14 minute read
Academic Achievement
KINGSWOOD LEAVERS 2020
The Year of the Pandemic
ELLA MCLEOD
For any Kingswood student, the last few weeks of your final term are iconic. Whether it is the excitement of muck up day, the emotional parade of leavers at the end of final assembly, photos from the Leavers' Ball, or rumours passed down from older siblings about the year group holiday. As a younger pupil looking on, it passes you by that some of the Upper Sixth walking across that stage are leaving a community they have been a part of since they were three years old. Although these events are about having fun (and trying to get a one-up on the previous year), they are really a celebration of your time at Kingswood.
Like most things this year, our leavers' celebrations could not be what we had imagined. However, if memorable is what you are going for, we certainly achieved that. I vividly remember crowding into Study 50 to watch the education secretary announce that exams were cancelled. There were mixed emotions to say the least. On one hand, we didn’t have to sit exams, however on the other, and much more dominant, was the uncertainty of our grades and the feeling of being in limbo with the goal we had focused on
School House
for two years having disappeared. In the following months, we had the welcome distractions of full-time lessons, an online exam week and then a diverse enrichment program along with plenty of lockdown challenges and a heatwave to enjoy.
In many ways we were lucky. In hindsight, not being able to take our exams was not the worst thing to happen, and the easing of lockdown came just in time for small outdoor tutor group meetings on what would have been our last day as School. We were also the only year group to have an online Leavers' Service and Final Assembly, virtual speeches and House Entertainment. For School House this was a DIY stilton and port toast and the traditional kissing of "Bulf the frog" over a Microsoft Teams meeting. However, I don’t think my brothers were as impressed when they were woken up on their first day of holiday to watch me leave school from the living room sofa, wearing my brother's leavers tie as I had already spilled breakfast down my own.
Now as we approach a year on, I am sure many of us are not where we thought we would be. Our year is as diverse as any with a real mix of leavers destinations. One of the aims of Kingswood is to prepare you for the next steps, an impossible job under this past year’s circumstances. However, I like to think that the resilience and good friendships nurtured in our time there, have stood us in a much better stead than otherwise. For me, the countless video calls and a lifetime's worth of quizzes with friends are the highlight of my week. Maybe it’s the lack of human contact but even the seemingly small things, like receiving a check-in text, or running into someone in your weekly food shop, is a reminder that although we have now left Kingswood physically, the community spirit is something we always carry with us.
STEPHEN KING
My recollection of the end of the year was much like the start. A blur. Hoping as each day passed that nothing went wrong and no one was waiting for me to walk back into the Dixon with a problem that needed solving. I was on the Upper when the announcement was made, half laughing and half upset that I was no longer going to be doing exams, but more so that House Football the next day was in jeopardy. Walking slowly back down from the Upper shock set in. Passing by people seeing a spectrum of emotions, ranging from joy to anger, but I think as people slowly began to realise that this announcement meant that that Friday was going to be our last, the response was more unifi ed. Over the coming days we began to refl ect on our Kingswood story, back to little moments that made it and spending as long as you still could in it with the people that shaped it, because giving it all up was never going to be easy, let alone doing it a term early.
With the year that it was, it would be so easy to get swept up in it all and focus on everything we missed out on. Naturally that’s always going to be something that we all look back on and regret not having with each other, but I think the better thing to do is look at the years we did have. For some of our cohort, that has been the majority of their lives through nursery until Upper Sixth. I’ve tried to focus more on the 6 years and 2 terms I had, as opposed to the 1 term I missed, and for someone who has never been a massive fan of cross country, missing that end of Easter term could’ve been a blessing in disguise. However, as Ella has eluded to, for us to miss the last term and a bit of our Kingswood journey doesn’t detract from the overall experience, which says something about the school and the power the community has on everyone involved. Even though we’ve left prematurely, I always know that Kingswood is somewhere I can call home.
Middle House
Hall House
Hall House
Alix Keates on Boarding at Kingswood...
“Choosing to board at Kingswood was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Boarding gave me a second family and a home away from home, which made returning after the holidays, no matter how home sick, such a joy and something I genuinely would look forward to. There is no divide between the boarders and day students at Kingswood, which is so unique and gives the school a very special feeling - One it was hard to find in any other school I looked at. I cannot thank Kingswood and the boarding staff enough for the amount of fun and enjoyment they brought me for the five years I was there, from all the cool trips we went on, to just being amazing people.”
Emily Vaughan on Leaving Fonthill House...
“I am very grateful to Mrs Mainwaring, Miss Moore and Miss Wright for giving us ‘Fonthill Ladies’ our last ever House Entertainment via Teams. It was not the leavers vs tutors tug-of-war we had expected, but it ended up being so much more special. After being parted for so many months, it was lovely to have the House reunited to reminisce and discuss our favourite (and most embarrassing!) Kingswood memories late into the evening.”
EQUALITY, DIVERSITY & INCLUSION
I know that a number of alumni signed a letter to Simon Morris in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, making the point that it behoves us all to be more than just non racist, but to strive to be actively anti-racist. I thought therefore that our alumni would appreciate the chance to read a recent letter to parents from our Foundation senior leadership team on the topic of gender equality.
Dear Parents, Guardians and Pupils
As highlighted in the last couple of Senior School weekly newsletters, our tutor group programme for the week we returned to on-site learning was designed to help us reflect on the importance of International Women’s Day by discussing ideas on how we can improve gender equality for all Kingswood students. The feedback regarding both the mixed format and the discussion topic has been overwhelmingly positive and we want these discussion opportunities to become the norm; for pupils to hear and explore each other's perspectives, debate and educate, and respect the opinions of all genders within a safe environment. In the coming week we will again develop the theme of gender equality in our Assembly and Whole School Service.
The importance of the issues raised have been amplified following the testimonies posted on the Everyone’s Invited forum. Aggression, violence, intimidation, and the harassment of women or girls, are abhorrent and have no place in a civilised, modern society. The Prime Minister has recognised the need for a “cultural and social change in attitudes” to tackle abuse and prejudice.
Our responsibility as Kingswood School is to teach and model equality, diversity and inclusion as well as to tackle injustice and discrimination. We seek to do this in many ways; for example via our PSHCE programme, tutor group discussions, assemblies, guest speakers and chapel services. A key purpose of our PSHCE programme is to educate and encourage pupils to respect others, and themselves, with Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) being an important part of this curriculum. Our School policies and practices are aimed at ensuring Kingswood is a safe environment where all children can learn and develop, and we are committed to an open and constructive partnership with parents and guardians.
As a school with a Methodist foundation, the importance of inclusion, respect, and compassion should be ingrained in all we do. As well as our pupil led Cultural Discussion Group and Pride Group who help to raise awareness across our community, we are in the process of appointing a Diversity and Inclusion Lead as an important pastoral figure within our School community. Next term, we will be asking our pupils to work with us to develop a Student Charter as a grass roots exercise, crafting the words to reflect student voice about the place that Kingswood ought to be. We will continue to work with staff, parents and pupils to actively promote equality of gender and other characteristics, be that race, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief, or other. Our strong Pastoral team, led by Mr Opie, are always here to listen to any pupil who has concerns they would like to share. Similarly, we will do everything we can to support former Kingswood pupils who might have had negative/ adverse experiences. We are also keen to engage with those who have experience or insight into ways our community may be able to do better. We value and are fully committed to nurturing the culture of kindness, as well as the diversity and inclusion that already exists in our School community.
Janine Solomon-Gardner Diversity & Inclusion Lead, Computer Science & RPE Teacher
Yours sincerely
A Gordon-Brown (Principal of
Foundation), G Opie (Deputy Head Pastoral KS), J Davies (Deputy Head Academic KS), K Dickinson (HR Director), M Brearey (Head of KPS), H Worrall (Deputy Head Pastoral KPS), K Wilkinson (Deputy Head Academic KPS), S Vickery (Bursar)
THE KINGSWOOD SPIRIT
Amongst the many educational challenges the pandemic has thrown at us, the question of how to ensure the spiritual life of Kingswood remains healthy has been at the forefront of our minds.
The world of young people is full of doubt and difficulty – today’s teenagers are already being dubbed ‘generation Covid’ – and the prospect of long-term damage to the spiritual wellbeing of our young people is real. It has therefore been of such importance that the Methodist values of the School should continue to speak clearly into the community.
It has been a great privilege to serve as interim Chaplain during this challenging period. Given my main role as Deputy Head Academic, there has been a limit to what I have been able to achieve. One of my key priorities, however, was keeping alive our tradition of worship. I remember first arriving at Kingswood and being rendered speechless by the vitality of the School’s worship tradition – I have never known a senior school engage so fully with a schoolbased service. I have regularly found the weekly gathering to be a deeply moving experience. together. When we were in school, students gathered as tutor groups and houses to watch whole school service videos together. Each week, members of the community prepared thoughtful talks and prayers to stimulate spiritual reflection, and to try and create a moment of calm in an otherwise stormy situation. In addition, many of our fantastic musicians offered to record themselves playing their instruments – we even managed to keep alive the tradition of hymn-singing as both teachers and students recorded sung worship for all to enjoy. It was wonderful, too, to be able to include Mike Wilkinson and Jonathan Pye on the roster of worship leaders, as well as the Headmaster and Gordon Opie. Throughout our first term we enjoyed a wide range of inspiring talks, ranging from Dan Darwin (Head of History) exploring the uncomfortable tensions of Bath’s colonial past, through to Gordon Opie’s reflections on the importance of routines and places that are special to us all. We tried hard, too, to preserve some of the other worship traditions of the school calendar. Many of you may have seen our recreation of the annual Remembrance Service – a collaborative effort involving students and teachers to mark this very important occasion, to ensure that our young people did not miss the call to remember the past, despite the pressing distraction of the present. Christmas, too, needed to be marked by appropriate worship. I remember reflecting that it was a time like no other where the urgency of the Christmas story would seem
It is, of course, very difficult to recreate the real experience of physically gathering together for an act of corporate worship, but we have tried our best to leverage technology to bring people
even more relevant to our lives, with its social upheaval, difficult journeys and a climate of fear and difficulty. The message of Christmas focuses on the light in the darkness; many of our students have experienced a bewildering darkness for the first time in their lives during this pandemic and so our Christmas messages felt more poignant and apposite than usual. *** For me, this year has presented great challenges, but also great opportunities. It is a true blessing and honour to say that I have served as Chaplain to Kingswood School, even in a temporary and much-reduced capacity. Ours is a special community, rooted deeply in a wonderful tradition of love, justice, compassion, inclusion and service. This school has endured many trials through the years and has stood the test of time, charting the difficult waters set before it. The rich Wesleyan heritage we still celebrate is testament to our school’s spiritual resilience.
This latest period of our history will surely be remembered by all as profoundly unsettling and sad but, I hope, will also be held as a time that the Spirit of Kingswood stood firm and braced itself, in faith, against the buffets of the Covid storm, and emerged singing.
I write these words at the start of Summer Term 2021. We are slowly beginning to emerge from lockdown. The vaccine programme has just reached 50% of the UK population, and our students have returned from all over the world to reconnect with their community. Year 11 and Year 13 are facing down internal assessments that will help decide their final grades in the summer. Some anxiety still hangs in the air, but is less heavy than before, and now seems more definable. The sun has started to shine and there is a new optimism growing in our daily interactions. The school is gathering again physically in assembly spaces – the Summer Term begins with a Whole School Service led by Mr Opie with a selected audience of some of our Year 12 students. It feels good to be together again in corporate worship, reflecting on the truths contained in scripture and meditating on the areas of our lives where we can be thankful, and praying for those less fortunate than ourselves who continue to live under the very real threat of overloaded hospital systems or oxygen shortages. We therefore feel greatly blessed to tentatively begin our plans for the larger end of year events which, we hope, will include the return of the Commemoration Service that traditionally concludes our school calendar.
Mr John Davies (Deputy Head Academic)
