14 June 2019

Developing the whole person, rather than presenting a narrow academic focus, is key to what we do here in school.

As a result, I often find myself considering the integral qualities that mark someone out as a Cranford House boy or girl.

Whilst these are myriad, they include our pupils’ ability to confidently perform and engage an audience, something we saw this week from our Year 4 boys and girls who wowed their audience at their tea concert and from our Year 8s who, during an inspiring day at Microsoft, impressed judges with a professionally-delivered pitch to scoop a top prize, beating 200 other pupils from across the country.

These qualities also include the capacity to mix and make friends, something that was very much in evidence at both this week’s Year 10 Conference where our pupils and visitors from Langtree School joined to tackle a series of exciting workshops, and at Monday's taster day as next year’s Reception pupils played with their future classmates with great enthusiasm. Today’s Year 5 Senior Experience Day was also a wonderful example of this. We are oversubscribed for Year 7 entry in September 2020 so it was unsurprising that this was a very popular day in which we welcomed equal numbers of our own and external pupils to enjoy a day packed with sports skills, STEM and Geography investigations and film animations together.

Finally, we come to the importance of our pupils’ ability to understand others’ perspectives, to empathise with their feelings and to act on those insights. This morning’s Empathy Assembly, which summed up our whole school focus over the past few weeks, saw pupils writing their own ‘empathy resolutions’: commitments to fight injustice and help to make the world a better place through their own actions. Their thoughtful, perceptive responses made me very proud indeed to be their Headmaster.

With best wishes

Dr J Raymond