Chronicle Summer 2024

9 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

life – in assembly, for example, we always celebrate all the activities in which our pupils are involved, and we try to say as much about participation and atmosphere as we do about outcomes and results. It’s also about making sure that we don’t just celebrate success; we need always to celebrate pupils’ willingness to be involved, whether they are front and centre in a team or a crew, a cast or an ensemble, or backstage in a supporting role. That all sounds very grand, and it’s actually the small things that make the greatest difference. The way the day is structured, the way in which we make sure that pupils have time for everything, the way in which we help them to avoid too many competing demands on their time. Nick Coram-Wright and Alex Tester lead on that in the management team, and they are brilliant at it. And how do you ensure that pupils manage their time so that they do not do too much? The HMs are responsible for that, and the teams of Tutors which they lead in their

fixtures. That’s a huge level of co-curricular achievement – and that’s just in sport. This summer, more than 200 pupils were involved in concerts, even more were on stage in the Dance Show, and I don’t think anyone can remember a more spectacular Gaudy. Backstage and onstage, a huge number of children have done amazing things! We should absolutely focus on academic ambition – it would be a huge disservice to pupils and their parents to do otherwise – but we should not do so to the detriment of anything else. And, on all that evidence, I think we’ve managed to get just the right balance. How do you ensure that the great hallmarks of a Teddies education, the culture of participation and the breadth of opportunity, are upheld? There are two parts to my answer here – the first is about ethos, the second is about practicality. For the first, it’s about making sure that we’re celebrating success in every form that it takes. It’s about inspiring pupils to give their very best in every area of school

Houses. It’s easy to draw up a timetable and to say that everything should work in theory. But things can be very different in practice. If you know a pupil well, you’ll be able to see when they’re getting over-committed, when they’re becoming too busy to do everything well. There’s pressure in life to manage lots of competing demands on our time, and there should be some moments of pressure in school – that’s an important point of learning. There should never be stress though – pupils should never reach a point at which they don’t know what to do next or how to cope. I’ve been meeting with the four new HMs recently, to give them some advice before they take over their Houses in September. I’ve been telling them to make sure that they have at least three conversations with every pupil in their Houses, every day. If you can do that as an HM, you’ll know them all really well and you’ll be able to tell very quickly if it’s all getting too much. There’s an important role for older pupils here too, acting as mentors to the younger pupils, listening to their peers, and making sure that everything’s in balance.

Heather Young and Sasha Oberoi in an Economics class