Netballers Pippa and Jo have been named in the Saracens Mavericks pathway squads for 2021. Jo will be playing for the U19 squad and Pippa, who was awarded the Saracens Mavericks NPL Inspirational Player Award for the 2019/2020 season, will be playing up in the U21s. Congratulations to them both! We can’t wait to see them in action and wish them the best of luck.

Representing youth across the county and making history, A Level student Jacob Wrenn is the first Surrey Young Mayor.

The Sixth Former has been involved in youth politics for around five years, first through the Surrey Heath Youth Council, which he ended chairing, and then moving on to the Surrey Youth Cabinet where he ran projects acting on young people’s concerns. As the county’s first Young Mayor, he is helping to shape the role and goals for the future and championing the voices of young people across Surrey.

Want to get the best exam results? According to Sixth Former Charles Aldridge, sleeping is the way forward! Charles has just had his EPQ research on sleeping and effective learning, published by the Medic Mentor, a national magazine dedicated to applying healthcare students. The Cambridge hopeful, who discovered a passion for medicine after breaking his collar bone last year, says: “I was stunned by how important sleep hygiene is in memory”. As well as memory and the transfer of information from short to long term Charles also found that sleep has a direct impact on understanding; focus and motivation. His in depth article looks at how memories are formed, the five sleep cycles and how memory consolidation varies over the night through the cycles. And the secret to a good night’s sleep according to his research is reducing exposure to artificial light one to two hours before bedtime and sleeping in a cool environment (around 18 degrees). “Sleep is the solution to many issues related to learning, so investing your time into building healthy sleep habits is a simple way to fuel success in your future career.” To read the article, please click here.

Harvest Festival items, collected by all the school Houses, have arrived at the Woking Foodbank. In addition, £800 has been raised for this worthy local charity by Gordon’s parents, friends and students. The foodbank provides emergency food to people in crisis and was founded by local churches and community groups with the aim of stopping hunger in the Woking area. Pictured is Paul Curley (far right) delivering the donation, with volunteers from the Foodbank.

Rugby titans Chris Ashton and Jordan Turner-Hall joined some 70 talented rugby players at Gordon's for the first DiSE (Diploma in Sporting Excellence) Assessment Day. The students, from all over the South of England, were here to show their skills for a place on next year's Harlequins/Gordon's DiSE programme. In a talk to the young hopefuls, Mr Ashton who has played 44 games for England, said his rugby career had followed a pathway similar to those the students were hoping to embark on and that he had known what he wanted to do from a young age and had stayed motivated. When friends were allocated places after trials, "...that was my motivation to get ahead of them". For more information on the DiSE programme, please click here.