Sackville students to star at Cinestock May 14^th

As we emerge from lockdown and begin to think of restarting our cultural lives, why not try the Cinestock Open Air Drive-In Event on 14^th May?

You’ll be able to see several Sackville students take the stage, including Greater than Four (year 11), Jamie Bland (year 12) and Amber T (year 12). 

Georgina and Lyra’s part in the marathon effort to vaccinate the world

Year 9 student Georgina Kane loves a challenge. Avid readers of Sackville News will remember her completing the ‘True Grit’ marathon whilst in year 7. Such organised events are still not allowed, so Georgina (left) and her friend Lyra from Lingfield College organised their own twenty-six mile walk. Raising money to assist with the delivery of the COVID vaccine in less economically developed countries, they have so far raised the staggering sum of £1200. All those miles from Crawley Down to Groombridge and back to Forest Row must seem particularly satisfying now.

This money will be disbursed by UNICEF, who are also being supported by the East Grinstead vaccine clinic.

The scientists tell us no-one is safe till everyone is safe. Well done Georgina and Lyra – you have brought that objective more than a few steps closer.

The girls’ JustGiving page is still open if you feel you wish to contribute.

Easter Revision

Whilst the school is closed for the fortnight Easter holday, there are virtual revision lessons going on over the break for our year 11 students. You can find the meet links here. Good luck!

Sixth formers shine at Chemistry Olympiad

Congratulations to our sixth form chemists who put in an amazing performance during this year’s ‘lockdown’ chemistry olympiad.

Special congratulations go to our year 12 students, who have only just finished the AS level content, where many of the questions required knowledge of work to be done in year 13. All these students showed how much they are up for a challenge, and we hope to achieve even more highly next year.

Thank you to Mr Langford and Mr Groves for organising, and to Mr Groves for hand-delivering the papers to every student during the school closure.

Pictured here alongside their teachers are Sam Parsons, Lucas Ryan, Nadia Usman, Lucy Kolter, Luke Waddell, Hannah Plumb, Isobel Carrick and Sophie Taylor.

Watch out Gary Lineker – here comes Lewis!

Congratulations to year 8 student Lewis Cottam, who earned the chance to interview Brighton manager Graham Potter last month.

Lewis, an ardent Seagull, won the right to talk to one of his idols by describing his favourite Brighton game in 250 words. You can see his interview here. 

Lewis’ next job is to write a match report for the programme. Well done Lewis – we look forward to seeing you on Match of the Day in a few years.

Rosie’s photos recognised by Vogue Italy

She may only have left school last year, but Rosie Baird‘s photos are already getting noticed.

Some of her work featured on the website of Italian Vogue this month – a major scoop.

Well done Rosie. We will be checking fashion shoots in the near future for your work!

Sackville wins Virtual Sussex School Games

You can’t keep a good team down … 

We are all missing after school fixtures; their return will be a big sign of the return to normality!

In the meantime the virtual efforts of our sportspeople have meant that Sackville has been crowned winner of the Sussex Secondary Virtual School Games.

That looks like a healthy points advantage to us!

Amber T becomes Yamaha Music London’s youngest ever ambassador for International Women’s Day

Congratulations to year 12 student Amber Titchener who has been made an Ambassador for Yamaha Music, one of five women chosen to be part of their International Women’s Day celebrations on March 8th. She is the youngest ambassador they have ever had.

Amber has been asked to record an acoustic version of her next single, ‘Get Me’, as well as talk to camera about what Women’s Day means to her.

Amber is now eagerly awaiting a delivery of Yamaha instruments to play – and hopefully keep! You can read two press releases from Yamaha here and here.

Sackville suffers ransomware attack

We are sorry to say that in the early hours of the morning of Wednesday 24th February, the Sackville IT network was attacked by the Sodinokibi ransomware. This is despite having enterprise level anti-malware software installed and a full-strength firewall. All of the files on our servers were encrypted. Over the course of the following two days it has become clear that our database of students, staff and contacts has also been attacked and encrypted. Access to this database requires a second authentication. Whilst there is no reason to think that any data has been extracted, the workings of this particular piece of malware mean it is not possible to be certain of what it undertook before we were able to clean it from the system.

Following our responsibilities under the Data Protection Act, we have reported the attack to the Information Commissioner’s Office, together with a description of the data held on students, contacts and staff.

The encryption of the files means we are unable at present to use our central email system to contact all of our data subjects. For only a small minority do we have contact details outside this system.

As we work through and restitute the system we will update this post.