Firstly, may I give all of our parents, guardians and supporters a warm welcome back to school for the Summer Term. To those 14 new children and their families joining Claires Court this week, I can assure you of the sincerity behind this introduction, and I look forward to meeting with you somewhere on campus sometime soon. Whilst the world outside remains fraught with complexity and confusion, we have every intention of staying fully focussed to provide the best we can for our children, young people and adults. 

Please read my tribute to the best teacher I have ever had, James Reason, who taught me Psychology at the University of Leicester. Perhaps his greatest claim to fame was his explanation of why things fail, storytelling at its best, using the Swiss Cheese model; a metaphor for analysing and preventing accidents that envisions situations in which multiple vulnerabilities in safety measures – the holes in the cheese – align to create a recipe for tragedy. I do my best to keep many layers in place and reduce the number of holes to the minimum! 

Our regular weekly bulletins aim to provide sufficient information to allow our school community to know what’s happening in the days and weeks to come. We know that if we send out too many communications, these can be overwhelming, but by having different channels of communication, we can not just inform but affirm and celebrate too. That’s why the website news pages and school App are really helpful – when they work! Sadly, all META (for example) has to do is tweak its API and our news may not break through at all, so this does require pretty constant vigilance on our part as those pesky APIs seem to change relentlessly!

The major Parent Teacher celebration this summer is our PTA Cocktails & Canapés event to be held in the magnificent surroundings of Moor Hall in Cookham on Friday 5 June. The ongoing contributions to the PTA via their various fund-raising events and activities continues to support our awards and accelerate our developments and facilities in school. I cannot thank our parents, guardians and staff community enough for their generosity with inspiration, perspiration and (it must be said) money, and to that I add our PTA chairs and trustees, whose stewardship guarantees the funds ‘reach’ the target.

The Easter break, for watchers of Netflix, was dominated by the screening of “Adolescence”, a British television psychological crime drama series centering on a 13-year-old schoolboy, Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) who is arrested after the murder of a girl in his school. It’s no surprise that schools have been focussing on the growing burden placed on our children through their engagement with social media. To meet this specifically at Claires Court, we have refined over many years our twin strategies of “Girls on Board” and “Working with Boys” which have opened up ongoing dialogues with our young people, not just “one offs.” 

In light of the above, I do commend to parents our dedicated health channel, https://clairescourt.uk.schooltv.me, which provides a wealth of support and information for parents. Published today is our Special Report: Social Media & Comparison Culture.

Young people today are growing up in a world where exposure to other people’s lives is constant. Through social media and other platforms, they are regularly presented with curated highlights – from flawless holiday photos and academic milestones to the latest fashion trends and fitness achievements. This continuous stream of idealised content fuels what is known as comparison culture, where self-worth is often measured by how someone stacks up against others.

For children and adolescents, who are still figuring out who they are, this culture can be particularly damaging. Constantly comparing their appearance, achievements, or social standing to friends, influencers, and even strangers can lead to unrealistic expectations and a skewed sense of self-worth. This relentless need to measure up can contribute to feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, and anxiety – undermining both confidence and emotional wellbeing. Here is the link to that special report:

‘Ut Omnes Unum Sint’ – the school motto – declares “Let All be One”. Here’s hoping the highway ‘elves’ remember to keep all the local roads open in school time, because our work is made all the harder by those wretched traffic lights that keep popping up to break the traffic flow!