Over the course of Ramadan, we have also given away nearly 4000 grab bags for students at the end of the school day – a small gesture has meant a great deal to many of our young people.

Thank you to everyone who supported students during the month and helped make this  a positive, inclusive experience for all.

This will now be a weekly reoccurrence every Friday at the same time.

Lots of fresh produce, tinned and dry items and toiletries were made available free of charge to those in need in the local community and to the families of students who attend our school.

We had a successful turnout on day 1 and hope this continues in a bid to keep helping those who need support in our community.

Over 200 people attended, making it a fantastic opportunity for families in our community to come together and access free bikes, toys and baby items.

A huge thank you to On Trak for sponsoring the event and to the fabulous Safeguarding Team and Co-op Academy Grange for organising such a meaningful day. Your dedication to supporting our community made this event truly special.

It was wonderful to see so many smiling faces and families benefiting from the generosity and teamwork that made it all possible. 

A massive thank you to all who helped and supported to help make the event on Saturday 14th March 2026 a massive success!

Senior Science Technician John Dilger recently welcomed visitors to the academy’s science laboratory, where he shared the story behind some of the equipment used by students. Among the balances in the lab is a vintage OHAUS Brainweigh B1500D, believed to date back to the 1980s and still occasionally used when demand for balances is high.

The school also uses several other OHAUS models, including an Adventurer Pro, an Adventurer balance, and a Galaxy 1500D – another 1980s instrument that continues to function well despite its age. In fact, when the weighing pan was damaged, the Galaxy balance was creatively adapted with a standard baking tray, allowing it to continue serving students in practical lessons.

During the visit, John also showed an extremely old centrifuge resembling a pudding bowl, thought to be more than 40 years old – a reminder that much of the lab equipment has been inherited over decades.

Image from left to right:

1. Brainweigh – circa 1980’s
2. Adventurer Pro – approx. 20yrs old
3. Galaxy 1500D – Also 1980’s and yes, that is a normal baking tray that John attached to the top when the pan that came with the balance was damaged. Works fine!
4. New Scout balance kindly donated by OHAUS
5. Adventurer balance, a few years old.

Co-op Academy Grange serves almost 1,500 students in one of the most deprived areas of Bradford, with over 50% of students eligible for pupil premium funding. As a result, science departments often rely on long-serving equipment to meet teaching needs.

The newly donated OHAUS Scout balance will help modernise the department’s weighing equipment and support more accurate practical work in biology and chemistry lessons.

John expressed his gratitude for the donation, noting that the new balance will make a meaningful difference for both staff and students.

A warm and welcoming atmosphere filled the school last half term as we hosted a highly successful Safeguarding Coffee Morning, bringing together over 50 families, including parents of our incoming Year 7 cohort.

The event, served as a valuable opportunity for staff and families to connect, share important safeguarding information, and strengthen our school community. Attendees enjoyed fresh coffee and cake while engaging in conversations around student wellbeing, school support services, and community engagement.

In addition to the informative discussions, families were able to take home a range of free giveaways, including toys, a pram, school uniforms, clothing, food parcels, and hygiene essentials—generously provided to support our community.

“It was fantastic to see so many families come together,” said Mary Holt- DSL “Events like this really help build trust and open communication, which are key to safeguarding our students.”

Due to the positive feedback and strong turnout, we are excited to announce plans to host a Safeguarding Coffee Morning once every term going forward. We’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who attended, and we look forward to welcoming even more families to our next event.

Together, we continue to build a safer, more supportive environment for all.

Please take a moment to see what has been happening in our school.

Thank you.

Other obscure activities also took place, with the crate escape, Jacob’s ladder and bushcraft, where the students toasted marshmallows and warmed up with their own fires.

These activities were all designed to improve student’s resilience, teamwork, communication and
leadership skills.

Every student succeeded on this trip, as staff we all felt each individual had either faced their fears or grown as a person, doing things they normally wouldn’t. All week us staff members had the privilege of watching how the students represented the school and themselves, to the point that one of the instructors said that some of the activities were the smoothest they had ever run with this group.

Following this they should all be very proud to be a Grange Student!

Miss.Lee, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Teale.

Please take a moment to see what has been happening in our school.

Thank you.

During the summit, students took part in workshops and group discussions where they explored topics such as emotional wellbeing, mental health, and challenges faced by young people. They worked together to analyse information, discuss possible solutions, and present ideas for improving support for students in schools. 

The summit also gave them the chance to meet other young people, listen to speakers, and ask questions to professionals and decision-makers. As a result, students develop skills such as teamwork, leadership, and public speaking, while also gaining confidence and a stronger understanding that their voices and experiences can help shape positive changes in their schools and communities.

Please take a moment to see what has been happening in our school.

Thank you.

Please take a moment to see what has been happening in our school.

Thank you.

For many of the students, this was their first panto (and theatre) experience in the heart of their own city.

After initially being in awe of the architecture of the theatre itself, students revelled in over two hours of music and songs, dance and comedy as they watched some famous faces bring the traditional fairytale story to life in a unique and traditional slapstick manner, complete with a helicopter and dragon!

One student commented, "I loved seeing all the amazing costumes and the dancers were amazing!" with another saying "It was so funny I couldn't stop laughing at the jokes".

Please take a moment to see what has been happening in our school.

Thank you.

Please take a moment to see what has been happening in our school.

Thank you.

From memorable events to student achievements, the newsletter showcases the vibrant life of our school community. We look forward to sharing even more inspiring news and updates with you next term!

The first section was introduced by Wakefield born poet Matt Abbott who explored the diverse forms and styles of poetry, treating us to his sonnet Heinz 57 in praise of baked beans on toast. Our students each wrote a haiku.

The Slam poet Michelle Scally-Clarke taught us performance techniques, she talked about her early life and our students wrote an ‘I am…..’ poem under her guidance.

After a break for lunch where we visited the famous Story Bus in City Park and had a look around the BLD venue tents we returned to the hall where the award-winning poet Antony Anaxagorou explored the place poetry has in society today, the politics of writing and how poetry can shape our understanding of contemporary issues.

The last section of the day was with testament, the Guinness world record holding beatboxer who delivered a session outlining rhyme, rhythm and flow, exploring the links between hip-hop, poetry, rap and the inspirations behind the people who championed these art forms. He finished with a rousing rap using a selection of audience selected word suggestions.

It was an exciting, informative day and has hopefully inspired our students to be even more creative in their writing.

The guest author was Manjeet Mann who took part in a question and answer session where some lucky students were able to put their questions to her before the floor was opened and everyone was invited to speak. Manjeet answered everyone’s questions in great depth, providing us with glimpses of her life as a child, her journey into becoming a writer, via acting and scriptwriting and she told us what influences her stories, she also handed out some sage advice for budding writers.

Our morning workshop was hosted by the British born Cypriot poet, Anthony Anaxagorou. Winner of the SLAMbassadors UK rap poetry competition and founder of the Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and live music night based on the Southbank in London. We spent the morning writing poetry based on a collection of words given by Anthony.

Anthony was impressed with the resulting poem from one of our students and she was invited to perform on stage at the Showcase event.

After lunch Manjeet Mann singed our books and had a chat with each of our students before we went to have a tour of the university and the grounds.

The afternoon workshop was hosted by Kerry Drewery, the author of the award-winning Young Adult series ‘Cell 7’ along with a number of other novels. Kerry helped our students write a detective novel, including inventing a character name.

At the showcase event many students were eager to read out the work that they had produced that day. A competition for all attendees was announced which is sponsored by Quentin Blake, the world renowned artist and author.

Pictured are two of our year 11 students, one who received a £100 voucher for the most improved attendance from HT2 to HT3 and the other who received an Easter Egg incentive and is still in the running for the £500 reward for maintaining 100% attendance throughout the academic year. Well done to all 54 students!! 

Anthony read an exciting extract from the novel and told us how he was inspired to write this scene based on a real life experience after having had his bike stolen.

Students were given plenty of time to ask questions about ‘I Am the Minotaur’, along with his other novels and general questions about writing and publishing. 

Later in the morning we were joined by some First Story students for a creative writing workshop, before which Anthony gave a very practical demonstration, using some students, of the 5 Stages of the Freytags Pyramid, how the action rises and falls within a story. He gave everyone some tips on how to start a story and hold the readers interest. Students were given the opportunity to read out their work at the end of the workshop.

Anthony took time to speak to students on a one to one basis, sign autographs and take pictures. The students had a great time meeting and talking to him and there’s been many positive comments about his visit.  

If you are interested in reading one of Anthony’s novels please come to the library and speak to Mrs Blashill.

Pictured are our students hard at work thinking up names and titles for the collection of work. It was a fun, noisy evening as everyone put forward suggestions and debated them.

We were joined by the new Programme and Partnerships Manager (Yorkshire), Ali Johnson who said “It was great to meet the cohort, what a fantastic bunch.”

We have decided on the title ’Silence is the Loudest Sound’. Watch this space for further updates and the launch date.

Competition was fierce and staff had to be encouraged not to get too excited and shout out the answers. Our winner took home books, a chocolate orange, an electronic dictionary and a football.

Runners up were given books, chocolate oranges and electronic dictionaries. We also had some Big Book Bonanza quizzes and a ‘design a book cover’ competition in the library.

They are training for the First Award, which includes desk duties, shelving resources and customer services.

They all have a blue shield shaped badge, so when you come into the library and need help you can easily recognise the official Student Librarians.

Each student has a Pupil Librarian Toolkit where they can record their progress and achievements.

Mrs Blashill said “These students all work incredibly hard during their own time, their help towards the smooth running of the library is invaluable. I am sure they will be celebrating achieving the first level very soon.”

Over the past few months the panel have read and reviewed the books, as a school we voted ‘If the World Were 100 People’ as our overall favourite book, but we were about to find out which book had been voted number 1 across the country.

All the writers and illustrators were interviewed and we had the opportunity to ask questions, we joined in a quiz to see how much information we’d remembered from the books (we all did really well and had high scores).

Pictured here are jubilant scenes when the winning book was announced, it appears that lots of schools agreed with us and voted ‘If the World Were 100 people’ as their top book. All the shortlisted books and a display can be seen in the library.

Click here to access your voucher

You can download your token which supermarkets and bookshops will swap for one of the World Book Day books, or allow you £1 off the cost of a book.

The school library will have a number of books to give away on World Book Day, or you can join in with themed quizzes and competitions.

The competition was a lot of fun, especially the ‘Wacky Words’ round where the contestants could choose between spelling a dinosaur name or a place name – there were some very tricky spellings in there!

We also have to thank Mrs Crowther for her input in the anagram round – she was a star.

There was a great atmosphere to the event, all the schools were supporting one another, clapping and cheering and sharing snacks.

Competition was fierce and the standards were high and although we weren’t placed our boys did fantastically well, and both boys received a certificate and a badge. We are really proud of their achievements.

We met up with Mrs McKenzie, the librarian from Co-op Academy Priesthorpe and 12 of her book club students.

After playing a fast, fun and furious ‘Getting to Know You’ game outside in the square we then took over an area of City library and had our official launch of the Opus Book Awards. The students from both schools worked well together, swapping ideas, discussing the books and making friends.

As well as reading as many of the 12 selected books as possible before June, our students award marks for the storyline, the characters, and the style of writing and then make comments on the books. The group will also complete a number of challenges linked to the books and the authors.

Challenge 1: Design a trophy: the students have been asked to design the trophy that will be awarded to the author of the winning book after our vote in June. We are hoping to get the trophy made in the schools using the facilities in the Technical Design departments.

Challenge 2: Make a promotional presentation: everyone is going to make a 3 slide presentation to promote one of the books and encourage other students to read the books on our shortlist. We have a wide range of titles, covering many different genres.

We have many plans for the future including author visits and a trip to Co-op Academy Priesthorpe.

All our students were a credit to the school, modelling good behaviour whilst in public spaces, respectful to other library users and everyone made an effort to make friends with a Priesthorpe student.

Chapel FM is a radio station and Community Centre based in Seacroft, Leeds, they produce a literature festival every year where a wide range of writers, spoken artists, poets and authors are invited to take part and read their work on air.

Our First Story Ambassadors read from their published work in our recent anthology, ‘Down To Earth, Lost in the Stars’ which was produced last year with the YA author Dan Ingram Brown.

The First Story students who have joined the workshops this year read out recent work which has been written with our new writer in residence, Dr Sairish Hussain, a published author and lecturer at Huddersfield University. Their work will appear in our forthcoming anthology – we have no decision on the title at present.

We were accompanied by Claire Sharples from First Story who spoke about the aims and ambitions of First Story.

Peter Spafford from Chapel FM interviewed the students and they spoke about their love of creative writing and the thought processes behind their work. It was really interesting to see how a radio show is made.

The challenge was to read at least 6 library books over the Summer holiday.

Here’s some of our students who met the challenge, and who each received a certificate, a medal and a book just in time for the Christmas holiday.

Well done to all the students who entered the challenge.

As part of the introduction day our Senior Science Technician, John Dilger showed us some ‘whoosh, bang’ experiments. He did a couple of Whoosh Bottle experiments, the first using propan-1-ol & propan-2-ol, so we could observe and blue and yellow flames ‘dancing’ in the bottle. 

The second experiment showed how only a small amount of fuel is required to propel various types of plastic bottle across the science lab.

Our favourite experiment was mixing methane with soap bubbles and igniting floating bubbles.

It certainly gave the students a thirst for learning more about science.

Our students then spent a few weeks reading and judging the 6 shortlisted books and on 15th of  December we had a morning at City Library in Bradford where each student made a short presentation on their favourite book.

We then voted for the book title that we wanted to put forward as the school vote.Competition was fierce and our students gave impassioned speeches supporting their book.

Eventually a decision was made via a secret ballot and we have put forward ‘If the World Were 100 People’, an extremely interesting book showing world statistics for hair, eye and skin colour, languages spoken, levels of literacy and access to basic power, some information which we found quite startling.

We are now waiting for the winner to be announced in the Spring and are hoping to attend the awards ceremony in the Summer.

Not only is it a fun day with lots of activities in the library, but it’s also a great way to welcome our year 7 students to Grange. 

The day started in tutor time when our year 7 Grangers looked beneath their chair to see who was the lucky recipient of the Golden Ticket.

This year’s winner was Samuel! They won a large bar of chocolate and a selection of Roald Dahl novels.

This has been written with the support from our Writer in Residence – Daniel Ingram Brown. We were inspired by the Greek poem The Odyssey and updated it to set it in the future, we were traveling through space and visiting planets as opposed to a boat discovering islands.

The story unfolds in an almost linear style, reflecting themes of the Odyssey.

At our launch party students read out their work to an audience of proud parents and families, school staff and representatives from First Story. Students were presented with a certificate and 2 copies each of the anthology. We also took the time to celebrate the fantastic year we have had, and the many competition wins we have had.

Two of our students dressed as alien characters from the book, and Ms. Owen dressed as The Controller, a mysterious ‘baddie’ who appears in the story.

Sadly, this is our last year working with Dan, who has been an amazing member of the team, we presented him with gifts and card to express our thanks for all his support.

One lucky winner found a Golden Ticket hidden in their Tutor room and was the lucky recipient of a Roald Dahl book of their choice and a rather large bar of chocolate.

During break and lunch times students had the chance to enter many other competitions such as word search, design a chocolate bar wrapper and name a Willy Wonka product.

It was difficult to choose the winners as everyone worked hard and submitted some amazing work.

After A-Levels, Rain plans to study Medicine, hopefully at the University of Edinburgh.

Rain said that what helped her towards her success, was making good use of all the resources that school provided.  She said she worked really hard on the past papers she was given by teachers, and used Hegarty Maths and online flashcards using Quizlet to keep revising ‘little and often’ for all her subjects.  She added that all her teachers were always willing to offer extra help whenever she asked for it which helped, and that she had a good group of friends who helped each other out, depending on who was best at certain subjects or topics. 

Miss Ali (Assistant Year Leader) said about Rain:

“She is such a lovely student.  She has worked really hard working throughout all her time at Grange and has always gone out of her way to help her friends be successful too.”

In the future, she would like to study Medicine, ideally at Oxford and in support of that, she is currently doing work experience at Bradford Royal Infirmary which was organised through school.

Aarzoo said what really helped her, was amazing and passionate teachers who she could go to any time for help as well as lots of encouragement from her parents.  She said that Hegarty Maths helped improve Maths a lot from when she was in year 9.  She found revising with friends and helping each other out helped too. Her advice to other students is: 

“Start revision early so you know what works for you. Once I discovered flashcards worked for me, that helped a lot.  Before that I used to spend a lot of time trying to revise, but not feeling like it was working.”

Miss Ali (assistant year leader) described Arzoo as:

“an amazing student who constantly pushes herself to be the best that she can be and never settles for less than that!”

First Story is a year-long creative writing course. We have a writer in residence who guides our students through various writing tasks culminating in an anthology at the end of the year. 

The event was hosted by the poet Khadijah Ibrahim, who introduced a publisher, Habiba Desai and a lecturer, Dr. Phil Knox. Each speaker talked about the importance of writing.

The winner was one of our students from year 8 who climbed a tree in his local park and read a World Book Day book, he won a World Book Day T-shirt, a World Book Day badge, books and chocolate.

The competition itself is unique in that the winner is selected by judging panels made up of young people at schools across the country.

We couldn’t wait to explore the shortlisted books! A group of our students have read all these superb titles and presented their favourite.

Maryam Ahmed from year 7 was placed second in the annual national writing competition!

We have some really fun window displays in the library, where we ask questions or highlight a current theme. For our Valentine’s Day window, we showed our love for our library.