Welcome from the Headmaster

2 July 2010

If any of you have not yet signed up for the SFPA Hollywood Ball tomorrow week, Saturday July 10th, you have just a few more days – please get your applications into the Bursary. There are tables made of people coming on their own or in pairs – don’t feel you need to be in a large group to be able to enjoy it: it’s not that kind of ball! Please feel wholly welcome.

Today Mr Hullyer, our Estate Manager, celebrates his eighteenth year working at St Faith’s. Hel lives in Newmarket and came first to St Faith’s on a temporary contract to bridge a gap, saying vehemently that he wouldn’t come to work in Cambridge every morning even if besought to do it by wild horses (on their bended knees). That was then. This is now, eighteen years on, and long may it continue!

Yesterday Mr Ed Gough covered 109 miles of his 125 course on rowing machine, exercise bicycle and cross country circuit, in aid of Music Therapy at Addenbrooke’s. He didn’t do it all himself, of course; he was helped by various colleagues and pressed men. At various times I have seen (old) Mr Johnson, Mr Park, Mr Leggoe, Mr Hames, Mrs Hames, Mr Welch, Miss Kennerley, Mr Sedgwick and Miss Bucklow all burning off calories in support of Mr Gough. Mrs Waters burned off hers at Greens and had her distance certificated there to contribute to Mr Gough’s total and I know that lots of others have helped, but I just didn’t see them! Mr Gough was to be seen marking out the track, eating his breakfast, encouraging his colleagues, having his lunch – all important energy-generating things. In the end I caught him actually at the wheel of his exercise bike, pedalling away; and I must say he looked pretty impressive on it. He has, in truth, travelled so great a distance that the 125th mile was achieved before school today and he decided that he would now go for 250 miles ere the set of sun. I asked last week if the children might be able to collect £3.00 with which to buy things at this afternoon’s fair, and I hope that if they generously chucked their £3.00 into Mr Gough’s collecting boxes you may have helped them to find another pound or two for the Makukhanye Fair, which happens this afternoon, along with the Addenbrooke’s Abroad walk. Well done to Mr Gough and to all his supportive colleagues and friends on a huge effort on behalf of Addenbrooke’s hospital’s work providing medical aid in parts of the world where even primary care is very scarce.

Last week’s Pre Prep concert was a really enjoyable variety show, with songs, recorders, percussion instruments and raps. It was lovely to see the children taking such delight in their music-making with Mrs Cooper.

Last week was enrichment week and a huge variety of different things went on to provide the children with an excitingly different range of experiences. Much of Year 8 was in Spain, of course, but at home there was, amongst other things, dancing, entrepreneurship and how to sell things, Viking longboats, bugs on wheels for Year 2 (Year 7 helped), e-safety, activities at Mepal, mushrooms, PSHCE, Maths, Escher lizards around the Sports Hall site (fun, aren’t they!), drama at Burwell, the Great Fen and a languages week which included a trip to Les Misérables. The teachers all worked very hard indeed to create such a stimulating week for the children. Dr Martin writes about Spain later in this newsletter. It was yet another wonderful visit. Next summer Year 8 has the opportunity to go to Pompeii and Rome to give life and colour to their learning about the Classical World. If Year 7 parents have yet to fill in the form which gives Mr Critchley provisional numbers it is important to do it now.

I showed pictures of some of these things at Move Up Morning assembly to the children who will be new to us next term. They looked at the screen with wondering eyes. Could it really be this exciting, week by week, at St Faith’s? Mepal? Money? Mushrooms? Miserables? Every week? Wow, they breathed softly, looking at each other with a wild surmise like those chaps in the poem when that other chap stares at the Pacific on the peak in Darien.

The St Faith's Singers Soirée last night enabled our adult choir to sing a range of music in the considerable informality of a drinks party. It was sufficiently informal for the one serious blunder of the evening (perpetrated, as it happened, by me when the whole choir bar one dozy baritone stopped singing at the end of a round) to be seen as a merry enhancement of the jollity of the night. How times have changed: it was the kind of thing I would have been thumped for in my distant days as a King’s chorister. Mr Clenaghan didn’t look remotely inclined to thump me!

As this is the last newsletter of the term, next Friday being Speech Day, it is the time to say thank you to some of our leavers.

Mrs Kate Lee leaves us to become Assistant Head at St Philip’s Primary School. Mrs Lee has for four years demonstrated expertise and professionalism in her quietly inspirational teaching of one of our Foundation Stage classes. Her classroom has always been a pleasure to visit and I know that St Philip’s will appreciate Mrs Lee’s skills as a teacher, her commitment to children and the support that she will bring to her colleagues there, as, hitherto, here.

Miss Jane Freebairn finishes her contract here at the end of this term. She has looked after 3N very tenderly and taught them really carefully. She has been a popular and active member of our staff common room since she started as a Teaching Assistant in 2002, contributing to staff barbecues and make-up teams for plays and helping organise wonderful Christmas parties (and having a hand, I suspect, in ensuring that some distinctly dodgy Secret Santa presents found their way to the Headmaster’s place at the dinner table). She will be missed as she completes her NQT induction at Kettlewell Primary, whither she takes our very best wishes.

Mrs Win Galloway joined us last year to take over Dr Townsend’s Science teaching timetable. We were very fortunate to be find such an experienced Science teacher to pick up the reins and I am extremely grateful to Mrs Galloway for her very valuable contribution to the Science department since last Spring. Now, at long last, she can retire (but I bet she doesn’t).

Mrs Tessa Gent has been teaching in the Pre Prep to cover maternity leave, and I am very grateful to her for forgetting, for her time at St Faith’s, that her other identity is as one of the boarding house team at King’s College School. I am not sure whether she would have seen us as giving her a break from the choristers or the choristers as giving her a break from us. Either way, it has been lovely to have her with us and I thank her and Mrs Brading for their joint custodianship of their Year 2 class.

Mr Joe Linford leaves us after two years as a teaching assistant. He has been an admirably good-natured and thoughtful colleague and numbers of the children have benefited from his kindly support and encouragement and I am grateful to Mr Linford for all his hard work here.

I look forward to seeing many of you at our Summer Concert next Tuesday at West Road Concert Hall, and to seeing you again at Speech Day. And I hope that everyone has a really good and refreshing summer holiday!

Stephen Drew
Headmaster