Last night was our annual school Open Evening for prospective students and their families and as always it was a lovely evening. It is an evening with a distinctive and special “buzz” to it – there are flames in experiments, people scaling the climbing wall, ukuleles chiming, plastic being filed and polished and a whole lot more.

As part of the evening, there are, of course, speeches in the Hall and the way in which our Year 13 student leaders – who have been with us for many years – and our Year 7 students – who have been with us for just a few weeks – speak and talk about their experience at Wallingford School never fails to impress and this year was no exception. I also have the opportunity to talk about our school and our values and this is a pleasure. The strapline of “Sending each young person out into the world able and qualified” lies at the heart of everything we do as a school and is valued and cherished by our school community. The “qualified” part is of course about results and destinations; our results are consistently excellent over time and in 2025 the bar was raised even higher. Students go on to their destinations of choice be it universities from Edinburgh to Exeter, colleges, apprenticeships or other forms of training.  The “able” part is about the young people our students become during their time at Wallingford School and the experiences which shape them; it’s the trips and visits, the enrichment and extra-curricular, the things which support, challenge and nourish their progress into becoming young adults. All of these elements are important and cut to the core of what we are about as a school.

What does this look like on the ground? On Wednesday afternoon I observed a Year 9 Science lesson. It wasn’t a practical, it was about transition metals, about facts and information and connections and knowledge. It was brilliantly delivered, every student was challenged, encouraged and supported; the content was stimulating and engaging and it was a pleasure to be in the classroom. These students are some way away from doing their GCSEs but the foundations which are being put in place are rock solid so that they will thrive. I later walked around the building after the school day had ended. The Bigg Band were practicing in the Hall – they are nothing short of brilliant – and they then gave way to an early rehearsal of this year’s whole school production which simply blew me away due to the number of students who are involved. I then wandered down to the field where our Year 8 boys’ rugby team were playing a fixture before bumping into our PE staff who were returning from an away fixture.

My Wednesday afternoon was a snapshot of a couple of hours on a sunny first day of October but was a perfect representation of what “able and qualified” is all about.