Dear friends of Pilgrims',
It feels fitting to share with you some of the speech I delivered at our Prize-Giving Ceremony on the last day of term.
In the life of The Pilgrims’ School, this has simultaneously managed to be both an extraordinary, and a thoroughly ordinary year.
Let’s start with the extraordinary: The year started with an Interim Head in post – for any school that can in itself be a bit unsettling, but in the first week we unexpectedly also had to deal with the death of our beloved Queen; I can’t say that responding to such a major national event was what I was expecting in my first week, but I was deeply proud of the reaction of our whole school community.
Of course, later in the year also saw the Coronation of King Charles III, and again there was an opportunity to feel proud. Proud of our community yes, and also proud of our national traditions which proved to be both meaningful and remarkable. In fact, throughout this year the extraordinary has seemed to be all around us: we had a winter World Cup and three Prime Ministers.
Finally, probably the most significant extraordinary thing for Pilgrims’ was the Independent Schools Inspectorate’s (ISI) Inspection in the Spring. I am deeply proud of how the school came through that and thrilled with the result, and we are all indebted not only to the staff, but also to all the pupils for how they showed themselves, and their school, off to the Inspectors.
And yet, for all that has been extraordinary, when people ask me what I am most proud of this year, it is that we have felt a sense of the ordinary return to Pilgrims’. Community events like the Summer Fete, and the Senior Play have run as they always have done in previous years.
Tim Butcher joins us as our Headmaster from 1 September and I look forward to supporting Tim next year and beyond; Pilgrims’ is an extraordinary school, and we have a lot to look forward to.
Alistair Duncan
Interim Head
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