10 October 2019
I have just emerged from the annual House Singing Competition which is always one of the highlights of the calendar. It was great to see all the boys involved and it’s always really impressive to see the respective conductors rising to the significant challenge of getting a hundred boys or so to sing in time and tune! There was a bit of a retro feel to this year’s event with three Houses opting for songs by Queen, including Bohemian Rhapsody; an ambitious choice!
I’m grateful for the support of parents in ensuring that students made it into school for our Open Day on 28 September. It was a very busy morning and the boys did a fantastic job guiding our visitors around and explaining what they were doing in the different academic departments or Other Half activities. They really were a credit to the School.
I am also really grateful for the terrific support that many parents gave to the campaign being coordinated by the Independent Schools Council and the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference in response to the Labour Party conference motion calling for the abolition of independent schools. So many of you wrote in support and I am delighted that we have collectively been able to make the case against this proposal. I believe that we all want to see the quality of education in the country improved for all our children but I cannot accept that the way to do this is to destroy some of our most successful institutions. Abolition would be damaging to the pupils affected and would place an even greater burden on the state system, and makes no financial sense.
At Abingdon, we believe that the way to improve education for all is through effective and meaningful partnerships between state and independent schools and this is expressed through our burgeoning partnership programme, led by Mr Southwell-Sander. These partnerships yield significant benefits for the pupils and staff from all the schools involved. Our partnership programme is ambitious and wide-ranging, extending from academic mentoring to film-making, from peer mentoring to the Abingdon Science Partnership, from primary school workshops to sports coaching.
We have included further information about the partnerships programme in an Impact Report which will be shared with you shortly. The report celebrates the contribution that pupils, staff, parents and OAs have made both to the School and to the wider community. I hope you will enjoy reading more in the report when you receive it.
With regard to the wider community, the Charity Committee recently selected its charities for the coming academic year. These are The Abingdon Bridge, Close the Gap, Unicef, Save the Children and Mind. The first event in support of these charities is tomorrow’s Home Clothes Day and boys are invited to give £3. I hope the boys will enjoy the chance to wear their own clothes to school, or rather the opportunity to wear their alternative uniform of a hoody, jeans and trainers…
Over half-term, work will continue on our project at the Faringdon Road end of the campus. It’s been exciting to see the steel frame taking shape this week and I’m pleased to report that we are still on schedule to open the building in September 2020.
I hope that you have had the chance to catch up with the latest news from the School on the website or by following the links from the weekly mailing. It’s been a very productive few weeks and I hope the boys enjoy some rest and recuperation over the half-term break.
Best wishes
Michael Windsor
Headmaster
