Senior Reflections Week 21 February 2025

Dear parents,

Welcome back! I hope that you all had a great break with your children last week, and that the rest was restorative for you all. This week has flown by and it has been great to see your children back in school on Wednesday, as usual, engaging positively and showing enthusiasm and dedication to all that they do. This is especially true for the Upper Sixth, whose A Level trial exams started on Wednesday. These are a great practice-run for the actual exams in June and will help each pupil to shape targets for the future when they reflect on the results in a couple of weeks’ time. I wish all those in the Upper Sixth every success in these assessments and thank the exams team and subject teachers who will be looking after the exams, and then doing all the marking afterwards!

Staff development

Monday 24 February saw our third annual education festival – this year with a theme of ‘flourishing for all’. The day started with an incredible keynote form Michael Barton, a speaker who reflects on his own journey in autism – and we were captivated from that point onward!  You can find out more about Michael here.

Through the day we explored dyslexia, dyscalculia, sensory processing difficulties, adaptive teaching and mental health and ADHD, finishing with a keynote which encouraged us to celebrate and support the teenage brain. What a day! We learnt so much in the workshops and presentations and it was great to have more than 40 external delegates here alongside our own staff team. In the afternoon, about the same number of parents came along to hear about the teenage brain and to explore mental health with a spotlight on ADHD which was presented by Epic Solutions; it is a privilege to be able to take a deep dive into a topic in this way. With the understanding of inclusive teaching and learning techniques taking such a leap forward in the last few years, and a national picture of increasing numbers of pupils who have a diagnosis and who benefit from the additional knowledge and support, this felt like the right time to do this.

On Tuesday we followed up with more workshops and sessions, delivered in-house this time, to look at practical strategies to put into action what we had learned on Monday. Enormous thanks go to Mr Graham Bone and Mr Paul Fennemore who led and managed the day brilliantly, and to colleagues who led the sessions with such energy, knowledge and skill.

Former pupils

On Thursday evening we hosted an alumni event in London at the RAF club and had a great time with about 50 former pupils and guests who had come from far and wide, including one alum from Switzerland! The RAF club is an impressive venue for such a dinner and it was a pleasure to connect with these former pupils and hear their reflections of school. We had alumni who left in the sixties, right up to 2019, so quite a range of experiences! Joined also by the chair of governors, Ms Gillian Hodgetts, and a number of other board members, it was certainly a convivial evening. I very much hope that you will encourage your children to stay connected with the school when they leave us and Miss Alice Holohan, Director of Development and Alumni Relations, has a programme of activities and events to help to engage pupils with the idea whilst they are in the school, so that they can see the benefits of staying connected after they leave. Our alumni support us in so many ways, not just by events such as the dinner, but also by giving careers talks, offering mentoring opportunities, assisting with programmes such as Ten Tors, and donating to our bursary fund. The bursary fund provides means-tested financial support and enables bright pupils in the local area to access an Exeter School education. Bursaries are life-changing for our award holders, but their impact at school goes further – all pupils benefit from the opportunity to learn and build friendships within a diverse community. We calculated that if each of those who were present at the dinner last night and did not already support the bursary fund were to make a monthly £25 donation (with gift aid) we would be able to fund a full bursary for one year.  That’s quite a remarkable thought, isn’t it? To find out how you can make a gift and change a young life contact Alice here.

This weekend we have netball fixtures against Blundell’s School both at home and away and the Ten Tors training programme pushes on with a weekend on the moor based up at Princetown. It looks like it will be clear and cold – excellent weather for sport and adventurous activities!

Today is the beginning of Ramadan and we send our best wishes to all members of the community who are celebrating in the month ahead.

Have a lovely weekend.