Dear Parents and Guardians,

As we see the year come to a close and start to turn our attention to the holidays and the academic year to come, it is a moment to reflect upon the educational experience your children have had in the past year. Coming together as a single school on a single site is a historic milestone in the school’s history and the first term has been really positive. I want to thank staff, parents and pupils for making it so. There is a new, youthful energy about the campus and as we look forward to next year, we can see several ways in which being together as an all-through school is going to create more opportunities to build on our Round Square values.

We look forward to the examination results over the summer – IB, BTEC and NCFE, and GCSEs. Best of luck to all our pupils who will receive public examination grades in the summer. Achieving the best grades you can is not only important for opening up opportunities, it is also an affirmation that you can work hard and successfully to reach your greatest potential. The experience of public examinations is a formative one. It requires sustained effort in the preparation and execution, with considerable delaying of gratification. There is a discipline in sacrificing time for revision. All these qualities are represented in a short but significant series of letter and number grades when the results arrive.

It’s important to remember too that they are milestones and the journey of learning continues, hopefully to greater future success as the lessons – good and better next time – of going through examinations are learnt.

I was fortunate yesterday (24th June) to meet a recent Stannite, Isadora Rawlinson, now entering her fourth year of medicine at UCL. It was really striking to hear how much she valued her time at Windermere and the experiences of the IB. I appreciated more about Sixth Form life here by hearing her story and I look forward to her sharing these with pupils next year. In the meantime, next time you are in Browhead, see if you can spot her name on the honours board.

I wish every Windermere family a very happy summer break and look forward to seeing you all again after the August Bank Holiday.

Kind regards,

Frank Thompson

Head of Windermere School