Welcome to Year 9's Homepage

Here you can keep up to date with everything that goes on in Year 9 at Mount St Mary's

Amelia Uminska, Year 9, has begun the process of applying to be a member of the Youth Parliament. This involves a gruelling series of applications and speeches.

Members of the Youth Parliament are usually elected every 2 years by young people in their constituency. Amelia has already overcome her first hurdle and has been shortlisted in the final 6 applicants of her local area.

We hope that this will be the start of an amazing political career for Amelia, and will provide her the opportunity to use her elected voice to help bring about change in many areas, but particularly her passion for social change.

Below is a short transcript of Amelia's speech, it certainly is powerful indeed. Well done Amelia, we are extremely proud of you!

“With over 4.3 million children living in poverty in the UK in 2019-2020 (31% of children, or nine in a classroom of 30, child poverty is not as uncommon as it seems. 49% of children living in lone-parent families are in poverty. Lone parents face a higher risk of poverty due to the lack of an additional earner, low rates of maintenance payments, gender inequality in employment and pay, and childcare costs. On top of this many of these already struggling families have to buy school supplies for their children. On average 68% of parents are worried when it comes to back-to-school shopping. Parents whose household income is below £20,000 are the most worried at 77%. UK parents spend around £191 on back-to-school shopping per child. Items like blazers, bags, coats and shoes cost the most, with parents regularly paying more than £20 for these items.

What can the government do to help this? An easy idea is to give vouchers to low income students who can be identified by the school, based on many facets such as those who receive free school meal, so no extra application processes are put in place for the families. School have access to the information and it could work on the same basis as the Food Vouchers given out by Marcus Rashford during lockdown. These vouchers could be used in stores for things like uniform, revision guides, stationery, etc. By doing this we are helping those low income families that may need extra help from the government. To help raise money for these we could partner with stationary stores to help fund the equipment as well as have fundraising throughout the country or have sponsors who would supply the schools with these vouchers.”

Important Dates

Keep up to date with anything going on in Year 9 here

School Closes for Half Term -

Friday 27th May 

School Reopens -

Monday 6th June 

Letters

Any important letters for Year 9 will be displayed here