This Friday, 24 June, our wonderful Year 13 boys and girls will be in school en masse for the last time as they drop off books and materials, join together for a celebratory assembly and then tip out in a colourful heap on the lawn of No11 The Close for a farewell barbeque and a group photo. They have been brilliant throughout; whether the school has been in full session or not has not mattered. They have worked, played, supported one another and together have helped to build a new era for the school as Covid has ebbed gradually away. They were a collective first in so many ways. At 170, the biggest year group to join the school. The first coeducational cohort with the first Bishop’s Girls for over nine decades. The first senior students to go through the pandemic, through lockdowns and massed testing. The first students to assist in large numbers at community vaccination centres. The first to take A levels without taking GCSEs. The first to take A level Psychology at BWS. The list is a long and very impressive one.
That is for Year 13 as a whole, but there are so many individual stories too. Sophie and Alice, our first Head and Deputy Head Girls since the 1920’s, and Ella the first ever female Cathedral Prefect. Marni, our very first girl to be offered a place at Cambridge, our first Netball Teams and both boys and girls’ Rugby Teams playing in sevens competitions too. The first recitals given by a BWS Choir that is truly SATB, boys and girls performing in the School Play, around 30 boys and girls taking their Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award and mixed gender teams of prefects heading up both the House Competitions and Community Sports Leaders. Girls joining with boys to head up student leadership, corral the School Councils, organize the many societies, arrange lectures and support younger boys with their academic learning. When I first mooted the idea of making the Sixth Form coeducational (perhaps 5 years ago) I wondered whether it would work. With the benefit of hindsight it is obvious that the move has been transformational for the school community, boys, girls, staff and parents.
Change isn’t just about vision and hope though. Successful change takes imagination, flexibility, determination, bravery and the power to stay the course even when things are tough. That is what Year 13 of 2022 have shown in spades. When those young men and women pose for that photo on Friday morning, all smiles and post-exam euphoria, my mind will be going back over recent history and contemplating what they have achieved. I am enormously proud of them all, and very grateful to have had the privilege of their pioneering company over the past two years.
SDS
