Review of the Year

Arran has helped guide the School through these changes with a calmness and an eye for detail that have been absolutely invaluable. His measured and thorough approach has always been a natural and much needed counterpoint to my own nervous energy and restless desire for improvement. It is no exaggeration to say that we simply could

This past year has seen some great achievements from across the school and everyone involved should be extremely proud. We have also had some unexpected events that have meant we at LAS have had to adapt to the changing circumstances.

The country-wide lockdown meant students received online lessons and tasks. However, the pupils’ motivation and enthusiasm remained high due to weekly activities and challenges.

These included: Miss Barham’s PE challenge, cooking, geocaching and science activities. The large range of weekly tasks kept students busy and their energy levels up.

This year we have seen some staff changes. We say farewell and thank you to Mr Charles Price, our wonderful music teacher, leader of fortnightly

‘congers’ and Head of Peter House.

Mr Price has been redeployed to the Grammar School and we welcome to LAS Mr Rob Connolly in his stead. Miss Syan Gallagher joins us in the new role of Pastoral

Support Assistant, with the aim of maintaining and building on our outstanding reputation for pastoral care. Welcome (or bienvenida) to

Mrs Rebecca O’Reilly-Naik our new

Teacher of Spanish, a new addition to our expanded and highly successful languages department. In the

Mathematics department, we send our best wishes to Mr Johnathon

Taylor who provided us with excellent

Maths teaching for a year. Welcome to

Mrs Neena Sonecha, an outstanding new teacher of Mathematics who has relocated from London to join our staff. Best wishes to Mr Graham

Sutch on his retirement and to Mr

Richard Wright, who joined us from the Grammar School to support in

Physics for one year. Welcome to not have navigated the last four years with such success without his wisdom and hard work. I will miss working with him, and wish him a long and happy retirement and not too many DIY jobs!

I am really excited that Arran’s replacement as our new Academic Deputy Head is Richard West, the Foundation’s current Director of Music. I am really looking forward to working Dr Sarah Wilson, our new full-time teacher of Physics. In January, Mrs Jo Kitchener joined us as maternity cover for Mrs Lucy Travis, our SENDCO. Mrs Kitchener has proved such a dedicated, creative and generally brilliant member of staff that we have persuaded her to stay on as support for the SEN department and as our new Head of Years 9-11. We also say farewell to Mrs Jo Bexon, our much-loved Head’s PA, who retired in August. Her role will be taken on by Jo Gillett, who is already PA to Miss Davies. And best wishes to Mrs Emma Hopper, Head of PE, who is currently on maternity leave.

Alexander Henry Hopper, born 23 October 2020 This year saw Amherst’s first intake of boys into our senior school. The boys settled in amazingly well and added to the warm, family like feel of the school with football games played on the grass most lunchtimes. We also saw the start of boarding life at Amherst, as we welcomed the eight new students who had been selected to join the new Loughborough University National Tennis Academy. The programme provides the players with several hours of specialist coaching and training per day. The players compete regularly in international tournaments, and in the first year, we saw our players travelling all over the world, including to Spain, Italy, Cyprus, with Richard to build on our academic improvements and take things to the next level, both in terms the quality of our teaching and learning and the progress monitoring and support of our students.

We are happy to pass on your messages and memories to those staff who are moving on to new horizons – just email us at olcs.alumni@lsf.org

By Naomi Wilbram

LAS Head Prefect Morocco, Latvia, France and the USA. While away at tournaments, all the players have been able to keep up to date with their school work. They have all achieved some success in tournaments and they have brought home several cups and medals.

Music this year have delivered some spectacular events: at Christmas we had our annual Carols service, where two LAS choirs performed beautifully and made the evening very special; we also had our first house music competition, organised by Mr Price, which took place on the last day before the Christmas holiday. This was full of fun with performers from all age groups, Agnes taking home the victory this year after a fabulous whole house performance. Two standout performances were from Maisie (Year 6) on the violin and Peter (Year 12) on the piano.

The LAS show, set to take place in March, was cancelled because of Covid-19 but I would still like to say a big well done to everyone involved. We had dancers and singers from the whole school participate and the dress rehearsal was a special glimpse at how fabulous the show would have been. I am so proud to be a part of this Year 13 class and am excited to see how Amherst will continue to grow in the second year of being a fully coeducational school - and to see what new directions my fellow leavers follow!

One last thank you to all our teachers for their continued support guiding us through this challenging year. I hope Loughborough Amherst School continues to be the warm, friendly place that I love and I know Year 13 will look back and remember all the beautiful memories we made during our time here.