinski, Wellacre's Leader of KS3 English, also selected the outstanding writing efforts of fellow Year 7 students Ethan and Aidan.

Mr Magdzinski said:

“We were delighted to hear the news of Jake's success in the competition! Our boys put in considerable effort to write their poems. I was impressed with how their poetry reflected their feelings towards this strange year and how they were able to express this through their vocabulary.”