Abingdonian 2020

73 www.abingdon.org.uk House Reports 5 A*s and Ethan Chui, Matthew Lau and Perry Tsai all achieved 4 A*s. Seven other Crescent students achieved a mixture of A*s and As. Over the course of a very unusual year, the house was ably led by Heads of House Perry Tsai and Oliver Botting, with Nathan Hudson and Kai Li representing Crescent as school prefects. I thank them and the other senior boys for all of their support and hard work. We said goodbye to Mr Taylor as a tutor after one year. We replace one physicist with another as Mr Magee joins the house in September. My thanks go to all the tutors for everything they do, as well as to Miss Poole in her role of Assistant Housemaster and Miss Deaves-Small as Matron. The Heads of House for 2020/21 will be Eric Zhong and Harry Richards, while Rory Mitchell and Owen Ravden will be school prefects. I am confident that they and the rest of the Upper Sixth will lead the house ably, in what I am sure will be an unusual but hopefully very successful year for Crescent House. Matthew Kendry Crescent is a house that is built on community and inclusivity, with the games room being the centre of everything that goes on. It is a place where boys from all year groups interact and come together during break times and lunchtimes to enjoy a bit of pool, toast and table tennis. Throughout the lockdown period, this space was missed greatly by all boys in the house across all year groups. However, we tried to maintain the house spirit and tried to replicate this environment by setting up multiple virtual games rooms that were hosted by the senior boys on Zoom. Although these were not as much of a success as anticipated, it did get a number of boys from different year groups chatting at breaktime. Crescent is a house with such a diverse culture with boys coming from all over the world from Russia to Hong Kong. This made tutor periods very challenging and meant some boys were joining having just woken up and still finishing their breakfast and other boys had already been up for eight hours and had just finished their dinner. At times this was testing but all boys coped well and were very mature with their approach. Inter-house competitions see all Crescent boys getting involved, showing great house spirit and devotion. Although we were not able to participate in the usual events over the course of the Summer Term, we ran our own Crescent House challenges which had plenty of prizes up for grabs including the tutor group toilet roll challenge and the individual lego and tik tok competitions. A large number of boys in the house from all year groups got involved, put in a lot of time and effort, and most importantly had fun. Towards the end of the Summer Term, we also had our virtual sports day and road relay which saw many Crescent boys participating with great commitment and dedication. During the Summer Term we also welcomed the new third years to the house during their virtual induction day. This consisted of them meeting their new tutors and a number of senior boys in the house. It was great to have so many boys join in from all over the world. The event was enjoyed by all and gave the new third years a great insight into what Crescent house life is really like. We look forward to seeing them again at the start of the academic year. Harry Richards, 6BW