First of all, can I take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy New Year. Following our Charities Week before the Christmas break, I can now relay that the total amount raised was £11,623.65; a staggering sum which highlights the commitment of the students in supporting valuable causes and the generosity of parents. The money raised will be split equally between the three chosen charities - Mission EmployAble, Sal’s Shoes and Bone Cancer Research UK. Thank you to everyone involved in Charities Week and all the initiatives and work behind the scenes which ensured that this was such a huge success; it is a great achievement and collective effort by everyone, the impact for the charities and those they serve will be tangible.

It has been an incredibly busy month for both staff and students. With their mock examinations over, we have been delighted to see many of our Year 13 students getting offers from their preferred universities, a number of these from Oxbridge and/or on competitive courses - it is an exciting time for them all. The first few weeks of the Spring Term have seen much sporting success; our Year 9 boys football team beat Shenfield High in the last 32 of the ESFA National Cup; the U15 girls football team has reached the last 32 of the ESFA National Cup as well; the Year 8 boys Basketball team has had success in the District League starting the season with 2 wins; and the Year 8 girls Netball team have made a great start to the year with a 15-8 win over Watford Girls. These are fantastic achievements and the result of the commitment and hard work of both the students involved as well as the PE staff. Looking forward, there are many exciting events planned for the remainder of this half term; rehearsals are well underway for the Upper School Show ‘Her Naked Skin’ with performances on Thursday 8th and Friday 9th February promising to be a joyful evening of theatre showcasing the wonderful talent that St Clement Danes has to offer. This year’s Gym and Dance Show ‘Kaleidoscope’, with a range of solo and group performances, promises to bring colour to life in a way that you have never seen colour before! Tickets for both events are available on ParentPay and I look forward to seeing many of you there.  

At the end of the month we will be holding our inaugural Apprenticeship Fair in the Barbirolli Hall; the event aims to raise student aspirations, help them to develop their communication and networking skills, and raise awareness of the apprenticeship programmes available in various sectors across the UK. My thanks go out in advance to Mrs Garwood-Evans, Mrs Ritchie and Mr Arnold for the huge amount of work which has gone into making this event possible, and I look forward to sharing with you in the February edition of Headlines how this fantastic opportunity for our students went.

Assemblies this week, led by Mr Garvey, have marked Holocaust Memorial Day; the theme of the assembly is to commemorate the Rwandan genocide, to consider the impact of radio in spreading messages of hate and reflect upon individual responsibility to challenge discrimination.

In my assemblies to all years at the start of term I spoke about one of the most powerful and often used words in every language - Hope - yet it is a word we know relatively little about in terms of its origins. January, from the two faced Roman God Janus, often sees us looking to the past and future as we contemplate our hope for the year ahead. Hope, amidst the despair of conflict; death and destruction in Ukraine, Russia, the Middle East, from climate change and as a result of rising poverty and inequality, can seem futile. I referenced a conversation Nelson Mandela had with Gordon Brown about hope and the picture of hope Mandela briefly had on his prison cell wall on Robben Island, by George Frederic Watts, depicting a blindfolded girl trying to play a harp with almost every string broken. In his conversation with Gordon Brown, Mandela explained for him there was no contradiction in the painting and that in even the most hopeless of situations you have to retain hope, as he did so powerfully during his life and political career.

I shared why, despite the despair 2024 has begun with in many areas of the world, by looking back at the past and into the future there are reasons for hope and that hope begins and ends with us as individuals and through education, compassion and kindness as Mandela said “the impossible is only impossible until we make it possible”.