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8 January 2017 An Act of Remembrance Abingdon and St Helen’s celebrate The 15th European Day of Languages was marked by the MFL department with a talk for middle ​school pupils and a joint MFL Society dinner for sixth formers from Abingdon and St Helen’s. On both occasions, pupils enjoyed a presentation from Dr Helen Abbott, Professor of Modern Languages at Birmingham University and a specialist in nineteenth-century French poetry and music. Senior Mathematicians Success Our senior mathematicians came a very credible third out of 18 teams at the annual regional final of the Senior Team Maths Challenge held at Wheatley Park at the beginning of November. In the Princeton University Maths Competition the Abingdon team did exceptionally well, coming 6th out of all postal entries, and produced an intriguing and very professional set of solutions. Amongst the top ten were schools from Romania, USA, Croatia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Australia. Abingdon News The School took time to pause and reflect collectively on Friday 11 November, when we remembered the sacrifice made by our former pupils and teachers in conflict. 2016 marks of course the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, a battle which, in many ways encapsulates the suffering and loss in the Great War. In his address on Remembrance Day, the Chaplain reflected on our former pupils who died on the Somme. The CCF impressed with their turnout and drill and then represented us with distinction in the Abingdon Town parade on Remembrance Sunday. Two sixth form teams are taking part in the BlottMatthews 2016/17 A2A (Airport to Airport) Challenge for Year 12 students, with a prize fund of £5000. Each team consists of students who hope to study engineering or a related discipline at university. The Challenge is to design a transport link between London airports with a maximum transfer time of 20 minutes between any two ‘airports’, for example Stansted to Heathrow. As well as selecting and explaining the technology to be used, teams must choose routes, address the requirements of the principal civil works necessary and provide basic costs and a development schedule. Lower sixth pupils Ben Wilson and Thomas Shaw visited the Institution of Civil Engineering in London to conduct research to help with the project. They attended a lecture given by two of the key project managers for the London Crossrail project and saw the largest LEGO bridge in the world! Winners will be announced in April 2017. Airport to Airport Challenge