A MESSAGE FROM THE HEAD

Welcome to the Shebbearian Magazine 2021

It has been an extraordinary 18 months as the world has navigated its way through the Coronavirus pandemic and it is my pleasure to be opening the Shebbearian magazine this year - the first version since I took over as Head in September 2019. As I started writing this introduction I began to think about everything that had happened this year and it really made me realise how much we have achieved and how proud I am to be the Head at such a fantastic school.

As members of the Shebbear College community, we all know that it really is a special place - visitors to the school comment on this all the time, with one prospective parent saying to me recently ‘I knew as soon as I got here that this was the place for my children. I can’t put my finger on what it is, there’s just a ‘feeling’! How true that comment is - there really is a warm, special and welcoming feeling about Shebbear which we see displayed every day in our pupils, and even with the challenges we have faced during the pandemic, as our Methodist foundation outlines, we are ‘stronger together’. We have been blessed at Shebbear with our dynamic community who have worked to ensure that we have not only embraced the challenges, but have enabled positivity to come out of the pandemic. We have experienced many changes since March 2020, the most obvious one being the switch to remote and blended learning and I am proud of our pupils and staff for taking on this new way of working with good humour, determination, ambition and resilience. In fact, we are now a school at the forefront of digital teaching and learning and ahead of where we would have been if the pandemic had not happened.

I never thought I would be able to say that I had worked as a ‘processor’ in a pandemic testing centre - but, thanks to the lockdown of January 2021, can now add this to my CV! Alongside other members of the SLT and our newly developed Health and Wellbeing team we tested staff working on site twice a week from January to March, and then when the pupils returned, we did the same for them. Not an easy process but, as we all do so well at Shebbear, we pulled up our sleeves and got on with the task.

I must also mention our Chapel services in this introduction, something that has kept our school community together throughout the year. Along with Revd. Donna Leigh, who joined

us as our Chaplain in September, I recorded 82 remote Chapel services before we were finally able to get back together in person in June! Every Wednesday afternoon, with the technical help of Mr Banyard, we would record Chapel from my study ready to be broadcast to pupils and staff every Friday and the following Monday, who watched from their classrooms. When we became one Senior School bubble in June, and could have our first service in Chapel, with actual people around us, this was incredibly emotional (and also a huge relief as the novelty of being on screen had definitely worn off by this point - I expect the pupils will agree!)

Covid-19 aside, this year has also seen many other changes at Shebbear College as we strive to develop our school and our young people for the future. On the next page you will see an overview of our newly developed Vision, Mission, Ethos and Values.

Hand in hand with our Vision and Mission comes our Five Year Strategic Plan in which we outline our goals for the next few years. This is a whole school approach - Prep and Senior, Boarding and Day - encompassing inclusivity and diversity with the pupils at the heart of everything we do. We are already progressing well, with our faculty model starting to take shape, including being shortlisted for the Sporting Achievement’ category in the Independent School of the Year Awards; our pastoral care and wellbeing developing further with the launch of our Health & Wellbeing Centre (HAWC) as well as working towards the Wellbeing Award for Schools; and our growth looking positive with a Marketing and Admissions strategy well underway. As a member of the Methodist Independent Schools Trust (MIST) we are just beginning work on a site development plan which will highlight areas of investment over the next few years.

In September we launched our new House system. We now have four Co-educational Houses with a vertical structure (Form 1 - Upper 6) creating smaller communities within our school. New common rooms in the Quad, at the heart of the school, were developed over the summer and the vertical structure of the houses has enabled the pupils to mix with others in their house as well as just those in their year group (Covid bubbles aside!).

I mentioned our school values earlier and throughout this magazine, you will see evidence of all of these values - Confidence, Courage, Compassion, Creativity, Courtesy and Curiosity - through the achievements, responsibilities and conduct of our wonderful pupils. I have received endless feedback about them from visitors and prospective parents: ‘Your pupils are so polite and welcoming.’; ‘I can’t believe how well the different year groups get on here!’; ‘Your pupils are so kind and supportive of each other.’ - the list goes on. I am incredibly proud of each and every one of them as they have all shown these values and qualities in one way or another over the last twelve months. A couple of weeks ago I attended the Upper Sixth Rounsefell Dinner, which marks the end of these pupils’ education at Shebbear College and is a chance for them to relax with their friends and say goodbye to their teachers. These pupils have done an amazing job of leading the school with me in a very strange year and have acted as excellent ambassadors and role models for our younger pupils. They will be very much missed but we wish them all the best for the bright futures ahead of them as they become Old Shebbearians.

So, in conclusion to this overview of an extraordinary year, and as I said in my speech at the Celebration Evenings at the end of term, whilst Google played its part in education, it cannot replace a ‘real’ school. What Covid has shown us is that we need community: We need teachers in a classroom communicating face to face with pupils, solving problems and inspiring them; we need our sports fields to be filled with cricket, hockey, netball, football; we need games of rugby on the Head’s Lawn at lunchtime; laughter in the corridors and fun in the common rooms. We need people to be at the heart of our life experiences, at school and beyond in all that we do.

At Shebbear College, we not only have people, we have incredible people - staff and pupils - who are dedicated, enthusiastic and passionate and I am excited for our bright and exciting future as we prepare our pupils for their lives ahead. I will leave you with the words of John Wesley on which we base everything that we do at Shebbear:

Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can.

Caroline Kirby Head