We will be holding a few open events this year to give all prospective Year 7 parents and pupils the chance to come and visit us. These events will give you a little insight into what it means to be a pupil at Smestow Academy and give you the chance to ask any questions you may have.

Open Evening will take place on Wednesday 1st October 2025 | 4pm – 7pm

Open Mornings are by booking only. These will take place on:

• Thursday 2nd October 9am-10am

• Friday 3rd October 9am-10am

• Wednesday 7th October 9am-10am

• Thursday 8th October 9am-10am

Book your Open Morning HERE

The Young Animator of the Year Awards is the biggest animation competition for young creatives in the UK. It's free to enter and is a great opportunity to showcase creative skills. 

Students aged 11-22 can submit their work, get noticed by industry professionals and have their film screened at Manchester Animation Festival - the biggest animation festival in the UK. There are also top prizes up for grabs, including a tour of Aardman (the studio behind Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep!).  

2D, 3D and stop-motion films are accepted, and all films need to be under 3 minutes in length. The competition is open for film submissions until Monday 1st September 2025. The shortlisted films will be announced on the YAY website on Wednesday 1st October 2025, with the winners announced at Manchester Animation Festival on Sunday 9th November. 

It's free to enter so the perfect summer holiday creative activity to get stuck into. Time to get doodling, sketching, modelling and making! 

Find out more at >> https://younganimator.uk/   Should you have any questions please contact Sarah Leech sarah@graft.works

11 of our YR10 Sport Leaders had a huge impact on Christchurch primary school Sportsday on Thursday 19^th June. With have helped lead this day from a number of years now and to keep being invited back shows how well our pupils do. Thursday was an extremely hot day so difficult conditions for everyone involved but for our students to keep the primary school children motivated and engaged throughout the day is a huge credit to them, their enthusiasm was noted by all of the staff and congratulated.

It was split into two separate competitions with the younger year groups in the morning and older ones in the afternoon but with the same format of a number of different stations first of all that looked at many different skills that our pupils demonstrated and then managed, these included football shooting, hockey dribbling and a series of sprints over hurdles and through an obstacle course. The primary school children then went onto competitive races on the track which our pupils managed fantastically well with quick transitions to keep the day moving but also congratulating and rewarding the students as they finished their participation with stickers and kind words.

A note from the Christchurch headteacher who addressed our pupils at the end of the day; “This day wouldn’t run without you, the way you are with our children and engaging them throughout is appreciated. You are fantastic pupils and Smestow should be very proud!”

The pupils withheld many of our Smestow values throughout the day and were a credit to themselves and the academy. Well done all.

We have read over 25 million words so far on Accelerated Reader at Smestow Academy #successachievedtogether 🙂

Our word millionaires so far this year are D.Mobolaji, M.Wright, A. Sulthan Ilyes & A. Oseghale of Year 7, I. Abiodun & K. Singh Kaur in Year 8.

In Year 9 we have two pupils who have nearly achieved their 1 million words - so keep up the good work and well done to F. Mohammadzai and K. Thind.

Our Year 7 students have been putting their amazing Textiles skills to the test, transforming ordinary socks into incredible sock monsters! From stitching to stuffing, cutting to customising, they’ve shown creativity, patience, and fantastic craftsmanship in bringing their unique creatures to life!

#Textiles #CreativeLearning #SockMonsters #Year7 #Handmade #SewMuchFun #CraftingSkills

To celebrate Pi Day today Year 7 made paper chains to represent the first 10 decimal places of Pi. Pupils learnt a little bit about the history of Pi and that it is a never ending irrational number. They also saw Pi to 1,000,000 decimal places and listened to the Pi song!

Each pupil made their own colour coded paper chain to show 3.14153.1415926535 and then 7X2 joined them all together to fill Mrs Butler’s classroom.

Several forms have submitted excellent Pi tessellations and there have been some lovely PiKus. The deadline for the tessellations and PiKus is Monday and then a winner will be announced.

On Friday, the YR7 girls Futsal team took part in the #BiggestEverGirlsFootballSession at Aldersley Village. The girls played 5 games of Futsal against schools across the city and performed fantastically well, winning 3 out of the 5 games. It took them the first game to get used to the rules and surroundings along with some of them playing futsal for the first time ever, but once that had been then the girls played some really good football scoring some brilliant goals. We won the next 3 games, scoring a total of 4 goals and not conceding any which is outstanding considering the format and the games only being 5 minutes. The girls unfortunately lost the final game meaning we didn’t go through as group winners and into the final but a fantastic afternoon nonetheless. Our girls across the tournament came from Ameliah (2), Kyra (2) and Layla who all performed outstanding throughout all of the games and really drove the team forwards. A special mention must go to Ava who went in goal for us and was excellent, pulling off some fantastic saves to keep the girls in some of the games and give them chance of winning.

A really well ran event and thoroughly enjoyable afternoon for the girls, they performed excellently and did themselves and the academy proud showing fantastic Smestow values by striving to improve to be their best and owning what they do with their behaviour and sportsmanship on & off the pitch. Well done girls.

Today we have hosted a Careers Fair here at School in support of National Careers Week. Every year group has been invited to attend and speak with over 20 employers and training providers across the West Midlands and beyond.  

From the Arena Theatre in Wolverhampton, to Oxford Brookes University, WM Jobs to Aston University and WATES to Scholars School Systems, we have had a wealth of exhibitors to todays event.

Providing opportunities to have meaningful experiences with employers is supporting our pupils in achieving Gatsby Benchmark 5.  Careers is a key part of our personal development here at Smestow Academy and we are very grateful to all our exhibitors for the time today.

Some of our pupils at Smestow Academy have worked incredibly hard to improve their reading fluency and have now graduated from the sixth form reading theatre with reading ages significantly higher than the National Average. This is a true testament to #successachievedtogether.

Year 10 psychology pupils completed their end-of-topic assessment on Development! This reflects Smestow’s teaching principle of ‘Review’, where students consolidate over six weeks of learning.

Throughout this time, we have consistently checked for understanding, ensuring that students build strong foundations before tackling their final assessment. Well done to all students for their hard work, effort, and progress! 👏

Did you know? GCSE Psychology exams include a variety of question styles – from multiple-choice questions to extended 9-mark essay responses, testing both knowledge and evaluation skills.

Keep up the great work, Year 10! 🎯✨

#SmestowPsychology #Review #HardWorkPaysOff