Alumni Lunch

Alumni Talk – Saturday 3^rd February 2024

Once again, a very warm welcome to our Alumni Day. It really is lovely to have more than 70 of you back in school today, especially when I know a number of you have travelled quite some distance to be here. And it is so nice too to have a real mix of alumni gathered together, former pupils of both Farringtons and Stratford House, ranging from those of you who were at school several decades ago, through to our most recent leavers, including eleven only last summer. The boy count at this event is creeping up year on year!

I do very much hope that you appreciated being back in our beautiful Chapel earlier. For some of you I suspect it may have been the first time in a while; on the subject of which, can I begin by thanking our wonderful Chaplain, Janet Verrier, for leading such a lovely service. I hope you enjoyed your tours too and that you did not share too many stories with our innocent and impressionable tour guides!

My sincere thanks also go to Fiona Vail, of course, for all her hard work in organising today so expertly, to Sarah-Jane Barker, our Marketing Assistant, and to Sally-Anne, Karen White, Wendy Cox and Jayne Hobbs for all their help today.

Equally, I trust that you have had an enjoyable lunch and that it has provided you with a really good opportunity to be reunited with or to meet fellow Old Farringtonians and Old Stratfordians. Our fabulous catering team led by Joe Gardiner, who sadly retires next week have, once again, done us proud – please can we give them all a very warm round of applause.

In my 25 years working in school, and in fact even thinking back to the time when I was a pupil, the question of how good the food is has always been a regular topic of conversation. It won’t surprise you to hear that it is regularly discussed at student council meetings, pupil voice having greater importance than ever these days.

Now it may surprise you to know that Farringtons was actually rather ahead of its time in this regard. I certainly do not recall having much of a say in anything when I was at school in the 1980s, or even being given chance to put forward suggestions for that matter. Not so here, as I discovered earlier this year, when the Housemistress of West House, Mrs Arnold, came across the beautifully written 6^th Form Council minutes from 1984. Even better was the equally beautifully typed response to them by Mrs Hatton, then Headmistress.

I will give you a flavour:

1. Pupil Request: Could there be something other than water to drink at mealtimes – perhaps orange or lemon squash?

Head’s Response: Drinks besides water is, in my view, unnecessarily                                     extravagant. They’ll be wanting wine next!

2. Pupil Request: Could carpets be fitted in dormitories, or at least could we have a couple of mats in them? – floors give splinters.

Head’s Response: We would all like to carpet dormitories, but you cannot                      expect boarding school to be quite like home unless parents would like               to pay us much higher fees!

3. Pupil Request: On Sundays could 4^th Years possibly go out for an hour and the 5ths stay out between lunch and high tea?

Head’s Response: What will they be going out for? General going out just tends       to lead to hanging around Chislehurst looking for fellas – not good for          the school!

Oh, how times have changed! Amusing and brutal in equal measure!

So, as ever, I thought you would appreciate a bit of a progress report on life at Farringtons and an update on the latest news.

Well, academically speaking, our public exam results last year were once again cause for celebration. Those of you who follow these things will know that summer 2023 saw a return to pre-covid grading of exams. At GCSE there were some excellent result, with one of our candidates achieving the extremely rare and remarkable feat of getting straight 9s across the board – for those of you not aware, GCSEs are now graded in numerical terms from 9-1 instead of in letters A*, A etc.

At A Level meanwhile, our pupils, some of them sitting in this room today, have headed off to different universities across the country to study an impressively wide variety of subjects including English, Neuroscience, Law, Digital marketing, Liberal Arts, Biomedicine, Graphic Design, Psychology, Economics, Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Criminology, Game Design, Computer Science and Business Management – among others believe it or not. Equally, it has been great to see the increasing interest in degree apprenticeships, something we have very much promoted as part of our Farringtons Futures Careers programme. Maria, Lauren and Lewis for example, all of whom are with us today, are working for Deutsche Bank, SharkNinja and Sonic Healthcare respectively, alongside completing their degrees.

With regard to pupil numbers, I am pleased to say that the school is in a healthy position, the current student roll from 3-18 standing at 702. We can ill afford to be complacent, however. For a start, we continue to operate in a very competitive catchment area with many excellent independent, grammar and state comprehensive school alternatives. The cost of living is making private education a real stretch for a good number of families. Added to this, as many of you will know, is the threat of VAT being placed on school fees in the event of a change of government. And as if all that wasn’t enough, birth rates are going down. Happy Days Headmaster I hear you say!

Despite all these challenges, we continue to believe very strongly in the quality of the education we provide for our pupils. And I mean that first and foremost in a holistic sense, not just academically. Indeed, our reputation as a school for having a very nurturing and supportive environment remains very much intact. I am proud of the fact that we are known as a school with family values and a strong sense of community. This is something that many parents place enormous value on, now as much as ever. We were therefore delighted that this was recognised with an ‘Outstanding Pastoral Care’ school award last summer.

We were equally thrilled that our Floreat programme was one of five finalists nationally in the ‘Best Experiential Learning’ category of the same competition. For those of you who don’t know, Floreat is our enrichment programme with 50 plus activities every week (alongside all the normal clubs we run); activities such as archery, scuba diving, beekeeping, clay pigeon shooting, water polo, law society to name a few, as well as a number of environmental and local community focused initiatives.

On that note, I had the privilege of attending the Bromley Rotary Club Awards ceremony last Friday evening, an annual event which celebrates young people’s outstanding contributions under the heading of ‘service before self’. Two of our pupils were recipients of awards this year, one of whom Maria, our Polish scholar, who was recognised for the self-funded voluntary work she did off her own back in October half-term, working in a children’s ward at a hospital in Uganda. Teenagers all too often get a bad press, and such occasions are a reminder to us all of the amazing, selfless work and acts of kindness happening every day.

Volunteering is a key element of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme, of course, which you will be pleased to know is very much alive and well too – with 60 pupils doing bronze, 19 doing silver and 11 doing gold. Really healthy numbers with expeditions being planned to the Yorkshire Dales and Snowdonia, as well as closer to home.  

On the subject of school trips, it has been great to see these flourishing once more in a post-covid world. In October, a group from Years 11 and 12 (5^th Form and L6th in old money) went on a World Challenge trip to Malaysia, and were involved in a community project and turtle conservation, as well as trekking through the jungle. In July a lucky group of students who have learnt to scuba dive as part of Floreat will be heading to Egypt and the Red Sea. Looking ahead to next academic year, Modern Languages trips are being planned to Paris and Barcelona. The Geography Department are heading back to Iceland with a big group, there is a ski trip to Switzerland and a football training camp to Inter Milan. All will be incredible experiences in their own way.

Sport continues to play a big part in the lives of many of our pupils, with our girls’ and boys’ football teams enjoying particular success. Our boys’ 1^st football side is on the brink of winning their league for the second year running and are in the latter stages of two cup competitions too. Our U18 girls, similarly, have done incredibly well, sadly losing this week in the quarter-final of the national independent schools cup to Millfield – a long journey down to the west country this week. They still have everything to play for in the Kent Cup though. Our U13 girls reached the national finals last year, finishing 5^th overall, whilst our U12s won the Bromley Schools Cup on penalties for the first time in the school’s history.

Last year in fact saw a record number of fixtures played (460 in the Senior School alone) with our netballers, swimmers, runners and basketball and rounders players proving very competitive and hard to beat. With indoor nets installed in the sports centre, thanks to the generosity of the Farringtons Parents Association, cricket is growing in popularity for both boys and girls. There are further plans too for a climbing wall and outdoor table tennis tables on site. Perhaps even more exciting, is the very real possibility of us partnering with Glebe Football Club across the road and the construction of an astroturf pitch, hopefully in time for September.

Ongoing development and improvement of the school’s facilities is, of course, essential and many of you here will know that our biggest planned capital project is for a new Performing Arts Centre – and has been for some time. Green belt land and proximity to protected woodland have proven to be obstacles in the past, but a new and revised planning application has very recently been submitted and we will hear the outcome by the end of term. Please keep everything crossed for us.

Because I have said it before, and I will say it again today. Such a building will be genuinely transformational for Farringtons. As those of you who are staying to watch ‘Beauty and the Beast’ this afternoon will see, music, drama and dance are absolutely thriving here. Our Prep School choir of 70 pupils returned from performing in the Young Voices Concert at the O2 on Wednesday this week, with Year 4 and Year 6 putting on Aladdin and The Wizard of Oz later this year. Last term in the Senior School saw the production of Agatha Christie’s ‘Black Coffee’ as well as our Masked Singer Competition. When you add to this, numerous other Dance, LAMDA and other Performing Arts showcase events, you will understand that there is certainly no lack of ambition, only a lack of space.

In closing, I would like to thank you all once again for coming. It is an enormous privilege to have been entrusted with leading such a wonderful school community. Over the next few years, I am extremely keen to continue strengthen the relationship between our alumni and the school, to consider additional events for the calendar and to ensure a growing number of former pupils have every opportunity to remain connected both with us and with each other. With that in mind, if you are in touch with former pupils of both Farringtons and Stratford House, please do tell them about today, encourage them to come next time but also to contact us if they have not received communications from the school in recent times. And do please visit our website when you get chance and click on the alumni section under the ‘Our Community ‘heading. The ‘conversations with alumni’ are well worth reading.

In the spirit of ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, I thought you would appreciate seeing a short video with highlights from the past 12 months. A big thank you to Sarah-Jane for putting it together so brilliantly. If you really enjoy it let me know - we can make it longer next year and I will cut down my speech! Many thanks everyone and enjoy the rest of your day with us.

Watch the video here