Thursday 18 September saw the 2025 scholars and their families presented with their awards, for academic excellence, for the Arts and Sports and for those who are excellent in the round. Those present included new entry and long-serving families to the schools, covering in the main Years 7 to 9. In the address I gave to the 48 scholars and accompanying adults, I highlighted of course the success the young people had achieved in winning the scholarship, yet that it meant something more to them and the school. I quote verbatim below:

”Now to business – Scholarship is a word that is rarely used, and perhaps often misunderstood. 

What this means at Claires Court is this:

Scholarships are awarded based on merit, such as academic achievement, artistic or sporting talent, or specific subject potential. Please note that for you young people, it’s not a REWARD – in a sense, you haven’t done anything yet! We have every expectation that, whatever your award, you recognise that you have entered a performance pathway that will, no doubt accelerate your knowledge and skill acquisition. As we celebrate with Holly Hatch and Gareth Wellen at the close of today’s celebration, our leading GCSE students now moving on from Year 11 into A level studies, they have been a major influence on the other students in their Year and the school more generally, and we hope you will have the same extraordinary effect on the school as you move through as Claires Court Scholars.”

This week, for both Senior School open days, Steve Richards presented to over 100 families in attendance that Claires Court was founded by my parents, that my brother Hugh and I are still fully involved in the school, but that in addition, our prospective parents would see on their tour around the school, young people who really were proud of their school, aware of the myriad of opportunities available to them every day, and clearly perhaps very conscious that they were already achieving so much more than they could ever have imagined prior to entry.

Of course at some point in the future, the 2 founding pupils (Hugh and I) will no longer be around, yet the school will be, with its ongoing aims and values being retained because of their fundamental value in what makes Claires Court the school it is. Yet the school has to be pioneering in its approach for education all the time, as what works now will certainly hit ‘cracks and potholes’ in the way ahead, a route for the ‘futures’ as yet unknown to us all.

The headteachers and I are really proud of the close relationships we build both with the children and young people in our care, but also with the parents & guardians that support their sons and daughters and our wider school community so strongly. One great recent example has been the enthusiasm and determination of our younger families to ensure their primary age children enjoy a SMARTphone-free childhood. Hosting the inaugural group of 60+ heads from RBWM at our Junior school highlighted that ‘Now was the time to act’, and it’s so good to see that message proliferate not just in our local authority but across the country as a major groundswell of parental opinion covering the next few years of their families lives so well.

For older students and us adults, the world of the SMART phone cannot be ignored, providing as it does a route to so many services required in life, and not just because we are now a cash-free society. Prime Minister Starmer announced today the need to have a digital identity card for citizens permitted to work in this country, and frankly since I no longer have a bank locally and need to access NHS services via an App, the reality of their universal use is evident to us all.

I’ve received the video released this week by the SMARTphone free pressure group in the USA. It’s a powerful message to us all; whatever the benefits of our digital economy, our children need the best protection they can get from the families they live amongst. Here’s an example of just how dynamic famly attention needs to be to the dangers let loose when young children are presented with such a device. 

And finally, very many thanks to Marliyn Hawes, Freedom from Abuse for her powerful and hard-hitting presentation on the wider challenges that now exist in navigating young people through the turbulent waters of adolescence. What makes the difference between the childhoods of parents and those older generations beyond and the young of 2025 is the the sheer mobility of society and immediacy of access to knowledge and experiences that were usually ring fenced by geography and community. 

In my family history there are ancestors from Essex/East End who were transported to Australia for criminal activity, but kept local and out of sight from the rest of the country. As a boy, I remember seeing the appalling photos of children in flames during the Vietnam war, and of the civil war of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. Yet they weren’t sent to the screen in my hands, but arrived perhaps in a colour supplement delivered first to my parents who with some care might have talked me through the stories. That’s the major difference now, and why managing the access to the world of troubles so sharply expressed in the video above is an essential part of the dynamism that schools and families need to embrace.

Ending on a high note about our pupils at Claires Court, whether they be the scholars winning awards last week or the wider school on show yesterday and today, they clearly just love that the continuity between schools is welcomed, and gives them the skills to express their voice, support their school and enjoy so many of the opportunities around them, very much beyond my wildest dreams from 1960, when I first started at Claires Court!