Headmaster's Newsletter Friday 21 March 2025

I am, theoretically, a big fan of the Mediterranean diet. In my mind, I follow the Mediterranean diet. What that really means, in practice, is that I own dozens of Mediterranean diet cookbooks and I have a freezer full of fish. But the cookbooks tend to remain on the shelf and the fish tends to remain in the freezer as I, for the Nth time, decide that I’m too tired to prepare anything more demanding than cheese on toast. In my defence, kind of, I could point to the fact that even many of those in the Mediterranean aren’t really following the Mediterranean diet any more: over twenty per cent of Italian children, for example, are currently classified as facing significant health problems due to sedentary lifestyles, the consumption of sugary drinks, lack of fruit and vegetables, and a preference for those parts of the ‘Mediterranean diet’ that are doughy and cheesy. It’s no defence, I know, and I promise myself every few months that I’ll get into better eating habits. That’s why we try to get the boys into good habits from the get-go, so they don’t drift into middle age staring quizzically into a freezer.

In a week I’m flying to Rome for the Easter vacation. Someone asked me what I planned to do there. I looked quizzically at them. What an odd question. ‘I plan to eat good food and drink good wine’ was my answer. I’ll take the wellbeing grid with me to remind me what ‘good’ means.

Have a great weekend,

Matt Jenkinson

Speaking of food, it has been Food Waste Action week this week, and Nick Hanson and his eco team have been weighing and guessing the food waste each day to raise awareness of how much we throw away. We managed to reduce the weight from 7.9kg on Monday to 6.4 on Wednesday! In other eco-news, this Saturday is Earth Hour at 20.30: families are encouraged to switch off their lights or find another hour over the weekend to do something positive for the environment. Next week is the Great Big School Clean. We will be doing litter picks around the school, and will aim to make something creative out of any litter that we find. The eco-photography competition will run again on the theme of spring; boys have until the end of the first week back next term to submit their photos via their parents to nicholas.hanson@newcollegeschool.org.

And, again, speaking of food … Year 6 and their families enjoyed a wonderful French café and entertainment on Tuesday evening. We got to enjoy a four-course French meal, prepared by Thomas Franks, while the boys acted as waiters and performed enjoyable poems and songs. Many thanks to Catherine Phillips for taking the lead in organising the event and to all those colleagues who made the evening such a success.

Well done to all those boys in Years 6-8 who performed so brilliantly in Monday’s senior recital. It is incredible to watch the standard get higher and higher each year. So thank you to Tom Neal and Natalie Bath, and all our VMTs, who are supporting the boys along the way. Congratulations, as well, to the choristers for their fantastic performance of the St John Passion last Sunday. And to all those boys in pre-prep who performed so admirably and entertainingly in Thursday’s spring concert and poetry festival. There’s a lot going on at the moment!

We have had some visits around town this week too. On Wednesday, Year 3 visited the Natural History Museum for a fascinating talk on rocks, fossils and meteorites. Also on Wednesday, Year 7 enjoyed a visit to the Department of Astrophysics. A team in the department, led by Professor Niranjan Thatte, are part of a multinational project to design the Extremely Large Telescope. Professor Thatte told the boys about the design of the telescope and why it will be such a revolutionary device. The boys also watched some fun demonstrations to illustrate some of the problems the telescope might encounter with temperature and pressure changes. Then, on Thursday Year 6 had a visit to the Natural History Museum. They attended a workshop on insects and their habitats where they learnt all about how insects can help us identify what an area is like and what conservation efforts might be needed to support biodiversity. Many thanks to Emma Krebs for organising these trips.