OLD SHIRBURNIAN SOCIETY
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From the Headmaster 2020 will long be remembered as the year of COVID-19: a time when our normal way of life received an unprecedented jolt and the fragility of the modern world was thrown into sharp relief. It was certainly not an easy year but nor was it one without silver linings. As so often, adversity was the spur to great acts of kindness, generosity and selflessness. It was also the mother of invention as, faced with the necessity of innovation and adaptation, we explored and created new ways of doing things. Nowhere was this more the case than at Sherborne.
Hard as it is to remember,
Form for whom that day
there was a time in 2020 when
proved to be their last at
the pandemic was yet to
School.
happen. Until the end of the Lent Term, as the dark COVID-
With the School closed until
19 clouds grew more
further notice, the Easter
menacing, School continued
holiday saw colleagues
very much as normal. The
working hard to design and
academic machine was purring
implement the means of
away nicely, and we were
remotely delivering our
confidently predicting the
academic, co-curricular and
School’s best ever A level
pastoral programmes. Thanks
results. The co-curricular
to their efforts, within a few
programme was, meanwhile,
weeks we succeeded in
proceeding at full pelt with a
temporarily reinventing the
slew of impressive
School which went from a full
achievements across sport,
boarding environment with
music, drama, the CCF,
almost all of the pupils here
outdoor education and a wide
almost all of the time to a
range of other pursuits. One
remote working operation with
of the many highlights of the
none of the boys here at all.
term came on that Saturday in
It is great testament to all
March when an outstanding
involved that this not only
1st XV came within a whisker
worked but worked very well.
of winning their National Cup
Lessons were delivered
semi-final on The Upper.
through Microsoft Teams,
None of us then knew that this
meetings held via Zoom and,
was to be one of the final
aside from the academic
sporting encounters of the
programme, a whole
year as, by the end of the
programme of co-curricular
month, all schools in the UK
activities was devised to keep
were ordered to close, other
boys active, healthy and
than for vulnerable pupils and
engaged. Meanwhile,
the children of keyworkers. It
Housemasters, Tutors and
was a melancholy sight indeed
other colleagues did sterling
to see boys heading home
work maintaining regular
with no knowledge of when
contact with boys and parents
they would be back. This
in order to ensure that our
sadness was, of course,
pastoral care continued to
greatest for the Upper Sixth
support boys’ wellbeing at a
s
