When people ask what makes a school good, they usually mean results. I understand the question,
and we take exam preparation seriously here. But I have come to believe that a school is not
first a machine for producing marks. It is a place where a child is either known or overlooked —
and everything else follows from which of those it is.
So I ask our teachers to learn names quickly, and to learn the child behind the name more slowly:
who has gone quiet this month, who arrived reading two years behind, who is carrying something
heavy from home. The child who needs this school most is rarely the one at the top of the class.
More often it is the one nobody has noticed yet. Finding that child, early, is the work I care
about most.
I want our students to sit their exams calmly, and to do well. But an exam is a tool, not a
verdict. It measures what a child could show on one morning; it does not measure their worth,
their kindness, or how far they have already travelled to get here. We say that to them plainly,
and often, because children believe what they are told about themselves.
If you visit, I hope you will not find a performance. I hope you will find teachers who are
genuinely glad to see the children, and children who are not afraid. That, to me, is the
measure of whether we are keeping faith with the tradition that founded us.
