KINGSWOOD INSTILLED CONFIDENCE WITHIN ME:

AN INVALUABLE GIFT THAT HAS SHAPED MY LIFE IN PROFOUND WAYS.

Scholarship. On top of this, when my family had financial difficulties the School gave me a bursary, which, combined with my scholarships, covered 100% of my fees. I feel quite emotional writing this, as it is so clear that without this financial support I would not have been able to attend Kingswood and my life would have been very different. My family faced losing our house, but, to use a cliché that’s a cliché for a very good reason, my school gave me a home.

their sense of my value as a human being at all. And this is the magical quality that Kingswood has.

Isabella Watson, an Old Kingswoodian and bursary recipient, reflects on her life-changing educational journey and how Kingswood provided her with a sense of belonging and a place she can still call home.

I’ve been reflecting on what it was that made Kingswood so transformational for me, and, whilst it’s clear that Kingswood gave me one of the best educations it is possible to have, the key thing that Kingswood left me with was the sense that I mattered, that the teachers cared about me. They didn’t just care about how well I was doing academically, or about how many sporting victories I contributed to, or how well I performed in a play, but about whether I was ‘okay’.

Throughout my time at Kingswood I had a Drama Scholarship and in Sixth Form I also had an Academic

It is the sense that the School cared about me no matter what that ultimately gave me the security and confidence that allowed me to perform very well academically. I got nine A*s and an A at GCSE (yes, the A still haunts me), and three As at A Level, and it is because of the teachers at Kingswood that I got into Oxford to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics. I applied during my gap year when technically I wasn’t even a Kingswood student anymore, with Mr Woodgate in particular helping me prepare my personal statement and complete practice interviews (which were much tougher than the actual interviews!). I would never have thought of applying if the teachers at Kingswood hadn’t believed in me, but crucially I also knew that if I hadn’t got in, it wouldn’t have diminished

I remember Mr Musto telling me that I was good at Maths and being moved up to set one a year or so after I joined the School in Year 7. Before then Maths was scary and intimidating and I had no conception of myself as someone who could be good at it, let alone someone who could study Economics at one of the best universities in the world. I didn’t think of myself as a naturally gifted sportswoman, but because of the encouragement of Miss Paver, Miss Wright and Mr Opie I got to give the final speech at our sports dinner wearing my full colours blazer - to this day one of the proudest moments of my life! Mr Harding taught me that the dichotomy between the academic and the creative is a false one, and that playing is a totally legitimate method of discovery (plus, we all need fun in our lives). Mrs Court taught me to think critically, giving me my first taste of the joy of discovering my own authority in the face of received wisdom.

Since university I’ve been a management consultant, I’ve completed a Masters in Philosophy, and I’ve had a career as a civil servant in the Cabinet Office and Ministry of Justice,

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