Headmaster's Newsletter Friday 6 December 2024

On recent Tuesdays we have been looking at a couple of related themes: Zoe Parsons talked us through the importance of finding ‘positive ways to help those outside my immediate community’. Then Izzy Rose talked about being ‘curious about the world beyond my immediate community and [trying] to understand its difficulties’, by looking at the positives of social subcultures who have often been derided and dismissed as ‘weird’. That is, we are encouraging the boys to improve their own wellbeing, and the wellbeing of many others, by looking beyond ourselves, beyond our school community (as important and lovely as it is), to the wider world. I’m pleased to say that this doesn’t just happen on a couple of Tuesdays in Michaelmas, as shown for example by the enthusiasm the boys show each year for helping charities around the world. They also seem particularly enthused when it comes to our news round-up assemblies every third Friday. These assemblies are quite often a challenge to put together: there is simply too much in the news that wouldn’t be appropriate for a prep school audience, no matter how hard one tried to simplify it – and quite often that simplification wouldn’t be appropriate. Equally, it’s quite fun to try to explain the logic (?!) of, say, the US electoral college in a way that Year 3 might be able to understand.

We take ‘kid steps’, then … with kids … when it comes to familiarising them with the challenges of the wider world: introducing them gently to some of the more protracted issues around the world, and bringing in different topics as they become age-appropriate, whether that be in assemblies or in the wider curriculum. The boys clearly have a great curiosity about the wider world, and we definitely want to keep encouraging this, to ensure that they are productive and active citizens in a healthy democracy just a few years from now. Communities (and polities) that look inwards, that focus solely on their own concerns, can end up being pretty corrosive for a wider world that relies on healthy coexistence, mutual understanding and productive dialogue, no matter how hard that might seem at times. We can but hope, and we can turn that hope into something more tangibly productive, with our youngest pupils being given concrete advice about how we can encourage such engagement.

Have a great weekend,

Matt Jenkinson

Congratulations to all those boys in Drama Club, under the guidance of Sarah Brown, who performed a wonderful selection of Christmas poems, jokes and scenes last Monday evening. As ever, it was great to see them growing in confidence and delivering their lines so clearly and beautifully.

Over forty NCS boys recently participated in the Bebras Coding Challenge and achieved some fantastic results. The Bebras Challenge, which introduces students to the world of computational thinking, takes place every November in schools across the globe. Last year, over 3 million students from more than 80 countries took part. We're proud to share that eight of our students earned Gold Awards, placing them in the top 10% nationally. Not only did they demonstrate outstanding problem-solving skills, but they also had a brilliant time tackling the fun and challenging tasks.

On Wednesday, our Year 8 pupils applying for music scholarships to their senior schools took part in a masterclass with William Howard, one of the country’s leading pianists and founder of the Schubert Ensemble. This was the first time that NCS boys had used the beautiful new auditorium in the basement of the College side of the Gradel Quadrangles. There was plenty of useful advice, which I’m sure will be applied in time for the music scholars’ concert (also in The New Space) early next term. At the other end of the school, it was lovely to hear the boys in pre-prep performing in their Winter Concert yesterday – these are the great foundations on which the rest of our prep school music builds as the boys progress from pre-prep to prep at the end of Year 2.