Headmaster's Newsletter Friday 7 February 2025
Dear parents,
Last week I wrote about the importance of self-review and self-awareness in the academic sense: knowing one’s own personal strengths and areas of development, and seeing this as part of a healthy learning process. This week is national Children’s Mental Health Week and, as if we’d planned it, the week’s theme has been self-awareness in the pastoral sense: ‘Know Yourself, Grow Yourself’. By understanding who we are as individuals, our strengths and our areas for development, and what ‘makes us tick’, the idea has been to promote young people’s resilience. The more we understand about ourselves, the better we are prepared to tackle life’s up and downs. Our Wellbeing assembly on Tuesday, led by our school counsellor Susie Galbraith, focused on this theme and encouraged the boys to pursue self-reflection as part of a healthy and productive life.
Indeed, this self-awareness is a useful part of a mental health toolkit. The younger we are, the more likely we are to react instinctively to what is happening around us. We have not had the time and experience to develop self-control techniques, to regulate our behaviour in response to what is happening around us. It has become a cliché when it comes to mental health issues, that we may not be able to control what is happening around us, but we can work on controlling our individual responses to those events. Easier said than done, and part of being human is having emotions that may sometimes supersede a rational response. As ever, the key is getting the balance. We don’t want, and can’t function in, a world that is either (a) a collection of over-rational automatons that can’t and/or won’t show emotion, or (b) an unregulated rabble of histrionic people who respond instinctually and over-emotionally to every trigger.
‘Know Yourself, Grow Yourself’ helps in striking this balance: the boys can develop greater awareness of their feelings and responses, thereby to work on minimising unhelpful and corrosive reactions, and to find more constructive ways in which they can respond to what is happening around them. This can be a difficult process even for adults to engage in: do we always really want to look in the emotional mirror and to be honest about how we react to things? Perhaps this process would be easier now if those adults, as children, had attended schools that talked about mental health in a practical and productive way. Or if there had been films like Inside Out and its sequel, which talk openly about embarrassment, envy, ennui, anxiety, joy, anger, disgust, sadness and fear – and how we might control our reactions to them.
Have a great weekend,
Matt Jenkinson
I’m delighted to be able to add Ethan and Max in Year 8 to our roster of awards, as they have both been awarded music scholarships to MCS. Congratulations!
Congratulations to ‘Oh Canada’, one of the Year 8 parent quiz teams, who emerged victorious from last Friday’s NCSPA quiz. There was only one point in it, and I’m pleased to say that all the teams did well and clustered not far beyond the eventual winners. My thanks to the NCSPA committee for all their hard work with logistics, including the clear-up effort, and to my wonderful SLT who helped to provide the questions.
Best of luck to our Year 8s who will be sitting their mock exams next week. As with everything we do here, the mocks are designed to be part of a healthy and manageable learning process, helping the boys to identify areas of development before their final exams. For some of our boys, sitting academic scholarships to local schools, those exams will be happening very soon – so we wish them the very best of luck too.
Year 6 enjoyed their trip to the New Theatre to see Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker on Wednesday evening. As ever, the boys behaved impeccably and we received our usual flattering feedback from other theatre-goers. Many thanks to Tom Neal and Natalie Bath for arranging the trip and accompanying the boys.
The Charity Committee has selected The Gatehouse as our local charity to support this term. The Gatehouse is local to NCS and a charity that the school has a proud history of supporting. They have been assisting Oxford’s homeless community since 1988, offering a wide range of free services and activities to adults who are homeless, vulnerably housed, on low or no income, or simply seeking company and community at their drop-in centre on Woodstock Road. The boys on the committee were eager to get involved in supporting this local, community-based charity, which does so much for those facing housing insecurity. In addition to the money raised this term, we will also be collecting donations of men’s clothing, with a particular focus on coats, jumpers, trousers, and shoes. If you have any items in good condition that you no longer need, please consider donating them at school before half term.
There will be cake sales every morning in break time, £1 per item, competing for the NCS Bake Off prize; last entries submitted by Thursday morning. Some pupils will be baking cakes with heart designs, others will opt for an ‘art’ theme, but any tasty treats will be gratefully appreciated (nut-free and ingredients lists included for home-made items please). Our Home Clothes Day is Friday 14 February at a cost of £2. Years 5 and 6 should wear or bring clothes suitable for games in the afternoon. In the lead up to Valentine’s Day and showing our love for the Gatehouse, pupils will have the opportunity to try land the bunch of roses onto the cut-out heart in our morning break competition. 50p for 3 attempts with sweet prizes to be won. Then, at the end of the week, to celebrate Charity Week staff and Year 8 pupils will compete in a friendly football skills competition on Friday 13:30 – 13:50.
11 February is Safer Internet Day. To mark that day, during wellbeing lessons several year groups are looking at areas to help pupils stay safe online. Topics covered include: the appropriate amount of time spent online, managing online relationships, judging the validity of online information, and why age limits are put in place for different types of media. Whilst pupils will be familiar with these messages from Coding lessons, we feel it is important to speak about these areas often. Pupils are also regularly reminded that they can always turn to staff at school if they are facing difficulties in the digital world. Internet Matters is a website which offers straightforward guides to pupils, parents and carers and sound advice: https://www.internetmatters.org. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you would like to discuss any aspects of your child’s online activity.
World Book Day is on 6 March, and will be upon us before we know it after half term. As ever, we will be joining schools around the country in encouraging boys to come in dressed as a literary character (though not one who looks, say, surprisingly like a prep school boy in home clothes). Please do not go to any great effort or expense for this; imaginative and recycled costumes are often the best ones!
Sport Roundup: The last two weeks have continued to show the NCS hockey teams in an amazing light as they have played some entertaining and excellent matches against formidable opponents. Last week, the U11 teams travelled across the county to Cranford and played four brilliant games, with NCS taking three out of four wins. On the same afternoon, the U13 teams hosted both Summer Fields and Hatherop Castle. All four NCS teams were involved in the mini triangular series, and in just over an hour, we saw twelve great games of hockey played. The NCS teams experienced a mixed bag of results; the C and D teams both recorded wins against Hatherop Castle but came unstuck when playing Summer Fields. The B team, despite scoring two goals in both games, lost 4-2 in both. In the A team game the boys were at their best and won both games 4-1 and 4-0.
In this week’s games, the U8 and U9 teams have been in action against Chandlings, and on a bright and sunny Tuesday afternoon, we played sixteen games of hockey involving over eighty children. The NCS teams put on a fabulous display of junior hockey, filling me with a sense of pride and optimism as we managed to win thirteen of those games, with one draw and only two defeats. NCS hockey is looking very bright indeed in the junior school! On Wednesday afternoon, the U11 teams were also playing Chandlings, this time away from home, in four games that did not go all our way. The U13 teams were again playing at home, and Cranford were our visitors. The A team were hopeful of a win following their narrow 1-0 victory in the recent county cup event over this team. After a few weeks of intensive training and ever-improving match play, the NCS first team put on a display of quality hockey that I have not seen for a good few years, leading to a comprehensive win with three boys scoring hat-tricks. On the other pitches, life was not so easy, and despite their best efforts, the B team again went down to the increasingly familiar 4-2 scoreline. After such a dominant display on the pitch, it was a little galling for these boys to suffer a defeat when victory looked possible.
The week has ended in a very happy and positive way with the U11 A team and their recent exploits in the annual IAPS regional tournament. After a cold start and a tough group, the boys found themselves in third place and into the plate competition, narrowly missing out on the cup by a single point. In the plate event, they turned on the style and backed up the wins against Warwick and Abingdon with a quarter-final win over Moulsford and an even more dramatic golden goal win over Winchester House, meaning that NCS were in the final. With a chance of medals, only MCS, stood in our way. In recent weeks, the NCS team have beaten MCS twice, but this time the pressure was really on. The boys, of course, relished the challenge and, after another great game, emerged victorious, winning 2-1 and securing the well-deserved medals!
Upcoming Events
Monday, 10 February 2025
Charity Week begins
Start of Year 8/8S PSB/scholarship mocks week
Year 3-8 mid-year self-reviews completed and sent home this week
Wednesday, 12 February 2025
09.00 Chapel. Speaker: Mr Edward Beswick, former NCS Head Boy and Academical Clerk
14.15 U11 A-D Hockey vs Ashfold, Away
14.15 U13 A-D Hockey vs Ashfold, St Edward's
Thursday, 13 February 2025
08.15 Tosca rehearsal, CLC
Friday, 14 February 2025
Charity week home clothes day
Saturday, 15 February 2025
Start of Half-Term
Monday, 24 February 2025
14.00 U13 All Hockey House Matches, St Edward's
Tuesday, 25 February 2025
08.15 Tosca rehearsal, CLC
14.00 U9 A-C Hockey vs Dragon, Away
14.15 U8 A-C Hockey vs MCS, Away
Wednesday, 26 February 2025
08.15 School Council meeting, CLC
09.00 Chapel. Speaker: Mr Matthew Albrighton, Headmaster of Burford School and NCS Governor
13.00 U10 A St Edward's Hockey Festival, St Edward's
14.15 U11 A-C Hockey vs Chandlings, Away
14.00 Fire Service visiting Pre-Prep with fire engine
18.00 Year 5 parents' evening
Thursday, 27 February 2025
08.15 Tosca rehearsal, CLC
Friday, 28 February 2025
9.00 HPV Vaccinations - Year 8 (ends 11.00)
14.00 U11 All Hockey House Matches, St Edward's