Following last year's harvest, our 'Incredible Edible' fruit and vegetable garden is now fully prepared and ready to be re-stocked thanks to a dedicated team of students gardeners.

Our students have enjoyed considerable success in the UKMT Challenge over the past two years and last term saw even more join the ranks of the top Maths students in the country.

Last term, 11 students in Years 9-13 took the ABRSM Grade 1 Music Theory exam for the first time at King James and all passed with flying colours

This year, eleven of our Year 13 students will be working at Glastonbury Festival thanks to a new initiative by Mr Longstaff, our Assistant Head Teacher and Director of Learning for Business Studies.

Earlier in the year, our Sixth Form and Year 11 Physics students visited the Observatory at Durham University as part of the university's outreach programme. The thought-provoking experience was so popular that Mr Lawton, our STEM Co-ordinator, working with Durham University's "Physics into Schools' Ambassador, Sam Watson, organised an in-school event which saw a portable planetarium erected in our gym.

This term, an exciting competition will be taking place in school for ice-cream lovers. The Flavour Wars competition will see four staff-led student teams, including ones led by Mr Grieveson and Mrs Babington, compete to invent a unique flavour for homemade ice-cream.

The groundworks for our multi-million pound new building are now complete and every day sees rapid progress as the steelwork emerges and our state-of-the-art academy takes shape.

Our Year 7 students have been working alongside Year 5's at Crook Primary School on a collaborative Royal Shakespeare Company project called "Shakespeare Flash Mob'. The project aims to promote the enjoyment of Shakespeare and to encourage schools to work together and be mentors to each other.

Students have recently visited Watermillock in Ullswater for our annual, week-long outward bound trip. Unlike last year's arctic conditions in Howtown, the weather was good, which meant that students could take part in a wider range of outdoor challenges.

A group of Year 9 students who are interested in pursuing STEM related careers recently visited Durham Science Festival to join in a carousel of Science and Technology team challenges.