Year 8

What a year it has been for this lovely group of young men; at the start of the year, their resilience and optimism was tested with many covid protocols still in place, but they have still come out strong and smiling and are enjoying life ‘as normal’ once again. This vivacious, determined and talented year group have been magnificently led by Head Boy, George Knight, Deputy Head Boys, Josh Lincoln and Advik Mishra and a team of excellent prefects and Future Skills Ambassadors. There have been academic, sporting, artistic, musical, and dramatic successes across the board for this group of boys who have certainly left their mark on the Prep School. Being at the top of the school has meant many more opportunities for roles of responsibility, especially within the 4 Day Houses. Unfortunately, due to the year group bubbling rules in the first term, our leaders weren’t able to fully explore their potential and some key House events were unable to take place. However, the House tug of war and the House pancake race were memorable events where all years came back together. House Drama Collapse Day was also an opportunity for our Year 8s to show off their leadership and role modelling skills; some stellar performances across all different arenas; from acting and set design, to marketing and lighting. Congratulations to Howard for their overall win; special mention to Advik Mishra for winning the most promising actor award for his mature and composed performance as Mrs Fox. The Summer Term brought about some relative normality. Exams happened as usual and were then followed by the Post-Exam Programme. This year, boys enjoyed various careers talks from law, to IT, Communication, Veternary, Poetry and rap, Engineering, Procurement, Immunology, Occupational Psychology, Interior Design and Amazon. A big thanks to our school community for providing these talks for the boys. They also took part in a self-esteem workshop from Making Me charity, a mock trial, an introduction to the Unifrog platform, First-Aid courses, Life skills challenges, SRE talks, Holocaust workshops through theatre and drama and a very silly tutor-group Sports Day (well done to the 8F victors!). Other highlights were the trip to Boughton Woods with the Bushcraft company where boys enjoyed embracing the great outdoors, playing team games and cooking their own food on their self-built fires! They all had a chance to shine in the Prep Guild Fun Day as well providing fun stalls and entertainment for the school community to raise funds for our House charities. The Come Dine events were a particular highlight, not only the evenings themselves but also watching the collaboration, teamwork and planning between the boys in the early stages. Their determination to host a wonderful evening for their families shone through and were a huge success. 8B kicked off with the ‘Tropical’ theme, which was very well reflected in the room design and sensational Hawaiian shirts! 8F then showcased their delicious Mexican Fiesta with some fun entertainment involving goggles and a piñata! 8KD and 8L both celebrated diversity and equality with their worldly menus. 8L provided hand-made clay centrepieces and gave a lovely introduction to each course stating why it was important for different members Year 8 REPORT

WORDS BY By Mrs Sarah Loader, Head of Year 8

of the class. 8PD concluded the Come Dines with their streetfood soirée - some delicious food and atrocious singing! Overall, each class delivered an amazing event and should be very proud of their work; their guests certainly had a blast. The overall victors were 8L for their mature, heartfelt approach to the evening, coming together as a team and providing a flawless and efficient service, resulting in a fantastic all-round event. During their English, History, Geography, French and Latin lessons, boys worked on their Independent Research Projects where they had to create a presentation and answer a ‘big question’ on a topic of their choosing which they presented informally to their peers and teachers in a Marketplace style event. Some insightful and highly thoughtprovoking ideas here. The project winner, as voted by his peers and teachers, was Andrew Wright whose research into successful coups throughout history provided an interesting and satirical presentation which gripped his audience. Andrew’s Personal Enquiry can be read on the next page. Huge congratulations to him, but also to the whole year group who all produced some highly impressive arguments.

The year concluded with Speech Day and Prize Giving where a huge amount of our boys were recognised for their talents both in and out the classroom. A special mention must go to Josh Lincoln who was awarded the Arthur Tisdall’s Award which is given to a boy who embodies the school values and most of all, kindness. Best of luck to Harry Adams and Jack McCardle who have left the school for new challenges elsewhere. Massive congratulations to each boy who has now completed his Prep School journey and is moving on to the Upper School or beyond. Thank you for being such a fabulous bunch - stay in touch; we will miss you!

Year 8

Putsch, pronunciamento, palace revolution. Regime change, ousting, overthrow. Whatever you call it, it’s a phenomenon world renowned, the coup d’etat. To begin though, we need to know what a coup is. By definition, it is a “sudden, violent and illegal seizure of power of an existing government by a small group.” (Although they are also usually organised, with unorganised coups often failing, leading to embarrassed faces and executed fighters). Maybe your boss hums excessively in the lobby, your teacher is giving you far too much homework, or you just want to take power, whatever your reason, here’s a tried and tested playbook to doing so, so buckle in, and take notes on how to stage a coup.

Aspiring dictators, your first step to a coup is deciding which coup is for you. There are many types, each with their own pros, cons and varying strategies, so let’s go through the list. First of all we have the breakthrough coup, and this is the popular one. This consists of a guerilla army, or a particularly revolutionary part of a country’s armed forces overthrowing the government. To clarify, let’s imagine you have an annoying (humming) boss, and he’s hogging the coffee machine all to himself, so you and your pals overthrow him and declare that the coffee machine shall be shared equally, in honour of famous barista Karl Marx, coincidentally it is 1917 Russia. Unfortunately, this coup must be popular with the people, although I’m sure you can sneak some extra sausages for yourself. Next we have the guardian coup, which sounds very alluring. In principle, this is a coup where someone feels the need to protect the country imminently, in order to prevent the collapse of it. Unlike breakthrough coups, guardian coups happen in unstable countries. If we go back to our coffee machine example, imagine that the machine is run by person a, but the coffee is far too strong, so someone else is elected to run it, but they never have milk in stock, so you decide to step in, organise a coup and sort out the machine once and for all. Finally is the veto coup, and this is perhaps the one which is the most undemocratic. Let’s go back to the coffee machine, and person c has just been elected in an absolute landslide as ruler of the coffee machine, and he starts limiting the exports of this delicious coffee to residents of coffee land so more can go to the residents. This angers the United States of Americano, who along with coffee land’s disgruntled rich overseers, call their friends in high military command who veto (overrule) coffee land’s ruler, and reverse his decisions, to the delight of the rich. In culmination, a breakthrough coup is popular with the majority, which may make it easier to pull off, but what is popular often doesn’t align with the wishes of the rich and powerful. A guardian coup takes advantage of urgent turmoil, so, coupled with a good message, makes taking power a piece of coffee cake, however failing to deliver will result in your disappearance faster than you can say pronunciamento. A veto coup may be a struggle to motivate your troops, however it rewards handsomely

They say patience is a virtue, and this is true for coups. I know many of you are optimists, but coups are delicate procedures, and need to be done at just the right time. Three circumstances generally mean it is ripe for a coup. Firstly, an economic crisis, which can be fortoled if there are high levels of inflation and unemployment. Secondly, the country in question may have just had an embarrassing military defeat, which demoralises the military and makes them easier to be convinced. A third ingredient may be deadlock between two different parties, meaning nothing gets done. You probably could stage a successful coup (especially if you continue reading this essay) with one or two of these circumstances in play, but all three of these make sure that any government can be toppled.

Into the nitty gritty, the planning stage of our coup. This is the make or break, life or death aspect of our coup. Our aim is maximum speed, which means we need to tick off our objectives simultaneously, which

requires a large amount of people. This means we need to organise our militia, and this needs careful consideration. You may instinctively want to hire people who have been marginalised by the government (ethnic minorities), but the sight of them may just encourage nationalism in the populus, causing a major obstacle. Our militia also needs to be trained, which points to the obvious answer : the armed forces (if you aren’t able to access the armed forces, with enough money you can Y8s come together to share their personal enquiries train your own army). Finding members of the army who are ethnically similar

ANDREW’S to you, which many dictators such as Idi Amin have done, may be a good way to ensure

PERSONAL loyalty, however in life everything has a price, so you can always just “buy” the military or ENQUIRY create your own. But not everyone is so easily corruptible, so you need to think of your marketing. Heard of the term buzzwords? HOW TO STAGE A COUP It applies here as well. Find someone in the country who is relatively popular and get them on side, they’ll be your propagandist. We’re looking for someone preferably in the high level military, but a national celebrity would probably do, as long as your propagandist is charming. Arm your propagandist with words such as “the government is corrupt/ exploitive/unelected/plunging the country into anarchy” and really hound the leader’s decisions, that will gain support from the public. Never forget your true boss though, big business (and also America). Sell the coup to them, and promise tax breaks or other business benefits like resources, and your funding will flow through. Now that we have the military (or your own militia) and others on side ; we need to take out the defences of the country. You might think that this involves using the army, but you would be mistaken at this stage. We do need to ask a favour from our american/business associates, and that is to ask them to use their powerful position over the media to incriminate the government. Repeat our buzzwords, throw in some serious ones in though, such as human rights abuses, bribery and other naughty activities. Find some evidence, or rather make some evidence, and just get the public really riled up. Your time has come deary one, execute the order and position your troops in strategic positions such as parliament, the palace and especially the ports, airports, roads and railroads. Hold the country ransom and infiltrate the palace, by this point a resignation or suicide has happenned and your coup is a success. If you want to stay in power, go watch the netflix show “how to become a tyrant”, and remember who you need to return favours to.