A NotebookLM conversation about this blog can be found here: https://schl.cc:443/gs and below.

The header image for this week’s blog, shows Claires Court’s 48 acres of playing fields to be found off Cannon Lane on the driveway into school. The photo doesn’t really give the scene full justice; -5 degrees Celsius, the frost crisp and even, taken on Friday morning 10 January 2025, from one of our ‘breakfast club’ families on the way in. We’ve always been incredibly conscious of the requirement to provide that longer school ‘envelope’ for the day, and now we have unpredictable road chaos everywhere, it’s probably a lifesaver for many working parents required to return to the office every day!

These fields have heralded a remarkable development for the school, not just because of their scale, but because they host a huge and diverse range of other community sports groups, winter and summer, and are now registered for use for four local cricket sides in the Thames Valley leagues this coming April. It’s nice to know that these facilities are now put to good use over the year, providing homes for a wide range of community groups who help pay for the provision that our own children already enjoy.

Other physical projects to be completed over the next few months:

• January – Tarmacing and carpeting of the MUGA at Juniors, official opening 7 March 2025;
• February – Installation of a Flexitent social area for parents at Juniors, funded by the PTA;
• Spring and Summer, investment in music and drama facilities at Juniors, thanks to a generous donation received through the PTA Foundation;
• Easter – installation of a new Pavilion for the Sixth Form, initially for public exam use and then as an additional study centre;
• Summer – new Music Centre at Senior Boys, new PE/Sports Fitness centre at College for Senior Girls and Sixth Form;
• Planning application to cover the replacement of the Drama ‘Shed Theatre’ and adjacent facilities at Senior Boys.

Whilst our physical development ideas do not end there, the above signals the completion of projects currently as part of the school’s overall development plan to date. 

As Principals, Hugh and I are being naturally very cautious of the planning of future investment, because of the choice of the Labour Government to impose VAT on our tuition fees, a direct cost to parents of course, and the consequential need for the school to ensure tuition fees to not rise any more than absolutely necessary. We await with great interest the outcomes of the judicial review of the legality of the imposition of this tax; nevertheless, the school must continue to consider our next steps for the benefit of our children, young people, staff and parents. At this stage, I feel it important to explain quite how we arrived at our current set of outcomes.

As our original plan to develop the school onto one site was refused in 2020, our challenge since has been how to reestablish a new focus and direction. The Court Report 2022-24 published last month highlights many of our achievements, so I won’t reiterate them here. Suffice it to say that we moved from a #NewCampus to #MaidenheadIsOurCampus and as a consequence have set our sights on improving all three school sites in Maidenhead and establishing even more mutual relationships within sports, the arts, ecology and the wider community.

Making our mark in 2025 is not just about physical building, and perhaps even more importantly, it’s about ensuring we continue to develop our education, health and care offer for all age ranges so that we continue to see everyone thrive, strive and as appropriate overcome the difficulties and hurdles that they encounter along the way. So much of the narrative under the new government carries the warning label of ‘Blame Game’, as if nothing good has come of the past quarter of a century in the country. As all informed commentators keep highlighting, we’ve really had enough time spent on consultations and reviews, we’ve plenty of actions recommended for those in service to get on with. After all, Claires Court may have encountered some roadblocks, but we haven’t just stood still and wrung our hands.

Writing in 2025 may very well be considered a different process, given that we have paper, pen, screen, voice and AI to assist, but children must not jump the developmental steps needed on the journey to conscious competence. 20 years ago, Professor Pat Preedy and I worked together with our association to highlight the absolute requirement for the children’s nursery space to include sufficient outdoor play and playmat activities to ensure that the primitive reflexes controlled by the brain stem we are born with are suitably overwritten by cortical activity in the brain. These adaptive responses develop during the neonatal period and integrate over time as the brain matures. They are present for survival and development in the early months of life. Physicians and therapists commonly use these to assess the integrity of the central nervous system. In this video produced six years ago, Pat talks about the failure of the current EYFS assessment and profile; she’d won the DfE over to commence the reform she recommended  in 2019/20, redundant as a consequence of the pandemic then. Claires Court, and other good schools with whom Pat has worked, have made the changes recommended in the book she co-wrote, Early Childhood Education Redefined.

In 2025 we know that not only must parents permit their children to crawl and struggle, and NOT cause to walk upright in bouncers, but we also know that too much contact with ‘screen time’ means children won’t develop the 3-dimensional grasp of the world they need, and that their state of excitement created by the over-release of endorphins can in due course lead to other unexpected differences in their physical, social and emotional development. At school, whilst we have thoroughly embraced the introduction of screen-based learning and the use of AI, our early adoption has been matched by clear consideration of the other needs children still have as they go through school. Movement for learning and making their mark on paper are both essential in slowing down the child’s intellectual response so they consider the ‘why, how and what’ they wish to do and say.

The new curriculum review will be welcomed by the state sector, as it has been deprived of the funding needed to provide universally across the country for the wider full funding of a truly broad curriculum. No one really will welcome any immediate changes to the upper secondary and sixth form examination syllabi, partly because we are just now gathering the evidence for the outcomes of the new 2017-2019 examination changes (largely positive), and we need wider society to decide whether it is going to re-introduce the wider pathways into adult skill development in addition to undergraduate education at University. The latest political decision (October ’24 budget) to place a higher cost by way of pay and higher tax on youth employment is already causing the delay in the growth needed of employer-based apprenticeships, so both government and employers must resolve the current impasse. Apparently many in their twenties are both crippled by debt and inertia that the state is funding their unemployment – that’s not a recipe for future success.

Claires Court’s curriculum will continue to develop, embrace and promote the best of academic know-how, with the parallel requirements to build the opportunities to use the physical, collaborative and entrepreneurial skills they need, coupled with a school-wide sense of belonging, engendered by “Your place is here”. Again the Court Report speaks to these developments too; at Junior level leading as we have in the trialing of the use of AI in the classroom, adjacent to the success we have had ‘out in the woods’ with Forest School, at senior level with the growth of the CCF and Paddling centre on Boulter’s Island.

To conclude, whilst there is much to do, as the Academic Principal leading Claires Court, I know it’s my duty to keep the school on its ambitious programme to the best we can be for everyone in the school, a ‘challenging space’ yet ‘safe place’. Next week sees us launch our annual questionnaire for our parent & guardian community. I look forward to hearing what our customers think of what we have been able to do and have in mind for the future. Watch this space!

Educational footnote: In academic terms, we’ve known for 7 millennia that classrooms need to welcome about 20 children to the space for teachers to lead their instruction. Since those early marks made in clay 5000 BCE and beyond, we’ve learned that the actual process of writing, drawing, painting, and making music all cause the growth of intellect and imagination. The first known writer in clay by name in history was a woman: Enheduanna. She received this name, which means “high priestess, ornament of heaven” in Sumerian, upon her appointment to the temple of the moon god in Ur, a city in southern Mesopotamia, in present-day Iraq The first book discovered written during Sumerian times is the Epic of Gilgamesh, part man, part god, now over 4000 years old, and the video below does rather highlight the extraordinary imagination of humans so long ago.

 The Epic of Gilgamesh started out as a series of Sumerian poems and tales dating back to 2100 B.C., but the most complete version was written around the 12th century B.C. by the Babylonians. The story was later lost to history after 600 B.C.E. and it wasn’t until the mid-19th century that archaeologists finally unearthed a copy near the Iraqi city of Mosul. Since then, scholars have hailed the 4,000-year-old epic as a foundational text in world literature. Link