St Joseph’s Castleford have used part of their PE Premium to forge a partnership with Northern Ballet. This has formed part of their application to become an Arts Mark Gold school and was recognised in their recent Ofsted inspection.

A child currently in Year 5, Maxwell Bucknell, was talent spotted by Northern Ballet at school after they came to provide some PE lessons. From this, he was asked to attend Northern Ballet once per week for classes, having never previously learned ballet.

When he was approaching 10, Northern Ballet asked him to audition to become a pupil of their Centre for Advanced Training (CATs) and he was successful. Maxwell is now a student of Northern Ballet and will hopefully become a fully-fledged classical ballet dancer, which will take him up to the age of 17 to complete.

This is an excellent achievement by Maxwell and we wish him all the best in his future endeavours with Northern Ballet.