An Astounding School

The pupil body began the year with customary energy and has generated a new narrative. Many key moments have centred on the Greek Theatre, where we gathered for start of term services and Handshaking, for House singing on Goose weekend, for services to commemorate the life of the late Queen and to celebrate the coronation of her son, for the inaugural Golden Egg ceremony of sustainability, and for a fortnight of performing arts including a magical evening of jazz, a memorable Greek play and a high energy Battle of the Bands.

When Bradfield gathers in Greeker memories are made. This is true of collective experience throughout the College: of the steeplechase, of the dance show, of the carol services and concerts, of Remembrance, of TiB talks, of matches and more. All are underpinned by outstanding individual efforts. 830 pupils have their own memories of this year – of the collective and the individual, of their own performances and of the prowess of their peers.

In our digital age, more is recorded than ever before. This has the capacity to prolong memories but also to amplify anxiety. Living simultaneously in analogue and digital worlds is a challenge for us all. Teenagers have enough to be anxious about concerning relationships, expectations, climate change, hormones and exams. Negotiating the added pressures of looks and likes amplified by devices that delight and distract in equal measure adds a new layer of complexity to adolescence. We will continue to do our best to help Bradfieldians find a balance here, emphasising the lasting value of shared primary experience. We must maximise the potential of technology to support life and learning whilst reducing its capacity to undermine them.

The sudden advances in the application of Artificial Intelligence ask new questions of us all in this respect. In school, AI will make us question how we teach, learn and examine. Beyond school it questions how we live and work with a technology that is developing extraordinarily fast.

Living our values is essential. An acclaimed recent book likens AI to a child learning avidly in its early years from the online record of humanity’s words and deeds. It is therefore more important than ever that we model positive behaviours online as well as in person if we want this child to grow into an adult with whom we can coexist harmoniously.

Pupil achievements of the last twelve months show how individuals benefit from the team around them. Just as Olympic and Oscar winners regularly speak of ‘we’, rather than ‘me’, so do our pupils. In the last year these include outstanding concert soloists and successful medical school applicants. They include Film Studies award nominees and the stars of multiple plays. They include pupils studying at the Royal College of Music and contributors to the exceptional Art and Design Commemoration displays. They include leavers with offers from top British universities and those heading to leading institutions overseas. They include national finalists in tennis and squash and international cap winners in hockey, football, shooting, netball and real tennis. They include outstanding presenters at talks that truly do inspire Bradfieldians and the Saturday morning speakers who do the same for our future pupils.

Learning to be an individual connected positively to a community is at the heart of our enterprise. The reciprocity of give and take, the virtuous circle of effort and progress, the realisation that ‘the more you put in the more you get out’: these are lessons for life. We hope to see this continue beyond school, where Bradfieldians have the opportunity to be net givers to their new communities, to flourish whilst enabling others to flourish, to feel good by doing good.

The principles of community life are enshrined by the new College values which have emerged from consultation with pupils and staff this year. At their heart lie Kindness and Respect – essential ingredients of the unspoken covenant between the individual and the group. Integrity and Inclusivity encapsulate the need for each of us to be authentic and true to our own values whilst recognising that others share that right. The final value – Positivity – can sometimes be hard to muster as an adolescent in the midst of exams or early in the morning, or as an adult with a large pile of marking or a demanding boss. Nevertheless, positivity characterises much of the activity of the College and will be enhanced by our new explicit focus upon it.

These values are also integral to many things that pupils do for communities beyond our privileged bubble. The last year has again demonstrated the College’s commitment to its charitable purpose, our pupils’ willing engagement in this, and the benefits accrued for all. Our partnership and community service activities have supported 35 local primary schools and seven secondary schools with over 200 pupils regularly volunteering through academic, sporting, art and music activities, and after school provision.

Charitable activity has included initiatives ranging from the annual harvest foodbank to support for the Amber Trust. In particular, numerous pupils and staff have raised money for the Oscar Foundation which transforms lives in Mumbai. Huge thanks to all of you who have supported this cause, including my debut as a marathon runner, which got things going.

I ended my last Commemoration speech with the exhortation to make Bradfield’s Education for Life a Regenerative Education with positive outcomes for people and planet. One of my highlights of this year was the publication of the Scholars’ magazine, Regeneration, in which a series of superb essays outlines ways in which this is such an important principle for our times.

This generation of pupils has the capacity to be a Re-Generation. Our education should equip them with the capabilities and mindsets they will need to flourish whilst their society and their planet flourishes. To that end, the launch of the new Faulkner’s Curriculum for September is the start of a wider curriculum review to ensure we are offering pupils the best preparation for a world where more things seem possible, yet fewer things are guaranteed.

The same principle lies behind the St Andrew’s church project where pupils will have the opportunity to learn to work better and smarter, alone and together, with books and bytes, and within a building that embodies the great tradition of this College and its founder’s belief in the development of knowledge and virtue.

The Founder’s prayer speaks of the ‘disappointments’ of the Reverend Thomas Stevens’ lifetime. My namesake would be saddened to see his church closed for worship, but I believe that he would be excited to see St Andrew’s take a new place at the heart of his school. He would have loved hearing Zadok the Priest sung in this space for the coronation and he would be proud that 173 years after he founded the College, inspectors recognised in their verbal feedback that ‘pupil ambition is in the culture’, that we have ‘created a space pupils want to fit into’ and that this is, in the words of one experienced inspector, ‘an astounding school’.

It is a great privilege to lead this astounding school. I am deeply grateful to my wife and my assistants for their unstinting support. I am full of admiration for all our staff, and especially the senior team who really run the place, and to the Warden and our excellent governors, who work alongside that team to ensure the College continues to flourish. Thank you also to our parents and alumni for being involved in many ways, for your support of Bradfield Horizons, for your support of our charities, and for your support of our fundraising. Thank you above all for your partnership in our core endeavour, that of enabling your wonderful children to astound us, to astound one another and to astound themselves.