REVIEW OF THE YEAR Below we print extractsfrom the Headmaster's Speech: Good School I want to consider with you this morning what constitutes a good School and how well we at St. Peter's measure up to such a definition. Dickens's Dotheboys Hall surely will not suffice. I quote from Nicholas Nickleby: Terms twenty guineas per annum. No extras. No vacations and diet unparalleled. How appropriate then is this, coined by a fairly influential member of the English 'new right' at a recent Anglo-American seminar?: A good School is a School that a lot of parents send their children to. For him and from his political standpoint no further qualification was required. Alternatively we can go to Evelyn Waugh in his novel Decline and Fall. Do you remember Paul Pennyfeather seeking a teaching job at the scholastic agency and receiving this advice: "We class Schools, you see, into four grades. Leading School, First-rate School, Good School and School. Frankly," said Mr. Levy, "School is pretty bad." Some of you may recall Sir Osbert SitwelPs Who's Who entry: 'Educated in the holidays from Eton'. I trust that our pupils get more from us than that! Indeed each year we make an effort to find out by inviting the parents of those recently left to complete a questionnaire. We ask them to grade from 5 (very good) to 1 (very poor) and comment on what we consider are twelve important aspects of the School: quality of teaching, teaching facilities, individual academic care, individual pastoral care, boarding house accommodation, day house accommodation, careers and higher education advice, sports programme and opportunities, sports facilities, cultural opportunities, cultural facilities and finally other extra-curricular opportunities.
Teaching First, then, quality of teaching. Generally our parents rate it highly. 'Consistent very high standards in all subjects'; 'Without doubt the School's strongest asset': these are typical comments. I believe that our examination results last summer also bear testimony to this, with record A-Level and G.C.S.E. scores. For example at A-Level three pupils each gained six A grades and three more each gained five A grades. The Department of Education league tables put us at the top of the list in North Yorkshire and the Daily Mail, by some remarkable arithmetic which I neither questioned nor fully understood, made us the eighth best School in the country. But the league tables do not tell the whole story and make no acknowledgment
of 'added value'. The fact is that we are not a School (nor is St. Olave's) with impossibly high entrance hurdles. Yet despite this our teachers, who deserve our thanks and congratulations, have the skills both to inspire the most able and also to bring on those for whom the academic challenge is the more daunting. Three further matters are also worthy of mention in considering our teaching quality. The first concerns our Art (and I shall have more to say about art facilities in a moment). The comments made by our A-Level Art examiner last summer are worthy of quotation: I felt that as an individual I would like to pass on my congratulations to the School and in particular your Art Department. The standard of the work and in particular the enterprise and initiative shown by candidates was a joy to behold. I can only hope that I am selected to visit your centre again.
Staff Secondly we are constantly reviewing our teaching provision, and in September we shall be increasing our staffing in Economics and Business Studies, introducing Spanish as a sixth form G.C.S.E. option and, with the appointment of Mr. Mike Jones as Head of Information Technology, ensuring that the most modern practice and cross-curricular advice are available in this important and expanding area. Finally it is appropriate here to pay tribute to those members of staff leaving us this term and to wish them well: Sandra Fox (for two years our Head of Economics and Business Studies), Robert Jeffs (returning to the University of York to study for a further degree) and Nona Blenkin who has not only been a stalwart of our History Department but also, as sometime Warden of Alcuin and then resident assistant in Dronfield, has given fine service to the girls' boarding side. Gary Lawrence, an excellent teacher of Biology and active and successful in our games coaching programme, has gained well-deserved promotion as he takes over his own department at Repton. Keith Pemberton warrants much more than a passing mention after forty years' fine service to the music of first the Junior and then the Senior School. Others can speak more authoritatively than I on threequarters of his long career here, but I pay tribute to his musical gifts, his selflessness, his humour, his generosity of spirit and his companionableness. We hope to see him and Jean often at things musical and non-musical in the years to come and wish them both a long and very happy retirement. Facilities I now turn to our teaching facilities, also rated generally good by our leavers' parents. In recent years we
