To be a Pilgrim is to be curious, caring and confident, Episode 1
I wish you all and your families and friends a very happy new year with the first newsletter of 2022. I do hope you managed some rest, recuperation and family time over the holiday period. I hope that you, like we at Pilgrims’, are feeling very optimistic and excited about the new year and all that it will bring.
Building on our theme “To be a Pilgrim”, you will recall we asked last term which adjectives best describe Pilgrims’ boys. The top three chosen by staff and parents all started with a ‘c’: curious, caring and confident. This felt exactly right to me and all the staff. This is what we experience every day and the attributes we want your sons to have and develop. It has been wonderful to have the boys back in School this week with their trademark curiosity, caring and confidence very much in evidence – as well as their energy, focus, conversation, purpose and optimism.
Of course, the lowest common denominator for all schools is they exist to educate children, and each school does this in a unique and different way. At the very heart of every school, the 'Aims of the School' describe specifically what each school is uniquely focused on achieving and delivering, for whom and why. The Aims provide the foundation for the values and the culture and everything which flows from all three of these, such as curriculum, learning and teaching, pastoral care, staffing, admissions, strategy, policies, organisation and all the other activities of the school.
The new year is always a good time to pause and reflect and one of my jobs this holiday was to review and update the Aims of the Pilgrims’ School. Please take a moment to read the Aims below. They build very strongly on everything that has gone before; this is absolutely an evolution, not a revolution. The eagle-eyed amongst you may spot that I have added explicitly a few ideas: 1) that with privilege comes the responsibility to contribute; 2) the importance of learning to collaborate and working together with others; 3) that The Pilgrims’ School helps boys to find their passions and to nurture them; and specifically, 4) that articulacy, eloquence, and quite simply, talk, is so important in driving learning. Talk underpins the development of thinking in children, which underpins learning, as per my speech at Prize Giving last year.
Aims of The Pilgrims’ School
As part of the ministry of the Dean and Chapter of Winchester Cathedral, and in our unique relationship with Winchester College, Pilgrims’ is a unique and leading boys’ prep school with a Christian ethos. The School itself was founded in 1931, however we build on an ancient foundation of centuries of education on this site. We aim to recruit boys who will best make use of what we offer, and who will contribute most towards it. Open to boys of any race and religious background, and with a happy blend of boarders and day boys, our aim is to develop the special character of each Pilgrim.
We aim to encourage each boy to use his mind well, to make wise judgments, to appreciate beauty, to be creative, to value and develop his faith, to be able to appreciate and support the needs of others, to be able to discriminate between good and better, between right and wrong, to understand that with privilege (economic, intellectual, physical) comes the responsibility to be kind, and, collaborating with others, to contribute to the world he will inherit. On the day he puts on his leaver’s tie, courtesy, decency, honesty, curiosity, independence of mind, aptitude for hard work, eloquence and articulacy, a genuine and real love of learning, and propensity to happiness will characterise the successful Pilgrim.
Our aim is to develop the full potential of each Pilgrim, whether that be academic, musical, sporting, artistic, dramatic, environmental, charitable and/or in some other field. We help boys to find their passions through wide and varied experiences at the School and to help them nurture them. Using the full opportunities provided by our skilled and dedicated staff and excellent facilities, enriched by our ethos, history and setting, we seek to maximise the progress of all Pilgrims in all areas of the curriculum, co-curriculum and extra-curriculum, to produce the highest achievement, and to encourage the quest for, and enjoyment of, a life-long pursuit of excellence.
Dr Sarah J Essex
Head, The Pilgrims School