Time for reflection….

After a quiet weekend in the boarding houses where the Study were preparing for their mocks and school examinations, the business of taking the exams got under way.  I feel this rehearsal for the real thing for Study II is so important – girls understood, some for the first time, what the staff have been explaining to them for some time: that learning is essential and that the staff cannot do it for the girls. Taking an examination is a lonely thing to do when one has only one’s own resources to rely on and, perhaps one has not done as much work as is required. Some finished the week with a sense of achievement but many knew they had underperformed and will be awaiting the results with trepidation. However, trepidation is not necessary – what they will all need to do is to focus on gaps to be filled and there is time to manage this. With a will to succeed, we are looking forward to working with the girls to make the improvement happen.

Monday began with the very funny Onatti Company’s French play which amused everyone who came as well as providing language listening practice and a cultural insight and on Tuesday the wit continued as the English A Level pupils went to The Importance of Being Earnest. It is so important to see the texts being studied in the flesh and perhaps to find an alternative interpretation to the one each of us formulates when reading. My thanks go to Mrs Kirby and Ms Sherlock for driving down to Winchester and back to give the girls that privilege.

The Inters were also out on Tuesday at Coventry Cathedral as part of the RS department’s programme of taking the juniors to places of worship. The cathedral is inspirational and historically powerful and the Inters came back reflective and impressed.

On Thursday Ms Sherlock was on the move again taking the Senior Youth Speaks team to the regional final in Marlow. It was a complete delight to see how much the team had improved since the last round and I genuinely thought Anaïs’s powerful explanation of her personal experience of reformulating feminism in her own mind was in contention. There was competition from another excellent speech from a young man also explaining his personal journey and I think that, had we had similar judges to the last two rounds, we would have won.  However the judge this time was more in favour of a performance and so neither of us were placed. We live and learn! Through this process the Senior Youth Speaks team have learned and gained so much in terms of presentation skills and confidence in their own abilities from this experience and I hope they will want to try again next year.

The week drew to a close with another quiet exeat weekend in the boarding house as everyone recovered from the examinations and began to look forward to the end of term. There was a little time to look at the gardens and appreciate the work done by Mrs Bishop last autumn as the bulbs are coming into flower and the sub is beginning to make a welcome return. And the blossom is out! Time to think about longer days and the beginning of summer – such a change from last week!