26 June 2025

As we reach the conclusion of this academic year, I’m writing 3 blogs to summarise all the joys, fears, pains and hopes that have populated  my world of work as Academic Principal. This first is largely a wrapper around an email I wrote this week to our 3 local MPs in Maidenhead (Lib Dem), High Wycombe (Labour) and Beaconsfield (Conservative). As you can read here – https://schl.cc:443/gZ – I’ve highlighted to all 3 that our local education ecosystem (state, private & otherwise), built up over the past 7 decades is now facing extraordinary if not existential threats from the government. I’ll leave you to read the detail, but  I feel I have tried to place in the hands of our local MPs some facts and realities that might help arm them when speaking in Parliament to those that have forgotten how to tell the truth. I’ve already had one ‘holding’ reply, but positive in terms of reaching out to the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Philipson. Bridget is already aware of my concerns and multiple offers to help, but has declined to engage to date.

Education works when those involved, whether teacher or learner, feel confident that the process being pursued  is worth it. Claires Court Athletes learn how to run, how to challenge, how to believe and so dip their head as they cross the line, even when they’re 8! It’s Sports Day season, I’ve seen enough already to know it’s true. Change the sport, use a hard or soft ball, racquet or bat, blade or rudder and we are still there at the top of the game. Yet none of this is possible unless we try.

It’s post GCSE (Wednesday ) and A level (Thursday) Prom week, a thing that did not exist when I was young. Friendship’s hard, they need work, effort, and having a common aim has encouraged pretty much the whole 2 cohorts to join in making a celebration happen, the assessment ‘job’ done. Meeting on the 2 evenings in question (Moor Hall, Cookham & Wycombe Heights GC respectively), I’m seeing young people and their teachers aggregate with all full respect for each other, and display a mutual, perhaps extraordinary gratitude for travelling in company with such success.

The current Year 11 cohort’s secondary education commenced in #lockdown, an impossible time yet of course normal for them “doesn’t everyone start secondary school this way” normalising perhaps the absurdity of the uniqueness of the event. In both groups I met with both young men and women who had joined 3 years ago from Ukraine, knowing not our language, culture or even alphabet. Now, academically strong, they can look forward to settling into Sixth Forms or University. “Surrey” sparkled one, “the offer is BCC and I’m on for AABB”. A leader of our tennis squad in Year 13, having won his match up on day 2 of 4, this taking our squad into the semifinals of the UK schools LTA cup was down to celebrate with his friends, facing an early Uber tomorrow at 5.30am. His face shone “Sir, if we win tomorrow, we get to go to Brazil for the World Finals!” Oh but to dream this big!

As Oompah, I enjoy all the benefits of the grandchildren, but can give them back at the end of the day. I’m immensely grateful for the pioneering work of younger parents and Mrs Kirby, Head of Juniors and my colleagues there, who’ve not just braved the concept of creating the possibility of a SMARTphone-free childhood, but pioneered the use of AI in the classroom too. It seems a paradox to unite both ideas, but we must. Born of a generation that watched their families smoke themselves to death, I never wanted that for mine. As Sam Altman (CEO, ChatGPT) makes clear, “It’s weird that even knowing ChatGPT, Gemini etc. exist has created blind trust in AI , and that’s what is causing it to grow so fast – People want fast answers, even if they’re wrong!”

Like many very experienced educators, I’ve seen the cohorts of adults over time go through ‘school’. I was one of the ‘baby-boomers’, my teaching began with the ‘latchkey’ generation, my children now perhaps sit as core ‘millenials’ as they were taught by me and lately of course we’ve seen the start of GenZ looking at nursery. Whilst the entire group may share a common love of say Robbie Williams and “Angels”, there’s likely to be staggeringly different views over drinks, foods, medias and technologies. There always has been such differences, such as those in my childhood not allowed a telly, but they’re nothing like as polarising as they are now. ‘Schooling’ by its  very name describes that growing up requires conforming to a norm, not pick’n’mix. ‘Helicopter’ parenting shifts the dial and the arrival of ‘Snowploughs’ is already creating havoc ‘Stateside’, and the exam boards in the UK report growing disputes over the ‘fair’ interpretation of their access arrangement rules.

William Shakespeare would be 461 if he was still alive. In his works, almost every ill of the present day can be found, and whether comedy or tragedy, that old man continues to inspire the generations to come. In ‘Measure for Measure’, the synopsis makes Angelo rule as a religious tyrant, try to manipulate a nun to sleep with him, is foiled, and ultimately punished. It sounds a tragedy, is a comedy, and has an epic series of moral conclusions that bear study in 2025. Those in current political life across the world would do well to check out the Bard. As the quote makes clear, if we can speak truth, build and give trust, the likelihood is that fear and anxiety will truly ease. I’ll conclude with a poem by another man, John Donne writing during the same time as William:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.