The Cathedral Service which took place last Wednesday (15 March 2023) was the last regular service that Year 11 and Year 13 will attend this year before they pitch headlong into their exam sessions. The theme for the service and the reading were both chosen by Toby Runyard, our outgoing Cathedral Prefect for 2022-2023. The service programme should be available elsewhere on the website, so here is the text of my short address. The theme that Toby chose for the service was ‘Change’ – very apt for both the time of year and the imminence of events for our two examination year groups.
Reading for BWS Cathedral Service Wednesday 15 March 2023
Change.
There is a degree of irony talking about change in a place like this isn’t there. This morning we are right at the heart of stasis, at the centre of an equilibrium that has persisted in much of this building for over 700 years; you can see it, feel it almost, the stillness, the stone columns and memorials, the stained glass, the inscriptions and statuary. A century ago a Bishop’s School Service in this place might well have felt very much the same – the number of bodies might have been smaller and the uniforms a variation on a theme, but the modus vivendi essentially unchanged. Such is stability.
But change is here too. You brought it with you when you came in through the North Porch door. A younger demographic than most congregations sitting in and around the nave means that constancy is less of a common currency because you are all still on a journey. For some of you that journey is a more pressing issue as you contemplate the exams that lie on the not-so-distant horizon and the promise of university or gap year travels to follow. For Year 11 it’s similar as GCSE’s beckon in around two months before you change trains to join a Sixth Form. Even in Year 12 that feeling of change is inescapable – we have a new batch of Senior Prefects which is crystallizing this term, visits to universities are going into the parental diaries and hopefully the HE Fair has helped to point a way for the future. Change really is the uninvited guest who sits alongside each of us.
In general human beings don’t like change very much, and many would avoid it if that were at all possible. It’s one of the trickiest parts of my job – talking to people (both adults and youngsters) about how things could be different in the future through enacting changes to what we all do. The Greek word Meta encompasses the concept – it actually means ‘after’ or ‘beyond’. Thus Biological metamorphosis (or future form) sees egg become caterpillar, then chrysalis, then finally a fully fledged adult. Metamorphic Rocks are changed through heat and pressure into something new and different. That’s all well and good (and fascinating for a scientist like me) but things always get a lot more complicated and unpredictable once homo sapiens are introduced into the mix, as people – you and me – tend to prefer the status quo the certainty of what will come next as opposed to the proverbial leap in the dark. I vividly recall a few years ago when a member of the Sixth Form Office Team proposed moving from tutor groups to the current system of academic mentoring. His cautionary words “Brace, brace, brace” at the top of his written proposal signalled potential difficulties ahead, and yet look where we are now. Mentoring operates throughout Years 12 and 13 and has even spread down into the Middle School. Life can become not just different but better. And look at what has happened to your school over the past 3-4 years; it has added an extra 300 students, half of whom are girls. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Bishop’s now is far better than Bishop’s pre-pandemic, and talking to a wide range of students from across the years, staff, parents and governors it is quite clear that I am part of a majority view. Change has worked.
There is an inevitability about the cycle of the school year that matches the transformation of the seasons. As the curtain falls on Winter and Spring begins anew, all of our minds must focus on what comes next. Revision and the hard graft of the exam sessions in the Sports Hall are what lie ahead in the short term, but I also hope that you can see beyond that and take a broader view – of yourself as an agent of transformation for a better world in the future, in whatever way you can. Everyone here has the power to enact change, to make a difference as that journey continues. You can always look back to find stability, security and the roots of your family, this school community, this city and Cathedral too of course, but transition of some sort will become a fact for you all over the coming months.
I wish you all the very best of luck…
SDS
