September 2018 seems so very long ago doesn’t it? I looked back in my outlook calendar to try to get a feeling for that foreign country, almost 5 years back when you joined Bishop’s at the heart of the Cathedral Close. It’s true – they did do things differently back then in all sorts of ways. Your school, which must have seemed enormous to each of you just catapulted from Year 6, was something much bigger than you would have been used to, with 930 students across 7 year groups. A different uniform – almost certainly several sizes too big for you knowing Salisbury mums. Try to think back to that first whole school assembly, on Wednesday 5 September – with you all sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of me. Or the first time in here on Tuesday 5 October peering along the nave and then letting your eyes follow the vanishing lines of the columns to the immeasurable heights above. I wonder if any of that is still there, memories hard-wired so that they are stored for times to come?
The world was rather different then, as we were all blissfully unaware of the storm that was yet to come from Wuhan. As far as we were concerned here in school MS Teams was another planet, probably used by people speaking a techno dialect from San Diego or Oakland. Certainly I had not conducted any business by video conference, and online lessons were unheard of; my only experience of video calls was talking to my own children as they travelled the globe via Facetime or Skype. I would simply have laughed at anyone who had suggested that online learning would become a thing for all of us within 2 years. And the school was different too – smaller and resolutely single sex. How life has changed – for the better in many ways – and you, too, have lived and worked your way through all of that.
Now we are fast approaching the end of Year 11 for you and, though many of you will be staying on into the Sixth Form here the fork in the road will become more obvious as the exams come and go. Yours has been a turbulent 5 years, stricken at time by a pandemic which came -and went – and came again, and has still not really left us. You were the year group who experienced the instability of lockdown on the approach to Middle School, whose foundations for GCSE were shaken and tested again and again by the aftershocks of the Covid surges. You were one of the year groups to experience mass testing upon return multiple times. You were one of the years to have opportunity restricted, music diluted, fixtures decapitated and competitions changed into formats that very few actually recognized. I doubt that any of you will look back on all of that with much pleasure.
And yet here you all are, almost at the end of Year 11 and ready to take your next steps wherever those might take you. I hope that you feel (despite the tale of woe that I have just related!) that you have had an experience to remember through those first 5 years at your school. Lasting friendships made, an opportunity to explore and mature, the chance to both succeed and occasionally fail with a safety net and a unique experience right in the heart of Salisbury. Memorable stuff – I hope.
Just before the weekend I was contacted by an ex Bishops’ Boy – a chap called Anthony – who must have left the school in the early noughties. He is now a lawyer, doing very well and enjoying family life, having returned to the local area after travelling and qualifying. I remembered him very well – not necessarily as an exemplary student at the time! He said this “My youngest was invited to a sports party at the weekend in the BWS Sports Hall, I was overjoyed to bring him along but was overwhelmed with nostalgia! There are so many amazing memories regarding this fantastic environment, I am forever thankful for the things this wonderful school gave me (even if challenging at times) and can see the revolutionary changes that have been made over the years. It is still an influential school at the very heart of the city”.
5 years is a long time. For Anthony, 20 years has been a very long time, but memories endure, and that is what I hope that you have from 2018 to now. I wish you all the very best of luck with the exams to come and thank you all for your company as we have surfed together on the waves of change.
SDS
