The Chronicle, Spring 2019

1 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE CHRONICLE SPRING 2019 | VOLUME XXXIX | NUMBER 678

Being Human The city beyond the School: our friends and partners

Silence Please? A Library for the modern age

Anchors Aweigh Challenge and inspiration on the water

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Word from the Warden Find out more Enjoy extra snippets of news by following @TeddiesOxford @TeddiesSport

Inspiring and mighty though the academic presence of the University is, it is not the only benefit we gain from our location in the city of Oxford. As you will discover in a special feature in this issue, the fact that our pupils are able to play a meaningful part in the life of the city brings enormous benefits, both to our pupils and to the people and organisations with whom we work. ‘Schools like ours must actively manage against a sense of entitlement’, said our Chair of Governors, Chris Jones, at Gaudy last year, and the feature from page 13 certainly illuminates this important aspect of a Teddies education. I salute all our pupils and staff who make a conscious and determined effort to involve themselves in life beyond the school gate. As well as learning about their volunteering activities, we hear a great deal from our pupils in this issue. Sixth Former Octavia Hamilton interviews Deputy Head Academic, Matthew Albrighton, about what it means to be successful and the importance of compassion in our academic ethos. Fifth Former Gini Hope writes about the role of Chapel in school life as we celebrate its 145th anniversary. Another Fifth Former, Leo Wilson, is interviewed alongside Head of Psychology and Head of Sailing, Annabelle Rose, about the surge in popularity of the Sailing Club. We also hear about sailing in a different context – in the shape of Shell

Timothy Long’s ambitious plans to become the youngest person ever to sail solo around Britain, a voyage on which he hopes to embark next summer, having dedicated his Fourth Form Warden’s Project to preparing his boat, Isabella , for the challenge. Continuing the sailing theme, Shell Patrick Maxwell invited me to talk to him about an individual I admire. I chose celebrated yachtsman John Bertrand, and you can read Patrick’s excellent summary of our conversation on page four. In addition to the features and news, there are glimpses of our major developments. You can see the footprint of our 13th House, Cooper Lodge, on page 22, potential sites for our first international partner school on page 20, and an early artist’s impression of the new Library on page 11. All pupils face public or school examinations this term. We wish them the very best of luck and encourage them to draw on the many levels of support and encouragement available in School to help them through these demanding few months. Beyond the exam period, we can, of course, look forward to Gaudy Week; booking opens shortly and I urge you to see as much as you can of this magnificent arts festival.

@BeyondTeddies @TeddiesRowing @TeddiesKendall @TeddiesCorfe @TeddiesJubilee @TeddiesMacs @TeddiesCowells @TeddiesSegars

St Edward’s School is registered in England and Wales as a charitable company limited by guarantee. Registered No. 116784.

@TeddiesField @TeddiesOak @TeddiesTillys @TeddiesApsley Follow our new Instagram accounts stedwardsoxford and teddies_sings Facebook St Edward’s, Oxford Registered Office: Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 7NN. Registered Charity No. 309681. The front cover shows Zak Leigh, Eva Livingstone, Helena Beccle and a pair of Ryeland sheep at the Fair Close Community Farm on school grounds. Photo by Will Griffiths.

Stephen Jones

Oxbridge

Congratulations to Ilana Cope, Sybilla Hamilton, Koji Shukawa and Sophia Majzub on their recent offers from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Ilana has been offered a place to study Psychological and Behavioural Sciences at Robinson College, Cambridge; Sybilla, a place to read Modern and Medieval Languages at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge; Koji, a place to read Natural Sciences at St John’s College, Cambridge; and Sophia, a place to read Classics and Arabic at Somerville College, Oxford.

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Astronomically Generous In February, we were delighted to welcome back to Teddies Lord Paddy Clanwilliam and his daughter Tamara on the occasion of their generous donation to the School of a Meade Telescope. Tamara and her sister Natalya were both at Teddies. Tamara left Oakthorpe in 2009, and Natalya left Mac’s last year. In his address, Lord Clanwilliam expressed great gratitude to the School for having looked after his two daughters

so well. Head of Physics, Matthew Rigby, explains below what this gift will mean to the Physics Department. ‘The Department is absolutely delighted to be the custodian of such an incredible gift for the pupils at St Edward’s. The Meade telescope is certainly a very serious piece of kit and allows us the opportunity to realise our dual ambitions of inspiring our pupils with Astronomy and bringing the subject alive as a practical discipline. We aim to have a working observatory situated on the roof of the Physical Sciences building within a short time-frame, affording pupils the chance to use the telescope directly and to view pictures in the comfort of the labs below in real-time. Clearly, these are very exciting times for all budding astronomers at the School and the generous gift could not have been more timely with the revamped astronomy content of the IGCSE course we cover.’

Matthew Rigby, Head of Physics, Lord Clanwilliam, the Warden and Tamara Meade OSE

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Inspiring People

By Shell Patrick Maxwell

In the first of a new series drawing on The North Wall’s Inspiring People talks, I asked the Warden who he would pick as an inspiring person. He chose John Bertrand, the renowned sailor who captained Australia to victory in the America’s Cup in 1983.

able to be an extremely calming influence over his team when they faced exceptionally strenuous conditions. Was Bertrand fundamental to the victory in 1983? Yes, definitely. He was able to build up the team and guide Australia to victory in a way which nobody else had done before, despite huge odds being stacked against him. Which of his qualities and philosophies can you bring back into the School? I think at Teddies we are slightly iconoclastic. We are not afraid of doing some things differently to other schools. We have a lot of belief in ourselves and perhaps a slight sense of having been an underdog. We were, perhaps, regarded as being behind the curve at one time, but now we have definitely arrived. This was true of Bertrand, who was completely underestimated - he was the scruffy little terrier competing against a thoroughbred Labrador. Yacht racing

Why did you choose a sportsman? Bertrand encapsulates many things that I find inspiring. He was an underdog and nobody expected him to win at all, with the Americans expecting victory as a matter of course. He showed extreme mettle to come back from one-three down and beat the Americans who had never lost the Cup. He had won a medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, but apart from that he was just a good sailor. I think that many of my ‘heroes’ are also iconoclasts. This is true of the Australian sailors in ’83. Their boat was revolutionary and iconoclastic in its design, being extremely light. How did you come across him? I was talking to a sailor who recommended Bertrand’s book, Born to Win . It was revelatory, describing the new psychological type of sport methods they were using. They employed extremely competitive tactics to overcome their opponents psychologically. In this way Bertrand captained the team in a disciplined and effective way and was

John Bertrand in 1983

does play a part in how I see we should run a school. I always seem to support the underdog. I think the School started at a different place from some others. That is like coming from Western Australia and facing the might of the New York Yacht Club. What personal traits do you take from Bertrand? I want to follow his example in showing a lot of determination. He would always intellectualise the boat race, not to a massive extent, but enough to win. He was one of the pioneers of the psychological aspect of sport. Do you see any aspects of a sailing race in a school? In a yacht crew, you need to have many different people doing many different things and at the right time. That is the same in a school. We also have to take notice of what our competitors are doing. There are some things that we have introduced that others have copied. We did that with the IB, which has been a great success. Other schools have now picked up on it. What do you see leadership as? That is an impossible question really. There are so many different types of leaders and there is no perfect one either. I think leading by example is crucial. If you look at great military leaders, you can see they had charisma and knew how to present themselves. There are certain things leaders need to know how to do and this is what we try to teach school prefects. There are some things you have to step up for, however dispiriting they may seem at the time. You might have a fairly boring duty to perform, but you come out of it better off.

Patrick Maxwell and the Warden

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Meet the Governors

This year is the 130th anniversary of the formation of the first ever governing body of St Edward’s. To mark the occasion, we interrupted a Governors’ meeting at the end of last term and insisted on a photo. Left to right; Stephen Withers Green, Bursar and Secretary to the Governing Body; David Jackson; the Very Revd Professor Martyn Percy; Georgina Dennis OSE; Professor Louise Fawcett- Posada; Mike Stanfield OSE; Kenneth MacRitchie; Chris Jones OSE, Chair; Caroline Baggs; Michael Roulston; the Warden; Wilf Stephenson; and Sally Anderson, Clerk to the Governing Body. Fellow Governors Dr Clare Robertson and George Fenton OSE were unavailable for the photo. Read more about our Governors on the website

under About, Staff and Governors, Governors.

When Eddie came to Teddies

When the England Rugby team came to Teddies in February, the 1st XV enjoyed a fantastic afternoon of coaching from Head Coach Eddie Jones and Forwards Coach Neal Hatley. Meanwhile, our junior sports scholars managed to stay much drier than the XV during their indoor session with England’s strength and conditioning experts.

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Battle of the Bands

Damola Otegbola Will Webb OSE

Congratulations to Natalia Elezovic, Oscar and Rudi Hilton-Johnson, Mike Denvir and Panpit Punnipa who won the hotly-contested Battle of the Bands in March with Vendetta. Top left are Oscar Ross, Joel Lytton Cobbold, Anton Myachin and Harry Power as the Sofaheads; and bottom left, Selena Thompson, Joseph de Ferranti, Joseph Burton and Harry Power as Wild Traces.

A Level Drama

Alfie Bussell in Tears of a Clown ; and Aniella Weinberger, Victoria Iliffe and Oscar Paul in The Ripple Effect , two truly impressive A Level Drama performances inspired by Gecko, a high-energy physical theatre company who have previously performed in The North Wall and delivered a workshop to Drama pupils.

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Belief, Reflection and Growth A St Edward’s Education

The academic ethos at St Edward’s is fuelled by a number of complementary principles and beliefs. We urge our pupils to look to long term life goals rather than just exam results; we encourage pupils to be reflective and to find their own solutions to challenges; and we value and promote a range of different learning techniques, actively helping our pupils to understand which work best for them. The Shell Curriculum introduces our youngest pupils to these concepts, and the new academic facilities being built in the Quad will enable us to embed them ever more firmly into school life. Sixth Former Octavia Hamilton talked to Deputy Head Academic, Matthew Albrighton, about these principles, how they shape our academic approach and how they impact our understanding of what it means to be successful.

Can you tell us how the balance between passion and structure supports our academic ethos at Teddies? There has been an interesting transition from the historical view of teaching as a series of inspirational ‘performances’ from the front of the classroom, to today’s focus on developing within pupils the skills to allow them to learn. I hope that at St Edward’s we get the balance right. The real danger of relying on an inspirational approach is that if the inspiration misfires, it can leave a large number of pupils behind. However, at the other extreme, there is a danger of being instrumentalist, too skills focused, where pupils switch off and are uninspired by the experience.

Ben Hutchinson, Jess MacLeod, Barnaby Singfield and Archie Nicholson

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What are the academic standards for Teddies as an institution? I would change standards to expectations and ambitions. What I think we do very well here and what I hope is beginning to be well understood is the notion that if you come to Teddies and you believe you can grow, you can achieve great things. Belief and effort will develop into confidence, so what we’re looking for are pupils in whom we believe we can instil the confidence to grow. Honesty is an interesting expectation. Teachers are at their best when pupils are honest and straightforward. We don’t want to create a sense that if you make a mistake or fail, it’s a bad thing. The important thing is to be honest and to want to improve. Honesty leads to reflection which is a vital factor in moving forward. The most important of our academic expectations is a genuine willingness to engage, to be involved, to use feedback and to take a risk with learning and this will lead to better exam results. You mentioned that you don’t want pupils to think of failure as a bad thing. How do you define failure? How should the pupils define failure? Failure is not a permanent condition. If you try something and it hasn’t worked, don’t wallow in it, just try again. There’s a famous quote by Samuel Beckett: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ This is a powerful mantra for Teddies. The worst thing is to allow yourself to keep making the same mistake over and over again. That’s not failure, that’s an act of futility.

How do you define success? How should the pupils define success? This can be very difficult to unpick because ultimately society defines success by position: if you find yourself in a certain position you are seen to be successful. I really hope we don’t perpetuate this belief system at Teddies. If an individual chooses a certain path and wants to define success in a particular way, that’s fine, but we, as a school, hope to instil in our pupils an understanding of what it means to be a successful human being, and that’s a very different thing. At Teddies, we want success to be defined on a much broader level: as not only achieving in exams, but most importantly, growing as a person, learning from others and having compassion. We want to create successful adults, and that means developing the traits of empathy, compassion and kindness. Being a good businessman might make you a great deal of money – but is that enough? Success should be creating a richly textured life for yourself and those around you and that is what the culture at Teddies is all about – not just the good exam results, but enabling students to become mature and compassionate human beings. This might seem idealistic, but if education is not idealistic then what is the point? How does Teddies differ in its academic goals and principles to other schools? Is there a specific atmosphere? We are against making decisions about children at a young age based purely on

raw academic results. We actively seek young people who have more to offer our community than simply being good at exams. Making decisions based solely on results can preclude a whole host of people with different talents, abilities and enthusiasms, and it’s this breadth that makes the Teddies community so alive and refreshing. I hope not. What I’ve tried to do, since I came to this school, is to make sure that we align the general ethos of development across all areas of school life: an ethos of collaboration, kindness and respect, in the classroom, in House, on the playing fields, in the Recital Room, on stage: everywhere, in fact. With that comes success – however we define it – and the ability to continue to grow. If you disconnect the academic ethos from school ethos, there’s a problem: they cannot be separate. The collaborative element still needs work. We have taken huge strides, but there is always room to improve. I’d like us to have a more universal approach to service which applies inside and outside the classroom. We can work on this collectively and structurally. The busy timetable can be a challenge and perhaps we can inadvertently imply a skewed set of priorities. Kindness and service are really important and, as I’ve said, fundamental to our view of what makes us good human beings – but of course these things are difficult to timetable. We need to think about how we build our values into our school systems. How has the examination style changed? Is this reflected in the Teddies’ ethos? The IB has a more varied set of assessment criteria than A Levels and that’s one of the reasons why it has become so popular. I think we, as a school, would favour assessment criteria which embrace greater variety to explore strengths in different ways. Traditional examination styles employ narrow assessment criteria, placing them somewhat at odds with the School’s principles and ideologies. It can be difficult to adhere to the School’s wholehearted belief in the importance of metacognition (learning about learning) if we have to stick to a really narrow path. We are currently looking at Is our academic culture distinct from the overall culture of Teddies? Which areas need more development?

Alex Niblett and Jack Johnstone

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how we can develop ourselves, here at Teddies, to enhance prescribed courses such as GCSEs to bring them into line with what we believe to be the right education for young people facing life as adults in these early years of the 21st century. What are your top three values? Why do you think they’re important and how will you embed them in school life? Above all else: compassion. As the world moves towards automation and artificial intelligence, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that humans are at the centre of everything. We face the world better and enjoy life more if we have compassion. Further, if we define success as bringing out the best in the people around us, an emphasis on collaboration and respect for other people – taking the time to understand different points of view – is equally important. We face a particular challenge in Western society as traditional models of leadership stem from the legacy of an autocratic, male-dominated culture. Things are changing rapidly: the autocratic style is becoming less successful. Increasingly, decisions are made collaboratively and with compassion.

Inigo Cottam, Maksim Orlov, Tabitha Emmott and Phoebe Lewis

What do you want the pupils to take away from Teddies? The belief that they can continue to grow, but that they can’t do it without others; and others can’t do it without them. I hope

pupils leave Teddies understanding that if they pursue their goals at the expense of others, it is not success in the way that we understand it.

Ruby Freeland and Robin Wheeler

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A Fresh Approach to Discovery Head Librarian, Sarah Eldred, gives us her take on the information revolution

St Edward’s prides itself on being a community in which pupils thrive and develop a passion for independent learning. While the foundations are being laid for the Library we are also laying foundations for the use of this new space in line with our academic and wider school ethos. As Head Librarian at Teddies I enjoy collaborating in the many interesting, inspiring and creative ways in which members of the School engage pupils in learning. However, whilst it has increasingly been recognised that there are multiple ways to teach and multiple ways to learn, our perception and use of libraries has not always changed to reflect the evolution of education. I’ve had many conversations over the years with people from all walks of life who wonder aloud if libraries are even needed any more. I always respond with, ‘Yes! - But let’s talk about what a library actually is and should be’. Libraries are often thought of as simply collections of books but the real purpose of a library is to bring together resources that

inspire and to provide a space in which to increase your knowledge, to develop ideas, to discover things which make your brain tick and fizz and spill over into passions and hobbies. A modern library is not just about books; a book is simply one type of resource and whilst books still play an important part in academia and reading for pleasure, we no longer always turn to a book in the first instance but instead reach for our phones and a web page. We have so many different ways now of finding information that increasingly librarians are called upon to teach how to find the best information and what to do with it once you have it. Although we don’t know what the future holds for information and the way we access it we do know things will continue to develop and change. To prepare pupils to navigate these changes we need to provide multiple formats and opportunities for developing flexibility in their approach to learning and information gathering. A successful school library, therefore, is a collaborative space which brings together

the whole community. It should be an active learning space which responds and adapts to the needs of its users, catering for various working preferences and abilities, acknowledging that different people have different needs. It should be a neutral space not tied to any one department or discipline, a place of possibility and imagination. The vision for the new Library includes providing traditional elements – there will be plenty of books and places to work quietly – but our main aim is to encourage pupils to enjoy the space and develop a passion for

Sarah Eldred

An early artist’s impression of the new Library

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discovery. This means providing a variety of designated silent, quiet and collaborative spaces that can be used according to need. Most importantly it means engaging pupils in the Library in ways which make them want to be there so that later, when they have to be there, they feel confident. Activities such as filming for YouTube videos with the use of a green screen, using augmented reality apps, competitions, poetry slams and movie nights may become as commonplace as book groups and quiet reading time.

What excites me about being a librarian is that I get to share pupils’ enthusiasm about whatever it is that makes them passionate to learn. I’m not tied to one discipline or interest: if a pupil wants to know more about economic theories, or rock climbing, or coding, I have a book for that… and a magazine or two, and multiple credible websites, and access to academic journal articles. In preparing for the new building over the last couple of years the Library at Teddies has changed from a ‘Sixth Form space’ to

a ‘whole school space’. With some simple furniture changes, colourful and lively book displays and quirky additions such as neon- coloured earplugs, the physical space has become lighter, brighter and more congenial. Shells now regularly raid the fiction area for more books to read in the hope of winning the Reading Challenge and Sixth Form pupils often visit for help with research projects. As we move into the new Library it’s my hope and intention that we take this spirit with us and the Library increasingly becomes a place where pupils choose to be.

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Change and Continuity The problem became immediately clear to History teacher Anna Fielding several

and Warlords. Many of the changes he instigated took place gradually . For example, when Mao came to power, farming techniques were very basic but, over a period, agriculture was transformed through the gradual application of the policy of collectivisation; a policy which modernised the country yet had disastrous implications for many.’ Fellow History teacher Huw Thomas has built on this work by creating a useful checklist of words to aid historical writing which is now always on display in History classrooms. Beyond the words, visual imagery has a big role to play. Another of Anna’s techniques is to construct a visual metaphor to capture the rate of change, such as the reading on an exercise treadmill as the runner speeds up and slows down. Another is to create a ‘living graph’ – a simple way to capture the fact that change affects people in different ways. For example, to help pupils appreciate that collectivism helped those in the city, by providing sufficient supplies of food, but caused suffering for those who worked in the large agricultural communes.

‘If you think about it,’ says Anna, ‘young children aged 13 or 14 haven’t experienced historical change, they haven’t been alive long enough, so it’s understandable that they struggle to understand and describe it.’ Through practical research in the classroom, Anna identified a number of techniques to help pupils write about change. Simple though it sounds, a lesson focused on identifying relevant vocabulary is a good foundation. ‘History is so much more, and so much richer, than simply a list of Kings and Queens, and battles and dates,’ she says. ‘Historical events can be big, sudden or cataclysmic; they can be triggers for subsequent developments, or they can exacerbate underlying tensions; they can be long-term, short term – or even scary.’ Historical developments can also be a number of things simultaneously. ‘When Mao came to power in October 1949,’ Anna continues, ‘it was a moment in time, a turning point in political leadership: Mao was a new leader and a Communist, after around 50 years of political instability under Emperors, a Republic

years ago during a simple classroom task. She had asked a Fifth Form class to construct a timeline of the historical period they had been studying. With most of the pupils fresh from the dates, facts and figures approach to History required by Common Entrance examinations, Anna was struck by the fact that their timelines simply left out anything that couldn’t be distilled into a specific moment in time. And so the seeds of her 20,000-word Masters’ research project were sown: History and Change: how to help pupils write effectively about the concept of continuity and change in History . Her research and recommendations quickly reached a wider audience through a piece in the journal, Teaching History , at the British Educational Research Association Conference in Belfast, and in a recently published book, Classroom-based Interventions Across Subject Areas , edited by Gabriel J Stylanides and Ann Childs.

Anna Fielding

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Beyond Teddies

Under the inspired and compassionate leadership of Head of Community Engagement Paula Diaz Rogado, pupils now have access to an exceptional programme of volunteering opportunities. They enjoy being out of School, meeting our neighbours and partners – and doing their bit to contribute to the life of the city in which they spend so much time. The following pages provide a special focus on the varied, important and life-enhancing work being done.

Helena Beccle and FarmAbility Co-Farmer Harry

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Nestling between the Boat House and the river in a particularly picturesque corner of school grounds sits the delightful Fair Close Community Farm where the charity FarmAbility hosts regular sessions for young people with learning difficulties, often also with autism. As part of our volunteering and outreach programme, Teddies pupils join in some of these sessions and help out with the sheep, pick fruit in the orchard and generally keep everything shipshape. Paula Diaz Rogado, Head of Community Engagement, talked to FarmAbility Programme Leader Raul Ospina Bonilla, and young FarmAbility co-farmer, Harry, about the benefits of the scheme. the Fair Close Community Farm? Raul: For me, the best thing about our time at the Farm is that the young people from FarmAbility spend time with other young people their own age. This helps them in so many ways – they pick up basic farming skills, of course, but more importantly, they develop invaluable social skills. By bringing together the young people from FarmAbility and the young people from Teddies, we are doing our bit to make sure they understand each other better, not just right now, but on into their adult lives. Paula to young co-farmer, Harry: What kind of stuff do you do when you come to the farm, Harry? Harry: We collect wood at the Farm and then sometimes we make things out of the wood. I made a letter S because my surname begins with S. FarmAbility Paula: How do the young people from FarmAbility benefit from coming to

FarmAbility Programme Leader Raul Ospina Bonilla and colleague with Maxi Madrian and Zak Leigh

Paula to Raul: How do Teddies pupils benefit from coming to the Farm? In much the same way – it’s about bringing the community together. We are bringing people from different areas of society together. So the Teddies guys get to see that there are all sorts of people in the world, and that life is not easy for everyone. I hope they realise that in many ways they are very similar to the young people they meet at the Farm, but that people have different skills and different abilities. What I love the most about you guys coming here is that we can become friends. Your guys befriend our guys and our guys befriend your guys and we can develop relationships. That’s what I like about it. For instance, Harry loves going to the cinema (Harry: ‘You can say that again!’) and I remember one particular occasion when he and Lola started talking about films they had seen, and then they moved on to talking about the kind of music they liked. Despite different abilities and backgrounds, the young people find common ground here. How did you end up working here? I come from a farming background in Columbia. For many years I’ve been a carer for my Mum who has schizophrenia, and I also set up a voluntary project locally that supports people with mental health issues to benefit from farm-based work. In 2013, I started volunteering with FarmAbility in Wytham, and became employed as Programme Leader later that year. An important part of my role has been to develop partnerships with local farms

where I can take small groups of co-farmers from FarmAbility. We’re determined to create more opportunities for our co- farmers to find purposeful roles in their local community where they’re valued and appreciated. Farms offer a rich range of outdoor activities, and we’ve been warmly welcomed in many places, from large dairy farms to small community farms like Fair Close. Being outside is the really powerful element of my work. You have your own devils in your head. I’ve got my own devils in my head. If we are indoors, we almost push towards each other. When you are outside you can go one way and your mind can go another way. Space and fresh air can help all of us in so many different ways. Yes, that makes everyone happy really, it doesn’t matter who you are. The FarmAbility programme combines the valuable ingredients of the farming environment (nature, animals, and purposeful activities) with an approach that supports people to progress through to meaningful occupation. FarmAbility participants (co-farmers) are actively involved throughout the year in vegetable growing, orchard management, horse care, animal husbandry, woodwork, an organic egg enterprise, and a range of seasonal farm tasks. Find out more at www.farminspirationtrust.org/ farmability

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Shared Endeavour We caught up with Raul Corrales, Behaviour, Safeguarding and Wellbeing Lead at Endeavour Academy, a specialist school and children’s home in Oxford. Endeavour educates young people aged between eight and 19 with autism and severe learning difficulties who benefit from an autism specific environment.

young people become adults and take their places in society, they will take this mutual understanding with them. Do you have other similar partnerships with the local community? Endeavour is a relatively new school so we’re still building our network, but interaction with the city and our neighbours is really important to us. The more external partners we have, the more opportunities there are for our pupils to develop crucial social skills, like shopping and travelling, and to get training and work experience, all of which will be vital for them when they leave school. On a broader level, it is all too easy for autistic people to feel isolated. If you think about it, for most young people, contact with neighbouring schools is a regular part of school life - so it’s just wonderful for us to have these links with Teddies.

For about a year, Fourth Form pupils from St Edward’s have been visiting Endeavour several times a month to help with an after school arts and crafts club. Tell us a bit about the club. It’s a fantastic opportunity for our pupils to hang out with neurotypical young people their own age. The Teddies pupils bring cakes and snacks every week, always a great ice-breaker with young people, and they all spend a lovely hour or so doing different arts and crafts activities together. Do they all get along? It sometimes takes time for the pupils from different schools to get used to each other. Some Endeavour pupils are not always comfortable in social situations and some of them may need time to get used to having people they don’t know very well around them – and it can be intimidating for the St Edward’s pupils to encounter young people with a condition like autism, which probably they don’t know much about, but may have heard of. Most often, however, the teenagers get to a point where they’re just a group of young people having fun – which is the whole point of the exercise. What are the benefits? There are so many misconceptions about autism. It is widely believed that autistic people are lost in their own worlds with no interest in others, but this isn’t always the case. Autistic people are extremely social. Many of our pupils really love being with other young people and they so rarely get the chance; the after school club is a fantastic opportunity for them. At the same time, it’s great to see the Teddies pupils getting beyond autism to see a young person with whom they can share a happy afternoon. It gives them the opportunity to know and celebrate the concept of neurodiversity. When all these

Raul Corrales

How will the partnership develop? We’d like to take it further by getting our pupils involved in activities beyond school – so we’re hoping to organise an art session in the Teddies Art Department or a day on the water at the Boat Club. We are also looking into work experience opportunities for our pupils. There are endless opportunities, we can do so much together.

Oscar Clark, Ecehan Bagis and Charlie Scales with Benny, Mishan and Kieran from Endeavour Academy

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Care in the Community Pupils including Panpit Punnipa, Claudia Harris, Maddie Catchpole and Gwendoline Davenport (pictured below outside the Lady Nuffield Home on Banbury Road), among many others, visit local care homes on a regular basis to play music, read poetry, talk to the residents and even, we are told, play charades.

Pegasus

Georgia Maddocks, Deputy Headteacher at Pegasus Primary School in Oxford tells us, ‘St Edward’s pupils visit us regularly and the children really enjoy the sessions. The content is always varied and very well organised giving our children the opportunity to share their learning about their current topic. It is particularly lovely to see the friendships develop between child and pupil over a succession of sessions and the confidence of the Pegasus children grow. We hugely appreciate the effort that goes into the programme and hope it continues in the future.'

Eva Livingstone and Rose Laurent Josi at Pegasus Primary

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Handy Voices Sixth Formers Bunny Lytle and Helena Beccle sang and signed with the Handy Voices sign language choir in Oxford for about a year. They told us: ‘We used to go along to Handy Voices in Oxford on Monday afternoons. It was really refreshing to get out of School and to be in a different environment. Most of the young people we sang with were deaf, and some faced additional challenges such as autism or learning difficulties. It was so good for us to know enough sign language to be able to make friends with our fellow choir members and to understand more about what it’s like living with the difficulties they face. It was also good to realise that despite the many differences in our lives, we all really enjoyed coming together to sing and sign with the Choir. Although our partnership with the Choir has come to an end for the time being, we both want to keep working on our signing skills. Right now we’re planning for Deaf Awareness Week in May – we want to organise something really fun like a Flash Mob performance in the centre of Oxford.’ IntoUniversity In 2002, three friends were helping at a homework club in North Kensington, a London borough of social and economic extremes. The scale of underachievement they encountered prompted them to launch IntoUniversity, a charity which now operates across the UK, running 30 local learning centres where young people from

disadvantaged backgrounds are encouraged to aim high. The Oxford centre in Blackbird Leys opened in 2014, and Teddies Sixth Formers have been volunteering at the centre on a weekly basis, helping with reading or project work. Pictured are Ben Courtney-Guy, Daniela Rafart Cardona and Max Morris about to head off to the Oxford centre. Phoebe Taylor and Benedict Machin also attend regularly.

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RAW Potential On the edge of a neat residential area in south east Oxford, OSE Rick Mower’s thriving business, RAW, is advertised with a vivid, neon-pink sign. The more one discovers about the company’s ethos, the more it becomes clear that the idea behind this business is as bold as its branding.

In the large, modern workshop, RAW’s team manufacture and hand-craft a range of robust, high-quality products – from shelf units to outdoor garden and parks furniture, and from office desks to dining tables. They also offer design services and bespoke units for pubs, cafés, restaurants, shops and businesses. Outside, there’s another part of the RAW enterprise, a booming waste wood collection and recycling service which serves an ever growing number of local and national house builders and developers. Finally, in a beautifully renovated barn, there is a retail outlet selling a huge range of reclaimed wood and timber. The services and products are impressive, but it is the company’s ethos and workforce that set it apart. Rick shaped his business around his strong personal respect for people who have survived some extremely challenging journeys in life and his passion is to create businesses that hardwire social and environmental outcomes into the core of everything they do. RAW actively seeks to employ and train people who face prejudice and barriers to work with the aim of enabling them ‘to be exceptional rather than being the exception’. Over 75% of the team is made up of people who have faced, or are facing, issues such as mental health illness, recovery from addiction, criminal histories and physical or learning difficulties. There is plenty of support for employees, or ‘Crew’ as they are called at RAW, but there are also high expectations. Rick proudly describes his team as ‘the best workforce in Oxford’ as he points to a list on the wall of the key principles of his ethos which include: be on time, be willing to do more, put in effort, be prepared, be energetic, only produce work you would be happy to give to your Mum .... As Rick says, you don’t need a degree to be able to embrace these important attitudes. Rick and his Crew expect their commercial clients to judge RAW on the quality, service

and value they provide. They are efficient and competitive – but are also able to offer more value in the shape of social and environmental impact. The Conduit, an exclusive private members’ club in Mayfair, and Oxford Brookes University, both recent RAW customers, will have received reports summarising the social impact hours their orders created, and the carbon emissions saved by the use of recycled materials. Other high profile clients have included Blenheim Palace, Garden Trading, Oxford City Council and numerous other local business and private customers. Making buying decisions that add value beyond the product or service itself is increasingly important for businesses, educational establishments and organisations of all kinds. ‘Although this might surprise people, there are ways in which we work at RAW, and my days at Teddies and The Dragon, that are very similar’, says Rick. ‘At school, I loved the feeling of being part of a ‘tribe’ – in my rugby team, for instance, and as part of my House and the close-knit community. It gave me context and values. One of our core beliefs at RAW is that, just as bees need a hive, humans need a tribe. This sense of belonging and shared endeavour is what RAW offers to many of our Crew: we look after each other, we push each other on, we share the same values, and we’re proving – by the quality of what we do - that nobody should be judged by their life history or condition. We can all Be Exceptional.’ For more details about RAW, its services and its wider impact, visit  www.raw-workshop.co.uk or email rick@raw-workshop.co.uk . Rick and his team have just taken on a project to create a bench from an Ash tree felled to make way for the new Quad Development; we look forward to reporting on progress in future issues.

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Rick Mower OSE and colleagues in the RAW workshop

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Teddies International

A Teddies party travelled to China in March to look at potential sites for our first international partner school. The main picture shows a possible site at an existing primary school in the city of Hangzhou, a two-hour drive south west of Shanghai. The inset shows Stephen Withers Green, Bursar; Margaret Lloyd, Deputy Head International (see opposite); and Jing Wang from Guanghua Education Group at a second potential site, a senior school in the same city.

Crafty Business Seb Southan, Joseph Cairns, Phoebe Lewis, Sasha Wolcough, Tabitha Emmott, Anna West, Izzy Hall, Molly Spencer, Lily Radford and Lila Howard heading off to spend a crafty afternoon with the young pupils at Northern House Primary

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Margaret Lloyd What do you do at Teddies and how long have you been here? I joined in September 2008 as second in the Maths Department and have been Head of Maths, Assistant Head (Academic) with responsibility for teacher professional development and IT, and now hold the new role of Deputy Head International. I still teach Maths, and this year have achieved my ambition of teaching my favourite subject – English. Where were you before? I was teaching at Wheatley Park School before I came to Teddies; but before that, I was a project manager in the financial services sector, working on all sorts of things including corporate partnership deals, new product launches and corporate restructuring. What does being Deputy Head International involve? At the moment, it involves lots of research: the various laws governing the operation of Chinese schools; the opportunities offered by different curriculum models; and very importantly, learning from the experience of other UK schools in China. We are in the very early stages of planning, with a lot to scope out. Why has St Edward’s joined forces with the Guanghua Education Group? Ultimately, we want to increase the number of bursaries we can offer. But we are not going to sacrifice our educational values to chase dollars. The most important thing in an international partnership venture is that the two parties share the same educational values, and Guanghua are very keen to apply western pedagogical practices in their schools. We hear a lot about how inadequate UK education is – but there is a huge market for the holistic, reflective education that we aim to deliver here. What other areas of school life are you involved in? I have been a tutor in Kendall for the last two years and am thoroughly enjoying

being in a boys’ house – in fact the more we break up mono-gendered boarding house cultures the better. I am also very involved in debating – being able to see lots of sides to substantive issues, thinking on your feet and speaking confidently in public are among the most important skills young people can learn. What do you enjoy about teaching? It’s always different – even if you’re teaching the same content, there are always different ways to deliver it and every class has a different dynamic. How has the teaching of Maths changed since you began teaching in 2004? Teaching Maths is always a tricky balance between mastering specific techniques and understanding broader concepts and applications – there are lots of exciting possibilities in Maths teaching but, ultimately, we are tied to the exam syllabuses, which increasingly provide little room for exploration. I like teaching IB - I like the way it encourages intelligent use of technology and brings Theory of Knowledge and Global Perspectives into the Maths classroom. What have been the highlights of your Teddies career so far? I don’t think I see a particular highlight – it’s a very friendly community and a lovely place to work, alongside intelligent, committed professionals who are also interesting and amusing people. Best advice you’ve ever been given? Listen to advice, by all means, but you have to make your own decisions for the right reasons. Which book would you take to a desert island? Thomas Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon : it’s funny, clever, long and eminently re-readable - perfect for a desert island, especially as our heroes spend a strange and miserable interlude on St Helena while they measure the transit of Venus. There are also bits set in County Durham so it would remind me of home.

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Cooper Lodge

The clear footprint of Cooper Lodge to the west of Kendall and Field, overlooking Chestnut

Jospeh Osei, Trudie Ball (House Nurse), Alvaro Esponera, Matisse Dubois-Pelerin, Linda Churcher (Matron), Shamil Aliyev, Emily Moss (Assistant Housemistress), Fergus Livingstone (Housemaster), Justin Liu, Helena Beccle, Zac Adeboye, Jack Hemmings, Eva Livingstone and Tracy Moore (House Cleaner) who, along with Henri Amato-Long, Flavio Vitale, Katinka Hughes, Amy Waghorn, Tomas Magnusson, Lizzie Williams, Felix Pickering and Resident Tutor, Ross Simmonds, make up our founding Cooper Lodge community.

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Richard Hayes What do you do at Teddies and how long have you been here? I’m the Estates Bursar. I’m responsible for the Maintenance, Logistics, Grounds, Health and Safety, and Security Departments. I also oversee capital projects such as the current Quad Development and the construction of Cooper Lodge. I started here at St Edward’s late in 1999 as a rosy-cheeked construction manager from Wiltshire! What did you do before Teddies? I’ve been involved in the construction industry all my life. After a spell as a bricklayer (extremely hard work but very well paid), I became a construction manager and found myself in charge of construction sites all across the south west. This is where I learnt the complex art of managing projects, people and budgets. Alongside my main career, I joined the Royal Navy Reserves and trained as a mine warfare specialist. I undertook short tours on many famous ships including HMS Invincible and HMS Brave, and managed to visit most of the foreign ports in the western world along with one or two in the Far East as well. This culminated in me being sent out to the South China Sea to help oversee the handing back of Hong Kong. My best memory of that trip was being lucky enough to attend a BBQ on a beach on We’ve just started building Cooper Lodge on Field Side, our 13th House and first co-ed one. It will open in 2020 at the same time as the Quad Development (see opposite). Of which new development (so far) are you most proud? The Life Science Building. Its subtle modern architecture and internal functionality have been a success since the doors were first opened. How does the school community cope with building work? The pupils and staff are amazingly tolerant and helpful considering the constant bombardment of activity. I am sure they can all see the benefits and are looking forward to the results as much as I am. Best advice you’ve ever been given? You may end up in life doing something that you didn’t set out to do, so embrace change. What do you in your spare time? I’m a regular long-distance motorcycle tourer, keen sea kayaker, father of two, grandfather of four – and a lover of the Isle of Tiree which I visit regularly. Tioman Island, which was tropical paradise. How is the Quad Development going? It’s fantastic to see the structures emerging now – the first floor of the Study Centre is in place and the oval shape of the Hall is rising up out of the ground. I’m already thinking about helping to prepare the School for the move into the new building. These are exciting times. What’s the next big project?