Chronicle Summer 2023

And which have had the most positive impact on pupils’ general wellbeing? We have given pupils more of a voice in the running of the School, with new year group forums, committees for food, Chapel and IT, meetings to talk about equality and inclusion, and a new annual survey about every aspect of school life. I think those channels have made a real difference. There’s also the new wellbeing curriculum, from the Shell to the Upper Sixth. It’s given pupils much more of an opportunity to think and talk about their personal development, about themes and issues in society, about practical issues affecting their futures – and that can only be a good thing. And, of course, there’s the new policy on mobile phones – it still divides opinion and it always will, but I think it has made a really positive difference. Pupils are talking to each other much more and I think there’s an even better atmosphere in the School as a result. You said at the Spring Parent Briefing that you would be focusing on developing the School’s careers provision. Can you tell us more about that? Absolutely – it’s a really exciting area for the next few years. We ran our first surveys last year of OSE three, five and 10 years after leaving and we’re using the returns to shape our careers provision and the development of the curriculum. For next year, we’re planning a Careers Festival during Gaudy

Louis Millar, Harry Sanderson and Hamish Johnston on a visit to the Lady Nuffield Home

shops. Staff are involved too – teaching in local primary schools, cooking for local charities, lending equipment and providing transport. I don’t think we’ve ever done more, but we can never do enough. You’ve been Warden now for nearly two years, and you and your colleagues have introduced a number of new initiatives. Which of these have had the most positive impact on pupils’ learning – in the curriculum and the co-curriculum? The last two years have been so busy that there are lots of possible answers to that question! On the academic side, the biggest impact has probably come from changing the shape of the school day to protect time for pupils to get their work done in the evening, so that they can throw themselves into all the other opportunities available to them. I think our work to make more of our location in Oxford has been really effective too – there were three times as many external speakers at society meetings last term as there were a year ago, and many more pupils in the audiences for them. The Oxford Lectures – short residencies for visiting academics – have been really well received, and we’re getting pupils in every subject in every year group into Oxford regularly too, to learn outside the classroom. The St Edward’s Fellows, the postgraduate students from Oxford working with pupils one-to-one and in small

groups, have provided real inspiration too. We’re going to have many more of them here next year. In the co-curriculum, the St Edward’s Award has been very effective at encouraging pupils to think about their engagement with all the opportunities that they have here and to take advantage of more of them. I’m looking forward to presenting the first prizes this summer.

Commemorative sporting shields in the Dining Hall