Welcome to the Fifth Year Blog!
It’s our Final Fifth Year Blog!
I always enjoy putting together the termly blogs, looking back on what you have achieved in all areas of School life. It truly is impressive with how much you manage to fit in and how talented you all are in multiple spheres! My only sadness is that I know there are so many achievements that I miss and would love to celebrate, but many of you are too humble to share! With only eight teaching days after the Easter Holidays before study leave begins, now seems a fitting time for your Form Tutors and Mr Neville to share some messages of joy and luck, alongside our usual reports and ‘round ups’ from pupils in the year group.
From me, I wish you the very best for your upcoming revision and GCSEs – you are the driver of your outcomes – so go for it! Control what you can control and seek help if you need it – we are always here.
Miss Brown
A message from Mr Neville
A massive ‘well done’ to you all on successfully navigating your way to the metaphorical water – now is the time to drink! You are all supremely talented young men with the potential to achieve some fantastic GCSE results this year. The key things during the next few weeks will be good planning, organisation and guarding against complacency. Here are my top tips:
- Stay focused on the job in hand and never lose sight of your end goals.
- Schedule your revision well and make the most of the days you don’t have any exams – you will have more time than you think.
- Aim to complete as many past papers as you can across all of your subjects and mark these critically yourself or ask a teacher to mark them for you and give you feedback.
- Keep to a good sleep pattern (normal school hours), eat healthily and make sure you get plenty of exercise.
- Don’t be afraid of telling your friends that you can’t hang out with them all day because you’ve got work to do!
It will all be worth it in the end, and you will have an extended summer holiday to enjoy plenty of rest and relaxation! All the very best, and don’t forget, we’re here to help if you need us!
Mr N
Hear from your Form Tutors
5A
You have been wonderful! We have had a great journey together over the past two years, it’s been a privilege watching each of you grow, learn, and overcome challenges along the way. There has been laughter (sometimes too much!), tears (at your poor performance in Interform) and you have made Tutor time memories that will stay with us forever. In all honesty, we will miss you and have thoroughly enjoyed being your Tutors and know that your future Tutors are lucky to have you. Thank you for the memories, good luck in your exams and we will be in touch to get you to speak to our next cohort about how not to behave as a Form..!
Mr Hooper and Mrs Havord
5B
Thank you for being such an excellent Form Group for the last two years! It has been great getting to know you. We wish you all the best of luck in your GCSE exams and every success moving on into the Sixth Form!
Mr Wilson and Mr McKitrick
5C
Boys, I have really enjoyed being your Form Tutor and have genuinely looked forward to walking into the room for registration and PSHE – you’ve been excellent company and I am proud of what every single one of you has achieved over the past two years. All the best for a productive study leave and good luck in your exams – remember the importance of sleep and rest, good food, continuing to exercise and controlling the controllables. Have a great summer when you get there, make some memories!
Mr Studt
5D
It has been a pleasure getting to know you all over the last two years – you’ve all come such a long way and have so much to be proud of! The variety of talents within the Form is amazing and we are proud of all your achievements! You have made us laugh…. and at times despair…. – mostly at the amount of times we’ve asked you to sort uniform out before leaving registrations (it is amazing how shirts can defy gravity and become ‘untucked’ so quickly) or at the various ‘scents’ sampled in the Form Room (the cologne was preferable over wet / unwashed kit left in bags!). Be kind to each other and yourselves, work hard over Easter and the study leave, and enjoy the summer when you get there!
Miss Brown and Ms Peel
5E
What a pleasure it’s been. Countless interform wins, Oscar worthy theatre performances, quizzing successes, athletic stars, football heroes, a swimming champ, rowing icons, budding scientists (+ golfers!), coding whizzes, a race car enthusiast, basketball dude (sing.), tennis gang, RAF pilots (one real and one with a great flight jacket)… I’ve loved watching you throw yourself into everything Hampton has to offer over the past two years. Most of all you’ve been great friends to one another.
Best of luck for the upcoming exams and enjoy that hard-earned summer break
Miss Todd
5F
What a pleasure it has been. Through thick and thin, you have stood by each other, cheered each other on, found the positives, and, most importantly, tried your best – what more could we have asked from you? Thank you for being such a fab Form group, for all the lessons and laughs, and for all the Interform wins! Each any every one of you can and should be wholeheartedly proud of what you have achieved over the last two years, in and out of the classroom. Now, keep working hard during study leave and your efforts will pay off. Wishing you all the very best luck in all your exams and a fun summer – you’ve earned it! Have the best time, make some memories, and we’ll see you in Sixth Form!
Miss Bellingan and Mr Beattie
5G
We can’t believe we’ve reached this point already—your time in Hampton as 5G is almost at an end! As you head off on study leave, we just want to take a moment to say how proud we am of each and every one of you. You’ve grown so much this year, and we know you’ll tackle your GCSEs with determination and resilience.
Remember, these exams are important, but they don’t define you. Stay focused, work hard, but also take care of yourselves—balance is key. If you ever need support, you know where to find us. Good luck, and we look forward to celebrating your successes with you soon!
Miss Singleton and Mrs Astrup
5H
It has been a pleasure tutoring you all over the last two years and getting to know you as a form – good luck for your GCSEs and I look forward to hearing about all your successes!!
Mr Bailey
5J
It has been a pleasure to get to know every member of 5J. You are an eclectic, vivacious and social community who demonstrate a huge range of talents that you should be very proud of. It has been fantastic to see you get stuck into form competitions and Hampton life beyond the classroom. Good luck with the upcoming GCSE exams and enjoy a well-deserved rest over the summer. We look forward to seeing what you will do next!
Miss Peck and Mr Chakravarty
Olympiad success
A number of different Olympiad challenges have been sat this term, with ever remarkable results from our talented Fifth Years.
Chemistry Olympiad 2025 was entered by seven of our top Fifth Year Chemists, who did very well indeed – many of them scoring higher than their Lower Sixth competitors. A special shoutout goes to Jihwan M who was one mark off a gold award – impressive at this point in his chemistry career!
The Linguistic Olumpiad saw similar success. Languages tested in the paper were Proto-Basque, SENĆOŦEN, Cherokee and Egyptian. There was also a question which asked candidates to compare colours across lots of different languages. Fascinating stuff! Well done to Max F and Jihwan M who achieved Silver awards and Advait B and Adrian S who achieved Bronze awards.
The Intermediate Maths Challenge was sat by over 320 pupils in Third, Fourth and Fifth Year, and once again our Fifth Years have posted some impressive scores. Jihwan M and Adrian S achieved perfect scores, with Arie B and Syn Foh N not far behind. These four pupils have qualified for the Maclaurin Olympiad where they will be competing with the best mathematical minds across the country!
Hot off the press – Jihwan M has also achieved an amazing score in the recent Intermediate Physics Challenge, with a score that puts Jihwan in the top 1% of entries – phenomenal!
Marvellous Music
The Music scene has been as busy as ever. The Rock Concert, a highlight of the music calendar saw six Fifth Year Acts perform hits by artists such as Green Day, Led Zepplin and The Beatles. Our talented musicians have also participated in the Woodwind Concert, Jazz Café and formed part of the band for the Junior Musical: Bugsy Malone, where they played on stage ‘in character’. To round off the term, Miss Brown was lucky to grab a ticket for the popular Spring Concert, in which 17 Fifth Years performed (many in multiple ensembles!!). This concert offered a fantastic variety of musical delights from female composers.
Well done to all involved! It is no mean feat juggling rehearsals, sports and academics and our musicians manage to do so with ease!
Take a look at the highlights of this year’s Rock Concert, and see if you can spot any familiar faces:
Talk!
We were all very lucky to receive Mr Martin Cross as the speaker at one of our Hampton Talk! events. Mr Cross addressed a packed Hammond auditorium, eager to learn a little bit more about his life and the huge number of varied roles that he has held over his career. Mr Cross is not only one of our brilliant history teachers, but has also held a number of different roles in his illustrious career. Mr Cross won the Bronze medal in the coxless four event at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and the Olympic Gold medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Games in the coxed four. Aside from being a member of GB’s rowing team for almost two decades, Mr Cross has worked as a rowing commentator at the Henley Royal Regatta, is the presenter of a YouTube chat series “Crossy’s Corner”, and wrote “Olympic Obsession” – a book about the mindset of athletes who competed at the Sydney Olympics.
I felt that Mr Cross’ talk was incredibly powerful. It was fascinating to learn more about his life – from his successes to his failures – and about his attitudes towards not only rowing and sport, but also towards his family and his life in general. Mr Cross spoke about how failures can help to motivate and support a person, and that a person should be defined by not only their successes, but also their failures. Hearing from an athlete with so much experience in the world of rowing was so interesting, and his overall message about how we can use our own failures to help us to achieve our own potential in our daily lives was definitely an inspiring one.
It was a real privilege to listen to Mr Cross, and I would urge you to come and listen to the different Talk! speakers. A huge thank you to Mr Cross, and everyone involved in organising the fantastic event!
By Joshua R (5E)
Iceland 2025
February half term saw the return of the legendary biennial Geography trip to the Land of Fire and Ice. About 50 pupils from the Fourth and Fifth years had the privilege of attending this trip, after a vetting process conducted by the Geography department as hopeful applicants sent paragraphs to Mr Hill, justifying their want for a place on the trip. Four members of the Geography department accompanied the pupils on the trip, with Mrs Parkes from the RS department, Mr Ferrier from the Music Department, and the Headmaster himself also in attendance. A late meeting at Heathrow Terminal 2 meant we finally touched down at around about eleven at night meaning we were ultimately able to get to sleep at half past one in the morning, letting us all snatch six hours of sleep if we were lucky before having to wake up for the activities of the first day.
The group was introduced that first morning to Dorothee, our ever-gracious guide throughout the trip, and to Siggi, our steadfast coach driver. That morning saw our excursion to the coast of the Reykjanes Peninsula, the most south-westerly part of the country. We drove through vast expanses of lava fields, setting a truly otherworldly backdrop for the peninsula, an area with several active volcanic systems, with eruptions as recent as last year. We were lucky enough to witness a breathtaking coastline, with imposing stacks stranded out at sea and waves relentlessly lashing at the blackened shore. We moved onto an active hot spring and saw mud quite literally boiling before our eyes, before driving to the much anticipated Lava Tunnel, where we ventured into an old lava cave, full of stunning icy speleothems (stalactites and stalagmites) before braving being plunged into total and utter darkness, and vying to remain as silent as possible to maintain the striking effect of complete darkness. Following the lava cave, we adventured onwards to Selfoss, where the group would partake in their first visit to a typical Icelandic swimming pool. These are staples in every Icelandic town or city, much like a pub in England. The water was wonderfully warm due to it being geothermally heated, but a brave few took on the ice bath and the cold plunge, whilst others (myself very much included) were content to lounge in the comfort of the “hot tubs” so to speak. We travelled onto the Hotel Stracta, where we would stay for the next two nights.
The second day was our opportunity to explore the South Coast, and first on the agenda was the trek over Solheimajokull, an immense glacier just south of Katla, one of the island’s most infamous volcanoes. The walk consisted of donning crampons and a hard hat and arming ourselves with ice pick. Led by experienced guides, we learned about the retreat of the glacier and the layers of ash packed inside the blue ice as we traversed it. We continued on to the coastal town of Vik, where we experienced the full force of Iceland’s harsh conditions, as we were battered by winds literally strong enough to push people forwards (particularly striking if you’d jumped as the gusts struck). Here, we witnessed an impressive arch as well as numerous basalt columns, as we all tried to prevent our coats from being blown out to sea. On our way back to the Stracta, we stopped off at Skogafoss and Seljalandsfoss, two of Iceland’s most well-known waterfalls, each standing at about 60 metres high. Appropriately sodden from the spray of the falling water, we returned to the hotel for a second night.
The third day was our chance to take on the classic day out in Iceland – an excursion to the Golden Circle. After being regaled by Dorothee as to the fascinating Viking history of Iceland, our first stop of the day was Gulfoss, Iceland’s largest waterfall. A truly magnificent sight, Gulfoss is a stepped waterfall nestled in a sharply cut gorge, with crystal blue water cascading downwards at a truly immense velocity. We moved on to the Geysir area, the site of the geyser which gave the geographical phenomena their name. Whilst Geysir itself has been dormant for some time, a neighbouring, younger geyser called Strokkur was very much active, and erupted every five to ten minutes, giving the group ample opportunity to see a live erupting geyser. We moved on to eat lunch at local greenhouses which used geothermal greenhouses to sustainably grow tomatoes, enabling the group to eat a limitless supply of tomato soup for lunch. The final activity of the day was Thingvellir National Park, where we could experience a once-in-a-lifetime experience to walk in between two tectonic plates, before taking in the stunning vistas of a beautiful lake backdropped by imposing mountains. Once our venture through Thingvellir was at an end, we carried on to the capital, Reykjavik, where we’d spend the remainder of our time. That night was especially rewarding for those willing to stay up until all hours, as they were able to catch glimpses of the Aurora Borealis – the legendary Northern Lights. Whilst not hugely impressive to the eye, phone cameras all tended to pick up on the lights far better, granting those lucky enough to see it fantastic images of the aurora.
Our final full day was spent in the city centre of Reykjavik, beginning at the Wonders of Iceland exhibit, perched on a hill was amazing views of the surrounding city. Here, we experienced a walk through an artificial ice cave, which was expectedly chilly but also a magnificent feat of engineering. At last, we made it to the much anticipated Lava Show, the only place in the world where you can see genuine lava, molten basalt, flowing down a channel. This was undoubtedly the highlight for many of those who attended the trip, before having the chance to virtually ‘fly over Iceland’ and see more of the incredible country than our five-day trip allowed. We then spent the next couple of hours in the main centre of Reykjavik, free to explore the attractions of the city, from Hallsgrimskirja, an immense church and the second tallest building in the country, to the Sun Voyager, an abstract sculpture of a classic Viking longboat. The group was then able once again to visit a local swimming pool that evening, before heading to bed sensibly early to cope with the day to come.
A three o’clock wake up started the next morning bright and early, for our journey home. The trip was truly an incredible experience for anyone lucky enough to go, and I’d absolutely recommend Iceland to anyone looking for an exciting holiday. On behalf of all those who attended the trip, I’d like once again to thank Mr Hill for organising the trip, and the Geography department and other staff who came for making the trip possible.
By Ben B (5E)
Samuel H (5F) and Fourth Year Hamptonian Bailey tell us a little bit more about the highlights of the Iceland trip:
Model United Nations
This term has seen three prestigious MUN conferences attended by Hampton pupils – the first being LEH MUN. This saw over 25 Hampton delegates making up five different delegations, racking up multiple awards across the board, including the massive ‘Best Delegation’ award won by Russia, consisting of several Fifth-Year pupils. Epsom MUN had a lively atmosphere, with five more Fifth Year delegates, one which achieved a prestigious ‘Outstanding Delegate’ award in the disarmament and security committee. And finally, to round off the year, Hampton pupils attended Haileybury MUN, with over 900 attendees, making it the largest conference of its kind in the world. Over the course of the weekend, and after over 15 hours of intense debate, the Cuban delegation achieved the crowning jewel of ‘distinguished delegation’ following a riveting speech and uplifting speech from another Fifth Year pupil. It’s fair to say that newer and veteran MUN debaters all gave it their best go this spring and are excited to power through to the next year of fruitful debate.
By Leander K-B (5J)
Sports Roundup
Basketball
Basketball is growing to be a prominent sport amongst the Hampton community. This year, unfortunately there were no U16 games so a few U16 players were given the opportunity to represent the U18 team in four of these games, having a 2-2 record and winning against Kingston Academy and Christ’s School. It was a great opportunity to be able to play with better players and stronger competition.
A few weeks ago, our U16 players were also given the opportunity to qualify for the 3v3 London Youth Games to represent our borough. We were faced with very strong opposition from local schools, many that play for the national league in basketball as well as one that has represented the England National team. Due to great team chemistry, we were able to beat the odds and place second with a tied best record throughout the tournament. A great performance from our U16s particularly Jack L who hit a miraculous half court buzzer beater to send a game to overtime, before hitting the game winner for that game to send us to the finals.
Overall, it has been a fantastic season, filled with great opportunity and we can’t wait for what Hampton basketball has to offer for us in Sixth Form
By Ian L (5J)
Rowing
In the spring term, the Hampton Head was unfortunately cancelled due to river conditions, but the J16 rowers pushed on with training and got a Bronze medal at Hammersmith Head in February. We then went on to get a Silver medal at Kingston Head, and a hard fought ninth place at Schools’ Head of the River in March for the J16 First Eight, and an impressive fourth for the Second Eight in their respective category.
We are now training hard and looking forward to regatta season (side-by-side racing) this summer.
By Johnny R (5G)
Rugby U16B
It has been a disappointing half of the season with cancellations as our main opponent. We only had three matches scheduled, two of which were cancelled and one against the difficult opponent of John Fisher School, who despite our best efforts, we were unable prevail against. However, this season has been a good round off for two years of excellent rugby. The team has played fantastically and with spirit over this past two years and has shown huge improvements both individually and as a team. We are all excited for senior rugby and hopeful for the seasons to come. A huge thank you to all the staff involved!
By Alessio C (5D)
Football U16A
The U16As have had an impressive season this year. With only one loss from 26 games in an unfortunate and well fought ESFA cup match it has been a near perfect season for the U16 boys. Challenging themselves vs many U18 sides, and statement 10-0 and 11-0 wins were just some of the key moments in this incredible season. Like every other Hampton team, U16A ‘Mills Ball’ is attractive and a joy to watch and play in. A high-scoring season to remember with 127 goals scored alongside a strong defence only allowing 17 past them, the U16As clearly demonstrate disciplined football in their run up to senior football in September, in which all members of the squad have had exposure to this year already!
By Seb R (5A)
And all that’s left to say is…
