Introduction to the Roll News, 2011 From the Principal Homerton College is now fully established in Cambridge and is beginning to be accepted, though I know that there are many University colleagues who still believe that we are only offering teachertraining (after ten years of change) and even people who think we are single sex (after thirty-five years!) Cambridge memories are long and it may take two generations (sixty years) before we are wholly understood and appreciated … but we are used to playing it long. We are working on our image, particularly in the arts, and had you been here in early September, you could have heard Philip Pullman deliver the annual Philippa Pearce Lecture, which we support, or come to a conference on the teaching of Shakespeare and met Michael Rosen, Carol Ann Duffy (an Honorary Fellow) or Trevor Nunn (a parent). At the recent Roll Reunion, we heard again the Homerton song written by Carol Ann, set to music by Sir Peter Maxwell-Davies (also an Honorary Fellow). This month we shall welcome our first medical Fellow, who will help to build our links with Addenbrookes, our nearest University neighbour except, of course, for the Faculty of Education, which is truly next door. We share a research centre in children‟s literature with the Education Faculty and are delighted that Morag Styles has been elected as the University‟s first Professor of Children‟s Poetry. She and the Poet Laureate have just launched a schools programme called Anthologise, to encourage schools and individual students to create their own anthology - a programme which Homerton has sponsored and I hope that some of you who are still teaching or have school-age children may be interested in the scheme. We had a wonderful, inaugural Family Day in late June on the hottest day of the year, as part of our event programme for younger alumni. Homerton was at its best: acres of safe, green, play space, treasure hunts, Indian drumming, face painting, bug hunts, storytelling and just about enough cake and ice cream. We‟ll do it again. The undergraduates helped with the Family Day as they do for many Roll events, and you may have been telephoned by them during the spring. They enjoyed talking to their predecessors about their experience at Homerton - to experience our current Homerton undergraduates go on watching University Challenge and hear the extraordinary erudition that they display. We are all very proud of them. What of Homerton in the future? The biggest threat may be the collapse of the PGCE, where the Government has already largely phased out bursaries and where, at present, future students face the high £9000 undergraduate fee. Further into the future lies the problem of postgraduate funding for students graduating with heavy debts in about four years‟ time. We need to build up bursary funds for such students. As I write, we do not know anything about applications for next year, but there is a general anxiety about how the next generation will cope with the huge fee increase which will come into play next autumn. So student numbers are a worry. I should like Homerton to be better known. My task in the next two years is to try to develop Homerton‟s image within and beyond Cambridge, by bringing in visitors to spread the news about Cambridge‟s newest college. My other task is to go on raising funds to enhance the College for all its members - past, present and future.
Kate Pretty 28th September 2011
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