Commemoration

Below we print the text of the Headmaster's leaving address:

You will not be surprised to know, and I must ask for your tolerance, that I am in a somewhat reflective mood this morning. Today, except for some finishing touches during the holidays, marks the end of my thirty-five years in teaching, my seventeen years as a Headmaster and the decade when I have had the opportunity and privilege to lead this school. You will sympathise with me as I question whether I have been abje to emulate the status and achievements of the great Headmaster's of the past. There was for instance Dr. Busby, Headmaster of Westminster in the 1640's. When asked why he had kept his hat on while showing King Charles II round the school, he replied, "It would not do for my boys to suppose that there existed in the world any greater man than Dr. Busby." Or nearer our time in the earlier part of this century a boy asked Allington, the famous Headmaster of Eton, "Is there any difference between a Headmaster and God?" Allington paused and then replied, "Yes there is, but so long as you are a member of this school the difference need not concern you.'' I fear that as I look back I do not possess quite this degree of confidence. Indeed as I stand here in my finery I wonder whether Margot Asquith's comment on Lord Kitchener may be somewhat nearer the knuckle: "He was not a very good general but he made a good poster.'' And as to reflecting on what I have achieved during my Headship that useful motto of Pope John XXIU may not be too far off the mark: "See everything, ignore a good deal, improve things where possible." But before the reminiscences I have the pleasure of paying respects and compliments to our distinguished guests.

It is always a great honour to have the Lord Mayor with us at Commemoration. This school, founded in 627 A.D. and, in those well-quoted words of A. F. Leach, "Older than the House of Commons, older than the universities, older than the Lord Mayor, older than the House of Lords, older even than the throne or the nation itself', is part of the fabric of the City of York. To have its First Citizen with us is a special privilege, and we thank you, Lord Mayor, and wish you very well for your term of office.

Dame Janet Baker modestly describes herself in Who's Who as a 'professional singer'. In fact we are greeting today one of the greatest mezzo-sopranos of all time and one with close York links: a pupil at York College and now Chancellor of the University of York. I hope that Dame Janet will permit me to describe the occasion twenty-five or so years ago when I went to Covent Garden to hear The Trojans by Berlioz. Just before the performance the curtains twitched and a man in a dinner jacket emerged to tell us that Josephine Veazey was indisposed and that Dido would be sung that night by Janet Baker. He added that this would be her first appearance at Covent Garden. Immediately a man in the audience shouted out, "And about time too." It would be impertinent of me to echo him but I do want to say what a special honour it is for us to have such a celebrated guest with us. We give her and her husband a very warm welcome.

Dame Janet will be addressing us in a few minutes. I guess that she will have more of substance to say than that other Speech Day guest of honour who, having done the task several times before, said to the Headmaster, "What I do is congratulate the prizewinners, admit I never won anything, place the responsibility for future world peace squarely on their shoulders and ask for a halfholiday. Okay?"

Usually at this point I have a further visitor to thank, namely the preacher at our Minster service. This year, my last Commemoration, I particularly wanted to invite Steven Harvey to address us and am very glad that he accepted. I knew from hearing over the years his excellent contributions day by day in Chapel that his sermon on this special occasion would be good, and so it was. I thank Steven for this morning; I thank him also for all that he contributes to the community of the school. I recently came across a Headmaster's definition written in 1932 of what makes a good school chaplain. Allowing for the dated references to 'boys' and 'public school' it hits the target:

He has got to be a young-minded man who is a figure in the life of the school, not someone apart, a grim ecclesiastical figure, different from other men, but a man the boys have come to like and respect in other spheres of school life. He has got to be ordinary, natural, genuine. But religion must be the chief interest of his life; thers is no doubt about that, for no one so quickly and correctly sums up a man as the public school boy.

There is much in that which speaks of Steven Harvey, and we all thank him for both his sermon and for his continuing ministry within the school.

I also wish to acknowledge the contribution to the service this morning of Andrew Wright, our Director of Music, and his choir and instrumentalists. Schools, I believe, should heed those lines in The Merchant of Venice:

The man that hath no music in himself Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus; Let no such man be trusted.

Thank you, Andrew, for what you do through the music to move us and to lighten our spirits. And our good wishes to you and your performers when you embark next month on your East European tour.

A feature of Headmasters' prizegiving speeches is a report on me year about to end. Those of you who have heard me before on these occasions will know that I arti not overfond of lengthy recitals of exams passed, matches won and mountains climbed. The audience's boredom is not the only factor in my mind; there is also the hazard of offending those whose achievements and endeavours, if not necessarily overlooked, have at least not been mentioned. And yet I have some obligation to reassure parents that all is well and that the school has had another busy and profitable year. There is nothing like a holiday slide-show to send the view to sleep; snaps have, as the name suggests, more zip. Let me men metaphorically flick through the pages of this year's album.

Entry last September was buoyant with a total of 483 pupils in the Senior School, the highest number over the last decade, with 102 in the Lower Sixth. Our boarding numbers were 169 and, at a time of national boarding decline, is the highest total for five years. We have managed to maintain our selective entry standards and, despite the competition from the maintained sector, retain for the sixth form the vast majority of our post-G.C.S.E. pupils (in 1992 the number of fifth form leavers was twenty-eight; this summer it is likely to be only seventeen). Our A-Level results were once again firstclass giving us high positions in all the league tables, and our G.C.S.E. statistics were our best ever with a 96% A-C pass rate. 44% of these were at A grade and 15% of the whole entry were in the new A* category. In this context Jonathan Reeves and Edward Vickers deserve special mention for their exceptional ten passes, all of them at A*. Worthy of record too is our twelve-pupil entry in the British Physics Challenge with two silver awards, six bronze awards and four commendations. Also half of the twelve applying this year for Oxford and Cambridge have secured offers (conditional of course on their ALevel results).

It is in the area of games that I have to tread with particular care; there are many toes to avoid. However, I think it right for me to note: our hosting of the six-school cricket festival last summer; a very positive rugby season, the best for a number of years with a successful 1st XV tour of North Wales, an outstanding 2nd XV record of twelve wins and strong junior talent coming through; the girls' netball won all its matches; the girls' squash and swimming were particularly strong; and the Boat Club, giving exercise and pleasure to many pupils, has as ever won a good clutch of trophies. Musical highlights have been the Mozart Requiem, the Chamber Choir's tour of Spain and Gibraltar, Graham Kershaw's performance of the Hummel trumpet concerto and an excellent concert Czechmate which was a fine showcase of so much of our varied and gifted musical talent. Cabaret in December was surely one of Ian Lowe's very best productions and much enjoyed by all of us who made our way to the Kit Kat Club of the Memorial Hall. Then there have been Careers Forums and Careers Open Evenings; a sixth form Challenge for Management course; a third year Technology Day; Science Society lectures and demonstrations; visits by Lady Antonia Fraser, the Archbishop of York and David Woodhead of National ISIS; and holiday trips to the French Alps, Florence, the First World War battlefields and, with the Mountain and Outdoor Club, to Snowdonia and the Highlands. There have been many individual achievements with R.A.F. flying scholarships and Army sixth form scholarships won, and we note Rachael Ogden's various athletics triumphs and Matthew Dodgson's selection for the Yorkshire Under-18 Rugby Tour to South Africa. Above all it has been a year in which the academic purpose of the pupils, their busy commitment to school life and their general good humour and responsibility have all been very much in evidence.

I warned you earlier that this morning I was in reflective mood, and I apologise particularly to the school who yesterday had to endure me in Chapel with my nostalgia being flaunted with some lack of discretion. However, it may not be completely irrelevant if, for a consideration of issues affecting independent education in general and this school in particular, I muse briefly on the changes which I have witnessed during my career. In my first professional post in the early sixties the cane was still in use; how much better are our discipline and ethos without corporal punishment and the countless petty sanctions of drills and detentions which both teachers and senior pupils used to impose. The fagging system was still in place, and we were somewhat nearer Tom Brown's Schooldays than we are now. The curriculum was unexciting and restricted by too early specialisation; contrast the syllabuses, the textbooks, the teaching tools and methods of today and the relatively few choices which now have to be made during the middle school years. In those days there were few opportunities for parents to meet with teachers and neither their concern for their child nor their presence at school was particularly welcomed. Also almost all schools in the independent sector were single-sex establishments; now co-education has come to the majority of us, and few who have led their schools down this particular road would regret its implementation and development.

I have also noticed marked contrasts in the exercise of my responsibilities since I first took up a Headship in 1978. Our teachers now quite rightly expect more of us, are more conscious of their professional duties and are under various and greater pressures. Few Heads in the seventies had staff appraisal systems; now these are the norm. No Headmaster under whom I served ever conducted any sort of review of me and my effectiveness (just as well, some may say); both Heads and staff have gained immensely from their implementation. Heads' relationships with their governing bodies have also changed. In my first term as a Head in Bristol I met my chairman of governors only once and that was at the termly board meeting. Both governors and I would now be concerned at such tenuous and unproductive contact. Governors themselves work harder, often through networks of sub-committees, and appropriately Heads are now more actively scrutinised and held to account by their boards if rolls are falling and if examination league table placings are too low. We have also had to respond in recent years to the threats posed by recession and the challenges to boarding recruitment caused by social changes and military cut-backs. I, as with my Headmaster colleagues, have had to learn some of the techniques of PR and marketing, and our prospectuses and fliers, our exhibition displays, our links with the media are testimony to this new dimension in our professional responsibilities.

These then are some of the changes seen over the thirty-five year span of my teaching career and my seventeen-year period as a Headmaster. The last decade at St. Peter's has also been a time of some challenge and to remind myself I went back to my previous St. Peter's Commemoration reports of which this is my tenth. Nine years ago on this occasion I was telling parents of our new tutorial system, of the demise of O-Levels and the advent of G.C.S.E. and of the proposed introduction of co-education throughout our eight-eighteen range. In justifying this major step I quoted John Buchanan, the pioneering Head of Oakham School who led the way there in the 1960's; "Become co-educational and rediscover relaxed normality", he wrote. So, I think, it has been.

In 1987 I noted the completion of the Alcuin tennis courts and the acquisition of the Methodist halls (at last eight years later now to receive their renovation). A year later I was regretting Mrs. Thatcher's veto of the Higginson Five-A-Level proposals, hoping that the new National Curriculum would not become a straitjacket and concerned that we should respond positively to the challenges of a reviving maintained sector. The following year, 1989, I was quoting Lord Melbourne, and at this stage in my address today it may not be inappropriate for his sentiment to be repeated: "It is tiresome to educate, tiresome to be educated and tiresome to hear education discussed." I had news of the Appeal (we had reached the half-way point with £300,000 already donated) and I opened about the teaching of morality (Lord Melbourne was undoubtedly right).

The day before Commemoration in 1990 we had had the Duchess of Kent's visit and the opening of the Chilman Building, and immediately after Prize-giving that year Sir Peter Shepherd performed a similar task with the Alcuin Library. In 19911 was able to report the near-completion of the Scott' and Grove block work which gave us new Mathematics and Modern Languages centres. Technology and Balanced Science in the National Curriculum were the mentioned flavours of the month. The following year the Chapel organ had been rebuilt, the issue of school league tables was my current neurosis and you had my renewed call for us not to be complacent about a re-elected Conservative government and its continuing policies concerning maintained schools.

In 1993 we had reached a necessary plateau in the development of our facilities; I delivered up my thoughts on John Patten and attempted, not very successfully, to expound my educational philosophy. (My fragile intellectual edifice was destroyed shortly afterwards; when

I came across a really convincing definition: "Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.'') And a year ago you were able to hear about our purchase of Clifton Preparatory School and all the positive benefits for Art, Careers, teaching facilities and pastoral care that flowed from our purchase, improvements and occupation of Linton Lodge.

What has been achieved over the last ten years is a result of the endeavours, skill and dedication of many, and I have numerous debts of gratitude to pay. I have to thank the Governors in general and you, Mr. Chairman, in particular. The Governors first did me the kindness of appointing me to St. Peter's and supporting me through what have been for me ten very enjoyable and stimulating years. I have been fortunate indeed in having John Southgate as my Chairman of Governors throughout this period: shrewd in all his judgements, always available when reeded, ever a supportive shoulder to cry on and a source of wise advice, never overly interventionist, allowing me to spread my wings even when, like the swan, I was flapping frantically below the surface.

I also wish to thank the teaching staff. They have been a marvellous group to work with and, if St. Peter's has met with any success, then so much of it is due to them, their hard work and their sheer professionalism. I hope that, while "to thine own self be true", I have not been too difficult a superior and trust that not too many of them have felt tempted to deface the staff cloakroom with that piece of graffiti, "I wanted to be a Headmaster but my parents were married." I wish to give special thanks to Ann Hodgson and Jacqui Finney, leaving us this term. They have both been splendid teachers of Mathematics

and excellent pastoral guides to girls and boys alike. Jacqui has done valued work as a boarding tutor and with the rowing and other sports. Ann, it must be remembered, is the one person responsible for the renaissance of St. Peter's as a leading rowing school and her contribution and dedication in this area in particular have been superb. We wish Jacqui all happiness for her marriage this summer and for her future at Strathallan, and Ann has our thanks and good wishes as she moves to St. Edward's, Oxford, and swaps Ouse for Isis.

I suspect that over the years my management skills have not been particularly sophisticated or modern and, in the famous school report phrase, there has undoubtedly been room for improvement. However, I have been served well by a small and dedicated team: our work to formulate policy, to meet crises, to solve problems, to reach decisions within the group of Headmaster, Bursar, Master of St. Olave's and Second Master has always been carried out in a positive, friendly, frank, enjoyable manner with more laughs man tears and more 'highs' than headaches. Brian Jelbert came to the school at the same time as me and gives it marvellous service with his financial expertise, his constructive grasp of realities and his firm control of the budget. Brian's contribution to the school over the last ten years has been huge, and it is the lot of good bursars that, with their necessary and firm control of the pursestrings, this is not always properly acknowledged. I owe him a big debt of gratitude.

I have also been well served by Trevor Mulryne, Master of St. Olave's since 1990. John Rayson before him was a most experienced colleague who besides much else helped me with the co-education developments and planned the new Chilman Building facilities. Since 1990 Trevor has been such an agreeable and effective working partner in what constitutionally is not the easiest of roles: he is Headmaster in all but name, expected to get on with the job in the Junior School but always vulnerable to my having a sudden intrusive burst of energy. He leads St. Olave's with much sensitivity and professional skill. That it flourishes is testimony to him, and I am very grateful.

We all know that old adage: "If the Headmaster is shepherd of his flock, then the second master is the little crook at the top of his staff.'' In my first years at St. Peter's Peter Croft was my excellent guide and support. For the last seven years I have had the benefit of Don Hamilton's many skills and his huge capacity for work that has embraced duties both as my deputy and as Director of Studies. Discipline, curriculum, syllabuses, invigilation timetables, exam supervision, staff and monitor care: all this and much else come within his orbit. He has relieved me of many burdens but above all he has been a close working partner acting as conscience and sounding board, supporting me and advising me, being both skilful workhorse and valued confidant and sensitively acting as a channel between Headmaster and staff. I owe him, we all owe him, a special debt of thanks.

A Headmaster has, I believe, two people in the school organisation whose effectiveness gives him some peace of mind in the stresses and strains that are necessarily his lot. If his second master is one, then the other is his secretary. Susie Roberts took over from Betty Clarkson in 1987 and has been a marvellous help to me for these last eight years. Her technical skills are remarkable: just see and hear her performing at her word-processor. But beyond that she has been such an able personal assistant, fulfilling the role of registrar for new pupils and being both competent and charming to all the staff, parents and others with whom she deals. The remarkable thing about Susie is that I can give her a task which I myself do not fully understand, and that is never a bar to her discharging it quickly and accurately. In December she too will be leaving St. Peter's to join her husband in the Far East. Both school and staff generally and I personally give her heartfelt thanks and good wishes.

During my career I have heard two farewell reports delivered as they retired, by Headmasters under whom I served. It was right and proper that they paid tribute to their wives for sustenance and support during their terms of office. G. K. Chesterton is relevant here: "Every good wife will support her husband through thick and thin though she is perfectly aware of the thickness of his head and the thinness of his excuses." And we all know the gag that behind every successful man there stands an astonished mother-in-law. But I have a particular difficulty: one of those Heads saying his goodbyes was not a particularly popular man and when he came lo that point in his speech where he praised his wife she received considerably more applause than did he. That too is what Laura deserves for her essential part in my life, both personal and professional, and I invite you to clap very loudly indeed.

Finally (and briefly) I did not tell you how I actually started that first St. Peter's Commemoration report in 1986. I began with a quotation from the famous Dr. Arnold of Rugby. It served as a benchmark for the changes and reforms that were then being launched and it will serve equally well as I pass on my responsibilities at a time of challenge for education in general and the independent sector in particular:

There is nothing so unnatural and convulsive to society as the strain to keep things fixed when all the world is in eternal progress; and the cause of all the evils of the world may be traced to that most natural but most deadly error of human indolence and corruption that our business is to preserve and not to improve. It is the ruin and fall alike of individuals, schools and nations.

In other words the message is clear: schools cannot afford to stand still. Whatever may or may not have been accomplished in recent years, reappraisal, improvement and change will inevitably lie ahead. For these tasks and opportunities my successor as Headmaster is, I know, well qualified, and he and the school have my warm good wishes for the future.