From the Head

Success, sustainability and sunshine

Miss Katherine Haynes, Head

As the sun sets on another successful and historic year at John Lyon, we reflect on an exceptional summer term. It has been our first full year of ‘normal’ school since the pandemic and, importantly, our first as a co-educational combined Senior and Prep school. Among many highlights was a Values Day packed with exciting sustainability-focused activities – including a whole-school photograph that poignantly captured this proud moment – with lots of special events to mark the close of John Lyon’s 145th anniversary year and to launch Quainton Hall’s own 125th anniversary celebrations. Things are looking positive on the sustainability front, too. We built on last term’s victory in the Harrow International Schools’ Sustainability Competition with a packed timetable of projects and activities. Among others, these included attending a mock COP 26 conference, reducing our plate waste, conserving wildlife, protecting habitats, encouraging our community to cycle to school, visiting a zero-landfill recycling plant, harnessing rainwater and answering the CREST project’s challenge about innovative waste-free lunch ideas. In line with these school-wide sustainability efforts, I am now sending my end of term letters electronically rather than printing and posting them. Similarly, we are significantly reducing our print run of other publications where appropriate and wherever possible, reducing the energy use and environmental impact of producing and delivering a physical product. But our plans do not stop here: with the support of our Sustainability Prefects, we are also working hard towards achieving the coveted Eco-Schools Green Flag Award. I am immensely proud of our pupils’ achievements: academic, artistic and athletic alike – we report on them all elsewhere in The Standard,so what follows is – far from an exhaustive summary! Magnificent achievements in the Chemistry Olympiad and Junior Mathematical Challenge were matched by Excellence scholars with five or more Excellence pins and CREST Awards for all of Year 8, while the VEX Robotics team came sixth in the UK, scooping a VEX National Innovation Award. In the arts, over 300 entries to our Secret Postcard Competition raised over £2,000 for Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity – and the A Level and GCSE art exhibition is simply stunning! Our musicians were inspired by the Motet Choir at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford and ‘an unforgettable day’ at King’s College, Cambridge. Powerful performances too from our talented thespians: Shakespeare’s The Tempest reimagined for capacity crowds in the Boyd Campbell Hall. With over 300 pupils, staff and families, our Sports Festival saw tremendous victories and an impressive level of engagement. Our cricketers enjoyed a week dedicated to the game and also reached two finals: the Middlesex U15 and T20 Senior Cup, while our tennis stars played many competitive LTA fixtures and our archers retained the Silver Arrow trophy in a nail-bitingly close victory against Harrow School. It has indeed been an extremely busy and productive academic year and I am very proud of all that our pupils, as well as the whole school as a collective community, have achieved. I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a wonderful break and I look forward to seeing everyone refreshed, revitalised and ready for our return. I am particularly looking forward to welcoming our new pupils and as we look to build upon our co-educational success, I am pleased to share with you the news that our incoming Year 7 cohort is to include 22 girls. That is a positive increase from last year and, as we open 13+ entry to girls for a 2023 start, it means that co-education at John Lyon continues to grow at a successful and measured pace. n

www.johnlyon.org/values

FRONT COVER Sustainability Prefects and Year 7s visit Sudbury Fields as part of John Lyon’s involvement in The Queen’s Green Canopy, a special treeplanting initiative to mark Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee.