Eastbrook School students speak a whole variety of languages at school, at home and in the community.  We offer examination opportunity for those who wish to pursue a GCSE in a chosen language.  Every student has the option at the end of Year 9 to either take GCSE French or Spanish, but their are some languages where students are already quite proficient and with a bit of extra support and tutoring, they can achieve top grades 7-9 in a Community Language.

Mr Lipinski is in charge of these exams, and this year he has been helping 20 students prepare to sit exams in Bengali, Urdu, Persian, Greek, Russian, Italian, Polish and Portuguese.  As part of these exams, there is a very challenging component where candidates have to speak to an unseen prompt, and these speaking components of the examination could not have been done without the help of staff in Eastbrook School who speak those languages and also help from the community.

We would like to thank Mr Lipinski for tirelessly arranging all these exams.  Thank you also to the examinational administration team; exams officer and our exams invigilators and Mr Ifrek for his support.  Ms Morson, Mr Lipinski, Ms Chankova & Ms Cheema, our school staff who helped with some of the languages.  Asma Parwani and Omar Faruque, our previous Yr13 students, we were delighted to see them come back offer their language help with these exams also.

We extend a special thank you to the Greek Embassy who got us in touch with a teacher, Varvara Sarimpalidou, within our London wider community who volunteered to help us with the Greek  exams.

One exam remains, and we are very thankful to another previous Yr13 student, Sumaiya Miah, who will be coming in this week to help with the Bengali speaking exam.

We are always looking for help from the community and our previous students, so please get in touch with Mr Lipinski through the school office if you would like to help in years to come.

I caught up with Omar last Saturday when he came in to help with the Italian exam.  This is not new to Omar, he has been helping the school for some while since graduating GCSE and then Sixth-form.  Here is the scripted conversation we agreed we would share with you all.

Q  Omar, you came to us here at Eastbrook first in which year 9 or was it year 10?
A  I came at the end of Y10, last week of June 2012 in fact, so in fact you could say Yr11.

Q  When did you finish sixth form?
A  I finished my Sixth Form at Eastbrook July 2016, completing Yr11 by 2013.

Q  You did an additional year with us here helping in the ESOL department with Ms Zimmerman, what do you remember from then?
A  I did not actually take a gap year. I was working part time as a teaching assistant while at university as well as helping with invigilation and Italian GSCE and A Levels. This was during my Year 1 and Year 2 of university (Sep 2016 – July 2018)

Q What are you doing now at Uni, or if finished, what qualification do you have?
A  So currently I am working as a Data Engineer at Slalom, a very big US company. I graduated in 2020 in BSc Hons Computer Science with a Placement Year. I did my Placement Year between Aug 2018 – Aug 2019 at a Digital Marketing company called AWIN as a Technical Analyst

Q  What are your plans for the next foreseeable few years, and also long term plans?
A  My plans for the future is to grow within the Data Engineering role and try to achieve Data Architect and Data Principal titles. I love to learn more and keep improving myself as well as try to inspire other students and next generation of pupils to pursuit a career in STEM subjects.

Q  Finally, how useful have you found the experience relevant to your life opportunities, the work you’ve done with us here since completing sixth form?
A  I love my years at Eastbrook and owe a lot to the school, specifically Mrs Zimmerman. I feel I learned a lot about how to be diligent and also strive for more and try to excel in my subjects as well as following my passions. I met awesome people and still do meet awesome people whenever I come back but key points I learned during my experience at Eastbrook were: compassion, understanding student needs, different tone and body language when presenting and trying to make students feel at ease when they’re nervous, especially during an exam. All these key points helped throughout my career so far with client engagement and presentation skills, but also helped me develop the attitude to try to help the next person when possible. I very much enjoyed the time spent at Eastbrook and hope I can help again in the future.