TRURO SCHOOL HEAD: ANDY JOHNSON

Truro School Head

My thanks to Graham, Amanda, Carla, and all the team for the care that has gone into creating another inspiring annual report. My thanks also to the Foundation and all who support it for its financial and wider commitment to our Truro School family. This commitment is part of our long history of championing access where we can, reaching back through to and through the era of assisted places and beyond.

During the academic year 2020-21 five children were awarded Foundation Bursary Support. The total value of the Foundation awards given was just over £60,000. This was a key and highly valued part of the School’s wider means tested bursary award provision, which equated to just over £950,000 for that same period, including emergency COVID related bursaries. This generosity has benefitted just over 105 pupils who represent 11% of the whole school roll. For the current academic year, 2021-22, current Foundation awards are due to amount to just over £74,000, which will be supporting six children to benefit from being part of our School. Foundation generosity over the last two years has not just supported individual award holders, but has contributed to our emergency bursary fund, designed to keep pupils in school whose families had been seriously and adversely affected by the pandemic. The School recently received a moving and powerful letter from a family helped in exactly this way. They wanted to let us know that their income was now more secure and to thank the School for enabling them to keep their children here, when otherwise they would not have been able to do so.

At a time when compassion remains needed in so many contexts locally, nationally, and internationally, the Foundation has again

committed £50,000 to the school for the 2022-3 academic year. Underpinning this, we are grateful for the contributions of all sizes from individual donors that keep this culture of support alive, be that via donations, legacies, dedicated awards in your name, or via contributions offered at reunions, that I have now enjoyably started to be able to support in person. The Foundation remains the epitome of our Wesleyan commitment to do all we can, and I applaud you. You help us as we seek to ever widen the welcoming doors that give access to the life changing opportunities of a Truro School education. Our school and community are fortunate to be emerging securely and purposefully from the pandemic. I am grateful for the generosity that supports strength in the here and now. I am also grateful for the ability this generosity gives us to plan ambitiously for our future. I look forward to meeting more OTs in person. Widening access is an important part of our School’s ethos and ambition. Please do reach out to the Foundation if you feel you can help in any way.

ANDY JOHNSON TRURO SCHOOL HEAD