A message from the headmaster T he school year 2024–25 has come to be an ‘interest-
regiment and was invited to give a lecture (aged 16) at We Have Ways Fest, an event organised around a very popular podcast. We remain in the Wisden top 15 for cricket but we have slipped from 4th to 5th in the country (!) in girls’ tennis despite winning the Winter LTA title. The sporting prowess of our young women con- tinues after school, with OE Carina Graf (School 2010–11) winning the boat race with Cambridge for the second successive year and five leavers populating the national netball super league. The choir is in fine voice, the orchestra on top form, with leavers going on to Oxbridge choral scholar - ships and as instrumentalists to the Royal College. Success is widely spread, with a record 200 pupils enrolled at Silver or Gold level in the Duke of Edin- burgh award scheme. Our CCF has 285 cadets and yet again this year, our senior cadet was chosen as the Lord Lieutenant’s cadet. We have won a wellbeing award and retained our platinum
ing’ one, in the words of the apocryphal Chinese curse. We cannot ignore here the troublesome triple-whammy of taxa - tion imposed, with VAT on school fees as a New Year’s treat from 1 January 2025, the removal of Business Rates Relief and a rise in National Insurance intro- duced in the Halloween budget of October 2024. I am beginning to approach every feast day with trepidation. We will keep going, of course, and in due course thrive and grow again after a period of consolidation, as we work to manage the extra costs. I think it is sad that the politics of resent- ment and class jealousy has returned but I cannot say I am surprised. The envy of our privileged children is misplaced though, not just because they come from a wide range of backgrounds but crucially because they go on to be a force for good in the world. The money their parents spent on them
Tom Lawson and his wife Jess about to take off in the Blue Sky Bursaries balloon on Speech Day 2024
continues to contribute to public good with so many of our OEs working in charities, green technology, the NHS, uniformed ser- vices or creating jobs as entrepreneurs. We will not be compromising our standards as we look for ways to find efficiencies and savings and, indeed, as we ask your donations to help continue the life-changing opportunities we give through bursaries. It is from the futures of these worthy recipients that the government is effectively pilfering. I leave it to you to judge whether the money raised (if any, after all, many parents will now switch to the state sector, reducing the taxable base) will be spent wisely and effectively by the central government. The non-negotiables for us at the College are that we provide house-based pastoral care, that we provide and promote aca- demic progress to a very high standard for pupils across the range of ability, and we educate the whole person with the values of kindness, integrity, participation and pursuit of excellence. The good news, for you to spread widely to encourage more to sign up (despite the fees being now higher because our education is taxed), is that our formula works. Let me give you some examples from 2024… After the summer’s exams, 85% of our leavers went to their first-choice university. Many achieved medals in academic Olym - piads in mathematics, science and even linguistics. One pupil is such a history buff that he is writing his own book on the Sussex
grading ArtsMark. None of this impresses Bridget Phillipson much, I dare say. But in her brave new world, who’s going to provide the cricketers, the mountaineers, the army officers, the artists or the soloists? Not everyone can be a train driver Ms Phillipson! To stop me slipping into politics again, I will remind myself of our successes this term – the ‘champagne moments’ as the former chair Philip Broadley would have it. We had an ISI inspection in Novem- ber 2024 which went very well indeed. I was immensely touched by the overwhelming majority of positive and supportive responses given in the inspection survey by pupils and parents. The loyalty that OEs have for the College clearly develops early on and spreads to our wider Eastbournian Society family of parents. I found it moving too that the excellent school play this year, Jessica Swales’ Blue Stockings , was about the Cambridge College my wife Jessica attended. At the end of the play, the cast held up photographs of the alumnae of that college and included my wife’s graduation photograph next to her late mother. Thoughtful and interesting stuff from our dramatists, as well as an opportunity for Jessie’s old university friends to visit! Thank you for reading and I look forward to catching up with many of you at events over the coming year.
Tom Lawson, Headmaster
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