Well, another Academic year is over and the Winners and Champions signed off for another 12 months.  Our Principal guest was Old Boy, Rupert Houseman, Video editor and BAFTA winner 2013 for the film 7/7 One Day in London.

You can see our video treatment of the BAFTA film shown this afternoon here .  Rupert was a truly outstanding follow-on from Katherine Grainger last year, not because he was in any way demonstrative, but because he was true to the spirit of the occasion as Katherine was last year, This day is a celebration of what marks out those of our our pupils that excel, and an opportunity to build the Peer pressure to encourage others to follow in their footsteps. Rupert attended the school from 1985 to 1992, and his words today resonated with a very large number of our boys and girls today.  He remembers being a nervous Year 7 new boy, somewhat anxious because he had just been diagnosed as being severely dyslexic. He left as a reasonably successful post GCSE student, In those days as we had no 6th Form, Rupert attended Henley College before going to work (as best you can) in the Film business.  His big break came when fellow Old Boy, Toby Hefferman, signposted his Runner post at Disney when Toby got promoted to 3rd assistant director there.  Rupert quickly moved from Film to Video, and from Running to Video editing, and he hasn’t really looked back since then.

In a touching closing ceremony, Jan Price, our Head of Art (and his old teacher) handed over to Rupert a collage of his own GCSE Art work, created in 1992, a testament to her wonderful back catalogue of her pupils’ work.

Rupert closed with these thoughts “It’s funny to consider that I entered Claires Court unable to read and write.  You taught me to be literate, and to discover my artistic talent.  Here I am, 21 years on, making a living creating documentaries, writing scripts and voice-overs for others!  Claires Court has much credit for this!”

Actually, this seems a poor paraphrase of Rupert’s words – watch him in the flesh here.