Our annual Parent survey assists us – Principals and Heads – in hearing the voices of our customers, celebrating the successes and noting the ‘pointers for improvement’ as appropriate. All our staff met at the start of this term with me to check through the Summer weeks ahead; in addition to their academic and pastoral roles, they were asked to focus even more clearly on collaboration, not just with each other and the children, but also with the parent body and the wider community. As John Seely Brown’s (JSB) quote makes clear, conversation is not just about the sharing of ideas, but an opportunity for challenge and a way of sparking new ways of acting and thinking.

In many ways, that’s how my brother Hugh and I join together the many threads of chatter that pass through Claires Court every day, and as that voice builds into a common set of ideas and questions, in turn, that helps us share amongst our leadership how best to respond and affirm priorities. In big project terms, so we can realise developments at pace and benefit quickly, they bounce across the sites. Last year, our critical focus was to provide the new Food and Workshop studios to enhance secondary technology facilities; this year, the new Astro at Ridgeway and the new Sixth Form Study pavilion at College, both now in use. New of course helps in the repurposing of the existing, so for the summer term for the first time in perhaps three decades, our Senior Girls have won back their sports hall and stage from the tyranny of public exams, that in their own way have grown like Topsy and have strangled so much ‘testing’ space usually reserved for PE and Drama.

As a school we are always forward-thinking so our attention turns next to Senior Boys, where we have building permission to replace the Music School as well as retaining momentum at College for the further advancement of fitness studio facilities for both seniors and sixth form.  However, there is a fine balance and, in keeping with our promise to our fee payers, these will have to wait in abeyance until continued growth in pupil numbers bring the additional revenue in to fund those developments.

At the same time, we continue to explore the business efficiencies to be gained by working smarter, and the acquisition of three new minibuses is reducing our reliance on third-party contractors to provide transport overall at a lower cost; just one example of proactively reducing expenditure. The growth of adult use of our buildings and playing fields during the weekday evenings and weekends means external revenue streams can grow and we have other ideas in the pipeline too.

There remains no doubt that our curriculum and pastoral innovations are also attracting considerable interest as opportunities in the wider education sector narrow further, and where innovation has been less obviously in the mix. We were really proud to host the first RBWM school and educators conference on developing ideas for a smartphone-free childhood last Friday (9 May) with our own junior school leading much of the thinking in this field. Just a footnote in history, it must be said, but worth noting, that Claires Court was the first school outside of California to invest in Yondr bags to house mobile phones in school, way back in the autumn of 2017, long before Yondr had a footprint in the UK. In practice, it’s our experience that phones have to be handed in, separation from device being as important during the adolescent years as separation from parents for EYFS learning is at the much younger age. Four years ago, we were the first school outside of the US to innovate with the use of Agentive Artificial Intelligence, and the Merlyn tools our junior classes have been using for two years now, are just being rolled out in Ireland and the US. The UK education gurus are yet to be convinced that schools know what to do, yet actually, in many settings, pioneers have got on with the safe use of technology, as we have, and the children are benefiting.

Over the next six weeks, I will be at every school event I can, so that conversation and ideas can be promoted and shared. At the Cocktails and Canapés PTA event on Friday 6 June, where our top musicians in the school are performing, I will be there to talk through those other ideas (as yet unspoken perhaps) that might catalyse those next innovations to take us to 2030 and beyond. The lifeblood of every school is the dynamism to be found in the way the children and staff take every day in their stride. Sure, for those in Y11 and Y13, it’s exam time, but that’s always been a given and dare I say, what sets the UK apart from the other countries in the Western World. We remain the best at qualifying our young people to be ready for employment at 18, probably best via apprenticeships, or higher education at University; the rest of Europe struggles to keep up, with the USA perhaps taking three more years to do so. 

As with my other recent blogs, I’ve captured here in *John Seely Brown (JSB) the name of an academic researcher whose influence has been significant on the world. His research interests include the management of radical innovation, digital culture, ubiquitous computing, autonomous computing, organisational learning and of course Artificial Intelligence. AI works because we have identified how we can link ‘hardware’ together and cause the system to capture and recycle knowledge and ideas, and now repurpose them as we would wish. The ‘software’ of Humankind has learned how to do this for millennia, it’s called conversation, could be via Cocktails and Canapés perhaps? Wherever, and whenever, so parents, if you see me there, please come over and have a chat – I’d love to hear from you.