It’s incredible what youngsters want to do in London’s East End, being adventurous and curious in all sorts of activities during the past 12 months, yet serious about learning. Take the inquisitive teenagers at this year’s Queen Mary University Science Fair held at Whitechapel’s Centre of the Cell, for example (above).
The university’s science boffins were keen to give a crash course in the Higgs Boson particle, one of the most important scientific discoveries of our time.
But the youngsters seemed more curious about things like—snot, sick and scabs which are substances studied in medical science.
The East London Advertiser has seen it all, keeping a weekly watch on Tower Hamlets secondary and primary schools throughout the year.
We were there for the GCSE and A-level results in the summer, watching the joy when schools did well and witnessing the disappointments.
The Advertiser also revealed that hundreds of children with special education needs are missing crucial eye care, according to SeeAbility sight charity.
Nearly four-in-10 youngsters in special schools have had no eye tests, including 445 in Tower Hamlets and 292 in neighbouring Hackney.
We were also there to record school outings, like the 420 pupils who were invited to the big Tesco store in Bromle-by-Bow in the past 12 months to learn where fresh food like fish really comes from—that is, before it gets onto the supermarket shelves.
There were also roadshows visiting schools, like the two-day Japan event staged at Marner Primary in Bromley-by-Bow by ArtSpokes social enterprise, aimed at improving children’s health with its Banana Bytes campaign.
The children were shown how to make sushi and write haiku poetry, inspired by fresh produce bought locally from Poplar’s Chrisp Street Market.
But there were also poignant moments, remembering the Nazi genocide of six million Jews the Second World War.
Students on the history GCSE course at Bethnal Green’s Morpeth Secondary lit candles on Holocaust Memorial Day last January at the Mile End Jewish cemetery.
It was the 70th anniversary this year of the liberation of Auschwitz death camp in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo and the anti-Semitic atrocities in Paris that month.
Morpeth students held a minute’s silence at the cemetery, while a Holocaust survivor gave testimony at a special school assembly.
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Selection of what schools did in past 12 months... see Gallery (scroll and hit the arrows)
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