Founder’s Day Address 26/4/2024
It’s quite chastening to read those words of the Chaplain in the front of the programme. Sixteen
Education Secretaries since 2002, mind you some of them didn’t have an extensive shelf life!
Seven Prime Ministers (they didn’t last long either), several wars, Brexit, more than one pandemic;
the tides of history have ebbed and flowed across the past two decades and more outside school.
Language College, Science Specialist Status, Academy Status and a trunk full of inspections, all
of which have come out reasonably well. Oh – and OFSTED has been headed up by 6 different
HMCIs over the last twenty something years too and I seem to have had very nice letters from all
of them apart from the current version. Perhaps he’s a bit too busy! And there’s another
chastening thought too – I first stood here and addressed the school en masse four years before
the oldest student here today was born!
Inside the gates of Bishop’s the changes have been equally profound over the same time period
as more than 3,000 students have gone on to university from here. This year should mark our
250th Bishop’s student joining Oxford or Cambridge since I started doing this job. Naturally
rebuilding most of the school has been a preoccupation for me personally since the turn of the
century, but schools are about people more than planning permissions, and it is the recollection of
a conversation that I wanted to start with this morning.
It was one of those rare moments where something – could be anything – stops you in your tracks
and makes you actually think rather than simply operating on auto-pilot. You probably know the
feeling, rather like glimpsing that bright field illuminated by a shaft of sunlight through a Wiltshire
hedgerow. You’re carrying out a habitual task, something that you have been routinely
accomplishing for a considerable time when someone turns to you and simply asks why? Just
why? Why have you made that choice, why have you done that for all that time, what made you
opt to follow that path? Why? That one-word question suddenly opens a door and it can take a
little time for the view through to become clear. It tends to happen quite often in teaching of
course, because youngsters – you lot sitting in here - have a knack of asking what adults rarely
do, something to do with an absence of social inhibition - or guile - or etiquette - or possibly all
three. The words just tumble out, the challenge is laid down.
On this occasion it happened, appropriately enough, at Great Yews. For those of you new to
Bishop's since last September Great Yews is a camp site in the middle of glorious Wiltshire
countryside where Year 7 have an overnight camp, helped by their House Prefects. Every year the
senior prefects also camp out at Great Yews in advance to help them pretend that they know what
they are doing when it comes to the real thing, and it was in conversation with a group of Year 12
girls and boys that I was asked that show stopper of a question "Why does a school like ours
matter?" I could have blustered. I could have avoided it I suppose, but I didn't. The question
demanded and deserved engagement from me. A real, thoughtful answer was needed.
On the surface you could look at what this school - our school - offers to all of us. No matter what
year group you are in or where you are sitting in here today you will have opportunities to learn
and to play, to try things out and occasionally fail too if need be. That's what great schools do. Our
home here in the Close is utterly unique too and we get to use this amazing building regularly to
think and worship because it's our parish church. I know of no other state school that can offer the
like, and I have visited a lot of them. You get an amazing group of staff to look after you, day in,
day out. You get the chance to get stuck into all sorts of exciting activities beyond the classroom,
trying out new things and travelling far and wide - if you wish to. You get the chance to shine,
that's so valuable when 21st century education elsewhere can be so dry and unimaginative.
Importantly (picking up from one of our earlier prayers this morning) you have the freedom to learn
and to gain the knowledge that buys freedom for others.
So another way of answering that question " Why does our school matter" then, and one based in
history. You see Bishop's was founded by John Wordsworth, Bishop of Salisbury in 1890; our
school's birth was a late consequence of the great period of Victorian social, economic and
political reform. At the same time as the railways were arcing across the countryside, new sewers
and hospitals were transforming public health and new cities were spawning around industrial
hubs schools were being built too. Bishop John Wordsworth's project here in Salisbury was a part
of all of that, a footnote to the story of nineteenth century Britain and testament to the Victorian
vision of a new society.
But there's more to it than that. More powerful than the present, more potent than the past. What
inspired Bishop Wordsworth to invest his fortune into founding the school was an idea - he had the
imagination to see that things could be different. When he spoke of founding a 'great educational
centre in Salisbury' he was outlining his idea for remaking the World - or at least his part of it here
in South Wiltshire. And ever since then the work has gone on to build, protect and extend the
fabric of that idea so that generations of boys - and now girls once more - can do wonderful things
in the heart of this small city. It is the idea of a school like Bishop's and its transformative effect on
young lives that explains why our school matters so much - to me, yes, but to all of you, your
parents and a great well spring of friends and alumni across the entire globe. Bishop John could
see that only too well and, as I told that slightly baffled lower sixth girl, you can hear the echoes of
his thinking all around us every day. It's the idea of Bishop's existence that matters so much, and
has been so fundamental for generations, many thousands of boys and girls over the last one and
quarter centuries.
There is a story written about our founder that perhaps gives us an idea of what he was like. It
comes from a book by a previous Headmaster, Frederick Happold, who says this about Bishop
John: "When he set his heart on founding his own school he allowed no difficulties - and the
difficulties were great - to thwart him. It has been said that, while others broke their heads against
a brick wall, when his head came against it, somehow the wall gave way. He went straight for his
objective. I can see him still, in one of those walking tours that he organised, striding, in spite of
the protests of his companions, straight across a field of corn because that was the most direct
way..."
A man on a mission. A visionary thinker. Our founder - and his big idea.
I was interviewed recently by Poppy, our Emeritas Head Girl, who was helping to put together this
year's school magazine. What, she asked, would I want my final message to the Bishop's students
to be before I leave? Another show-stopping question, but I distilled my answer into two parts.
Firstly, get the most out of your time here in Salisbury, find your way to shine. And second, don't
ever take what we all have here for granted. John Wordsworth's School, our school, our collective
idea and raison d'etre is in rude health. Play your part in making sure that the potency of his idea
continues to grow.
I’m going to finish with some borrowed words – on loan from an ex-English teacher, Geoff Barton,
General Secretary for the past 7 years of my professional association, the Association for School
& College Leaders. Like all ex-English teachers (and I do know one or two of them!) Geoff
sometimes reverts to the wisdom of Shakespeare, and just before Easter he put this in his final
blog before stepping down from his post:
In the final throes of The Merchant of Venice, the heroine Portia looks across the deepening gloom
of a Venetian lagoon towards her home in Belmont. She spots a flickering candle in a window and
says: "How far that little candle throws its beam. So shines a good deed in a naughty world."
Naughty – evil perhaps, or maybe vacant and sometimes soul-less. A dark place, where one could
wander and be lost. The imagery is clear and compelling four centuries later.
I don’t know about you, but for me this feels like a world that is pretty naughty at times, and I
guess that John Wordsworth would have had similar misgivings too in the final throes of the
Victorian Era. But he, too, saw that candle of hope and inspiration and here we all are in the
Cathedral today as a result.
So – my message for this Founder’s Day and for the future. Life is not hurrying on to a receding
future, nor hankering after an imagined past. Your job is to keep on shining in this naughty world…
