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A message from The Master At a recent meeting of the Alleyn Club committee, the College’s Chair of Governors, the Rt Hon Peter Riddell OA, referred to the last twelve months of the coronavirus pandemic as the most challenging in the school’s history since the aftermath of the Second World War. Trevor Llewelyn refers in his editorial foreword to the fact that the recent closures of the campus account for two of the only three occasions this has happened in our 401-year history. “Challenging” has been perhaps the most-used word of 2020, along with “extraordinary”. Certainly, as we concluded the 400th anniversary celebrations in 2019, none of us could foresee what lay ahead. With the closure of the campus and the change, almost overnight, to remote learning, Dulwich was forced to adapt – just as it had in that post-war period. Many teachers who perhaps had never thought themselves capable of teaching all their classes remotely were introduced to the delights of Microsoft Teams. We were forced to develop new syllabuses for exam year groups that would not be examined – and subsequently to support those pupils as the subject of grading became national news. Our pupils adapted incredibly well to the “new normal”, and there was a tremendous sense of collegiate effort across the College. Beyond the classroom, we sought to contribute to the local community: opening the College grounds to the public; manufacturing PPE for care homes and local surgeries and pharmacies; providing learning material and inspirational online talks for partner schools in the Southwark Schools Learning Partnership, and more. The pandemic led us to look out to whom we could support rather than in on ourselves. I think that helped us keep everything in perspective. However, closer to home, our coronavirus fund, supported by a number of parents who felt they had escaped the worst of the pandemic, was established to help ensure that no family would have to take their children away from Dulwich owing to hardship brought about by COVID-19. And in the midst of all of this – opportunity. An opportunity to develop virtual and hybrid learning, and to think about how advances made can bear fruit beyond the pandemic – educationally and in terms of public benefit and commercial ventures. An opportunity for our pupils to be inspired by the community spirit of the first national lockdown and to make a difference. An opportunity to reassess what it means to say we are a diversity community and a school committed to the promotion of diversity and inclusion. That the College has been able to negotiate the challenges and exploit the opportunities is entirely owing to the hard work of so many of our staff, the guidance of our governing body, and the support of the extended Dulwich family – parents, OAs and others. I am deeply grateful to all OAs who have played a role in 2020. Thank you. The future may look different from what we had imagined in 2019 but our priorities remain the same: providing a holistic education that prepares boys for their future, whatever that might be, within a diverse community of talent. I wish all OAs and their families, first and foremost, good health in 2021. Our sympathy and condolences are with those who have suffered illness, distress or the loss of loved ones over the last twelve months. I hope that we will all be able to gather in person once again in the not too distant future – at SE21 and beyond. You will all be most welcome back to the College when we reopen the gates.
As ever Dr Joe Spence The Master
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