The school’s annual carol service took place on Tuesday 12th December at St Katharine’s and St John’s Church in Old Colwyn. Over 60 pupils who sang, played and recited their way through the Christmas story led the service. Highlights included solo performances by Adam Arshad on the tuba, Aimee Parry on the tenor horn, Ben Sansom on the clarinet and Bethan Elliott on the violin. There were many vocal performances and the junior and senior choirs performed a selection of traditional and contemporary items. For the first time ever, the service also included pupils from the Performing Arts ‘More Able and Talented’ group, who composed and performed two Christmas pieces specially written for the occasion. The evening ended with all the pupils singing a rousing performance of ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’, which was followed by refreshments and Mrs Bronwen McKibben’s famous mince pies. Over £170 was raised from the collection towards the school’s Madagascar fund and Colwyn Bay Rotary Club.

We are delighted to have recently been awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's Level 3 Award for a developing school garden!!
The award recognises that :

Our Leadership Team and school community support our gardening project
We have built on our practical skills and can prepare areas ready for planting
We grow a simple range of plants
We encourage wildlife to the garden by providing homes and habitats
We re-use as many things as we can and understand composting.

Many thanks to staff members Ms. Julie Chapman and to Mr. Richard Bysouth for all their hard work and dedication, and of course, to all the pupils and local suppliers who support our garden.

The pupils involved in the regeneration of the school garden would like to say a huge thank you to John Griffiths of ‘Tal Y Goed Nurseries’ and ‘Kinmel Water Gardens’ for their donations of plants. Their support has been greatly received and this has encouraged pupils to learn new skills and most importantly contributed to their health and wellbeing which is openly supported within the school. We look forward to their continued support.

On the evening of September 12th, we held our 21st Annual Awards Evening which is a special event rewarding pupils for academic success and progress, across all three Key Stages. There are also special awards for Pupil of the Year, Head Girl and Head Boy. Read More…

Ysgol Bryn Elian is once again celebrating a superb set of GCSE results, adding to the great success of last week’s ‘A’ level results. This year’s results are the first of the revised GCSE curriculum in Wales, with most qualifications having been taken for the very first time. Read More…

Once again, we are delighted by the outstanding results achieved by our dedicated and hard working pupils with 2017 giving us one of our best Post 16 performance results. All students gained qualifications with a very high percentage of pupils gaining A*/A or equivalent in at least one subject area and approaching a third gaining at least 2 A* or A grades. This stunning figure is matched by the number of pupils who gained 2 or more A levels at grades A*-C, through our academically rigorous curriculum. Yet again, all pupils, without exception, left with qualifications Read More…

Our young enterprise group, Tech-Ex won the national award for ‘Best Use of ICT and Social Media’ in Cardiff on the 15th June, in the Young Enterprise Wales Company Awards 2017.

The group of Year 12 students have been amazing and have completely exceeded all expectations - they deserve praise and admiration for their talent, skills and enthusiasm!! The students competing in Cardiff were Zoe Boughen, Scott Lawley, Rees Sheldon and Ben Walsh ñ others in the team are Zak Walker, Dorothy Gough and Jack Hughes. Read More…

The Bryn Elian Performing Arts department will be performing Bugsy Malone in the School Theatre on Monday 17th and Tuesday 18th of July from 7.30pm. Tickets cost £5 and are available from Mrs Hildrew.

The school wishes to congratulate former pupils Sam Crossland, Chloe Jones, Isabella Jones, Owen Jones, Callum Ellis and James Randle who were presented with their Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday 25th May 2017. During Year 12 and 13 at Bryn Elian, the students worked hard to achieve all elements of the award, such as expedition, voluntary service and residential voluntary work, whilst juggling heavy commitments in their academic studies. The Duke himself was in attendance and spoke warmly with the group. The awards were presented by Jess Eddie, the Olympic rowing champion. Congratulations to all on such a magnificent achievement.

On Thursday 11th May, thirty three pupils performed in the final of “Bryn Elian’s Got Talent” for an audience of over 140 people. They performed a variety of acts including singing, dancing, instrumental solos and group, comedy double acts and even a Yo-yo demonstration. The judges were very impressed and had a difficult time deciding on the winners. First place was awarded to Cara and Cassie Parry who sang and played the ukulele, second place to Emma Tustin playing the harp and third place to Talia Ryan who sang. Congratulations to all who took place, a brilliant night.

Congratulations to our Headteacher, Mrs. Eithne Hughes OBE on her recent success in the inaugural Professional Teaching Awards Cymru.

Mrs. Hughes won the award for Promoting Collaboration to Improve Learning Opportunities, recognising the work she has led in the school on a number of projects, including ICT, transition, thinking skills and many aspects of pedagogy.

The award was presented by the Cabinet Secretary for Education on Sunday 7th May in a lovely ceremony at Cardiff City Hall. Read More…

Our Young enterprise Team ‘TechEx’ will be holding a raffle to win two tickets to see Little Mix live in concert. Raffle tickets are on sale at £1 each between the 8th and 18th of May, with the lucky winner being announced on Friday 19th of May.

Bryn Elian’s Got Talent Final - Thursday 11th May in Studio One. Tickets £5 available for Mrs Hildrew.

Over 70 pupils took part in the Performing Arts Department Easter Eggstravaganza performance on Wednesday 5th April. The event saw solo, duet, group and whole class performances of music in all styles and from all eras performed in front of a sell-out audience in Studio One. Some of the highlights included ‘The Lamas’ a year 7 rock band performing ‘Are You With Me’, Grace McLeod in year 9 performing the Blues piece ‘Everglade’ on the guitar, the year 10 GCSE Music class performing ‘Handbags and Gladrags’, the brass group performing ‘Time To Tango’ and a harp solo ‘Mountain Stream’ and ‘Goblin Rustle’ performed by Emma Tustin. The performance finished with a rousing rendition of ‘Fat Sam’s Grand Slam’ performed by the cast of the forthcoming production of ‘Bugsy Malone’.

Headteacher, Eithne Hughes represented the school at an award ceremony in Cardiff where Ysgol Bryn Elian was one of only three secondary schools in the whole of Wales to be presented with a prestigious award recognising excellence in education and training.
In particular, the school was singled out for its inspirational leadership and highly effective work in developing pupils’ literacy and numeracy skills.

The award was presented by Chief Inspector for Wales, Meinir Rowlands and the Cabinet Secretary for Education Kirsty Williams.

On the 7th of February I was lucky enough to be chosen to take part in the annual Welsh Teachers Visit to CERN, the huge science experiment in Geneva, Switzerland. The program was aimed at providing 24 Physics teachers, like myself, with first hand experience of the cutting edge research being carried out at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN). Over four days, we attended tailored lectures and workshops delivered by a variety of speakers, all leaders in their fields. I found it surprising how many of these eminent speakers were either Welsh or working at Welsh universities. One of the most fascinating talks was on the researching of anti-hydrogen, a project run by the University of Swansea, with their findings only recently published. Read More…

Tags: CERN

Bryn Elian Performing Arts Department present 'Easter Eggstravaganza' taking place Wednesday 5th April, 7pm - 9pm in Studio One. Tickets £3 from Mrs Hildrew

Tags: Performing Arts

Eleven students from Ysgol Bryn Elian, Colwyn Bay sat round a table back in September to discuss a new enterprise that they could begin through Young Enterprise Wales. Six months on and the students will be the only school representing Wales in the ‘Innovative Business 2017’ competition in Lithuania next week. Read More…

Tags: Enterprise

12 pupils in each year has the opportunity to experience civil engineering ‘hands-on’, working with the Institute of Civil engineers (ICE). They had to work together to construct a suspension bridge in school and then had the opportunity to find out lots of information about working in the industry. All of the pupils thoroughly enjoyed the experience, with the Year 10 and 11 pupils getting a very detailed insight into a future career in engineering.

For World Book Day this year, Year 7 and Year 8 Ysgol Bryn Elian students and teachers not only celebrated the day by dressing up as their favourite character from a novel, they also took part in ‘Don’t Judge a Book By Its Cover’. All pupils picked a book from the library, and then wrapped the book with paper. A blurb was then written about the book, without disclosing the name of the author or any characters. Each Year 7 and Year 8 chose a book from the blurb alone, which they read. Students then wrote a book review on their selected book to win some book tokens. Hopefully, we have encouraged our students to pick up a book, they might not necessarily have chosen!

Happy Reading!

Ysgol Bryn Elian has got the grade after receiving the prestigious Careers Wales Mark for the second time.

The accolade, which recognises a commitment to continuous quality improvement within an educational institution, was awarded to Ysgol Bryn Elian for its dedication and enthusiasm in preparing and supporting young people entering the world of work or continuing in education. Read More…