6 Nov 2020

WEEKLY MAILING

This week’s mailing is:

Letters:

Notices:

From the Headmaster to all parents:

Dear Parents

It has been a great pleasure to welcome the boys back to school this week. They appear refreshed after the half term break and have immediately picked up the pace of school life. This week included Oxbridge entrance assessments which involved many of our Upper Sixth students. I hope they were all able to display their full potential in these tests.

The UK has of course now entered a new phase of national restrictions to combat Covid-19. We will be playing our part but I am delighted that schools remain open. We want to do our utmost to keep the school routine as normal as possible. The new guidelines for schools do not introduce many significant changes beyond limiting some of our activities for day boys at weekends and after school but please do refer to the guidance that we issued last week if you require any further information.

I suspect many of us have been keeping an eye on events over the Atlantic as the US presidential election unfolds. I’ve been impressed by how engaged our students are with this and the detailed knowledge that they can display of the intricacy of the electoral college, mail-in ballots and so on. We often used to lament that young people took insufficient interest in politics but the combination of climate change, Donald Trump, Brexit, Black Lives Matter and Covid-19 has ensured that this generation is more engaged than ever.

Best wishes

Mike Windsor, Headmaster

For Parents of 5th Year Pupils: Morrisby Aspirations Programme Interviews

If your son is participating in the Morrisby Aspirations Career Profiling Programme, he will have received an email from Mr Triff with the date, time, and location of his Zoom online interview with an independent careers’ adviser from Morrisby. This interview will be next week on one of the following days: Monday 9 – Thursday 12 November. Thank you for ensuring your son has put this appointment in his planner/diary and that he sets aside some time this weekend (if not already) to go over the results of his Morrisby questionnaire with you, to research occupations listed in his results, and to complete the pre-interview questions – all in his online Morrisby account. The Morrisby Aspirations Programme can help to inform A-Level subject choices from a career planning perspective, so thank you for ensuring your son makes the most of his participation. Michael Triff, Head of Career Guidance.

Music:

  • Wednesday 4 November – Senior Solo Competition
    Well done to all those who participated on Wednesday in the Senior Solo Competition. In this fiercely contested event there were some excellent performances and an edited video of the event is accessible here.
  • Tuesday 10 November at 4pm – Solo Concert Platform
    An opportunity to join us for a solo performance concert at 4pm – as usual you will need to access this streamed concert via the box office.   Please note that in order to comply with the latest government guidance we have decided to bring forward the start time of this concert to 4pm.  We expect it to finish around 5.15-5.30pm.
  • Wednesday 11 November – Keble College Evensong – a reminder that this event has been cancelled.
  • Wednesday 18 November at 5.30pm (time TBC)  – Music Society Violin Masterclass with Levon Chilingirian
    A great opportunity for you, and especially your musician sons, to hear some of Abingdon’s more advanced violinists in an “open lesson” with one of the country’s most distinguished and eminent violinists, the leader of the famous Chilingirian String Quartet and teacher at London Conservatoires. This event is accessed via the box office on the School’s website.
  • Wednesday 25 November at 5.30pm (time TBC) – Junior Solo Competition
    Our Junior Solo Instrumental Competition involves solo performances by boys who have yet to take their grade 6 examination. Junior may be a misnomer as many of the performances will be quite sophisticated! This event is accessed via the box office on the School’s website.

Abingdon Box Office:

School Blog: Celebrating 20 years of the Moldova Partnership

The latest school blog from Adam Jenkins is a fascinating and humorous look back at the last 20 years of the School’s partnership with Agape in Moldova – it is well worth a read.
The School’s partnership celebrates its twentieth year this term. In the blog, Adam discusses the significant benefits of the partnership to children in both countries and recounts some of the highlights from the time spent by Abingdon School sixth formers in what is generally accepted as the poorest country in Europe.  Read the blog.

ASPA Lower School family event – ‘A Question of Sport’ quiz (via Zoom), Friday 27 November, 7pm

Lower school families are invited to join quizmaster, Adam Jenkins, to test their sporting knowledge in a family event which will include questions and challenges for all ages and abilities!  Please register your interest in the event and complete the booking form here by Wednesday 25 November so that we may send you Zoom joining information prior to the event.

Stevensons

Please see this link with an update from Stevensons.

News from the Week:

Food Menu for the coming week – Week 2

School Calendar

Please continue to consult the School Calendar for up to date information.

Here is the link to previous weekly mailings.