Headmaster’s introduction

WELCOME TO WHINCHAT MAGAZINE 2020-2021

Welcome to this year’s Whinchat magazine. As usual, the Whinchat records highlights of the year. However, it has been a most unusual year (although we were prepared for it owing to the year before).

The school, like the country and, indeed, the rest of the world, has been through a highly challenging time. We can take a measure of pride, though, from the way that the community has come through the pandemic, not just surviving, but learning new ways of doing things. It has been a year of learning how to do things differently. We have lived with Coronavirus for well over a year now. I reflected at Speech Day that over 100 of our boys have not yet experienced a full Bedford School term, as they have joined the school since Covid restrictions began.

Those 100 boys have not yet had a whole school assembly, experienced the energy of singing together with their whole house at a House Singing Competition, indeed have not yet sung the school hymn with all of their fellow pupils. But they will. So many things have not happened, or they have happened in a completely different way. It is now completely normal to walk into a lesson and see most boys present, with one or two beaming in via Teams whilst learning from home.

Nonetheless, the boys, staff and parents have done brilliantly. And it has given us the opportunity to strip back to what it is that makes Bedford Prep School such a special place to grow and learn, for all of us. CS Lewis, who wrote the Narnia books, said “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny” and I have said this before, that as we often find in times of adversity, human spirit, and indeed in our case Bedford School spirit, shines through. There has been much to be proud of, and to celebrate, not least the power of resilience, a quality the school has shown in abundance. Much of this is captured in this year’s Whinchat. Though much has been missed, I hope it will, however, live on in hearts and memories, and in the way we carry ourselves throughout our lives.

Firstly, then, thank you to our boys, who are a pleasure to teach; they have been extremely impressive in the way that they have flourished in the face of the challenges.

Thank you to our Governors who have been amazing in this time of crisis. Highly talented, incredibly supportive, and offering outstanding advice, and always putting the best interests of our parents and boys at the forefront.

I would like to thank our parents for their tremendous support, as witnessed in many areas, and we have missed seeing them in school over the last year. I would especially like to thank the Prep Guild who are brilliant, most notably, Chair Emily Hudson. The Guild have continued to arrange superb, enjoyable events, building community even with the limits imposed by lockdown.

Finally, our teachers. During the pandemic, the reputation of teachers has, rightly in my view, risen to where it should be. In very few careers is your profession on daily show, as ours was over this last year. Great thinkers of the past have always known how important teachers and teaching are.

Aristotle said, “Those who know, do; those who understand, teach.”

And, our teachers, as I am sure you will agree,