18th November - Message from the Headmaster

Dear Parents

Last Friday, the school observed the two minute silence as part of a service of remembrance led as usual by Mike Ansar-Carver. The adults and children shared a truly reverential experience. Mr A-C always brings a moving, historical dimension to this most important service and skilfully takes us out of our everyday lives and makes us concentrate for a while on those who have died in the service of their country and the many others who have suffered in war. He mentioned among much else the very few "grateful villages", where there was no loss of life in the first World War (only one village in the whole of Sussex, East Wittering) but used the local village of Wadhurst to illustrate the norm, where over 600 from a population of 2,000 in 1914 did not return.

On Monday I chose to speak to the school on the theme of forgiveness and some of the themes expressed in the Sermon on the Mount - "Blessed are the Peacemakers". Let us hope and pray that the generation of young people leaving school in the next few years will eventually make a better job of guarding the planet and tolerating each other than their predecessors have done. I also hope very much that some of the lessons your children are learning here will make a small contribution to that. I think that we could all rejoice, if that were the case.
 
Best wishes, as always, Roger Clark

11th November - Message from the Headmaster

Dear Parents

In the middle of an exceptionally busy week, the school and time stood still in the Abbot’s Hall, as Mr Ansar-Carver conducted his annual Remembrance Day service. This is always a very moving occasion and, after the service, pupils attached their poppies to the Honours Board in the Abbot’s private chapel, next to my office, as they always do. Thirty-three former pupils of Glengorse and
Hydenye Prep School, which merged with our school twenty years ago are remembered there.

The Scholars’ Concert this week was an equally moving occasion in different ways but also held in the majestic Abbot’s Hall. I try never to forget how fortunate we are to work in the historic buildings and the wonderful grounds of the old Abbey.

Year 7 and 8 were pleased to go to London this week to experience the delights of “The Railway Children” and our Sixth Form performing artists were also enlarging their exposure to live theatre.

Our inspectors have looked at us very thoroughly in the last few days and we look forward with cautious optimism to receiving the final report, which may not be until after Christmas.

Do come along next week to the Junior Showcase on Monday at 6pm in the Performing Arts Centre or to the FOBAS Quiz night in the library on Friday. You will be very welcome.

Best wishes, as always,

Roger Clark 

4th November - Message from the Headmaster

Dear Parents

There are five major achievements to report on from half-term. Two individuals have brought distinction on themselves as a result of long months of training and dedication. Zofia Malewicz has become European silver medallist for kick-boxing, not in the veterans’ class but in the full women’s competition. Oliver Slacke has become the national body building champion also against very strong opposition. These inspirational achievements send excellent messages to our students that hard work and determination can pay high dividends.

On the academic front we were delighted to welcome sixth formers from all over the South to our annual 1066 History Conference and I am extremely grateful to Mike Carver for the academic distinction, that this very high powered conference brings to the school.

Kevin Anderson led a large group of Year 8 pupils to Dorset for a week of bonding and adventure and Aaron Eckhoff with Charlotte Bryant took this year’s seven Duke of Edinburgh aspiring Gold medalists on an extremely tough hike and camping expedition in the Peak District. The gentle, sunny weather of the summer, which I experienced when I was in this beautiful countryside in June had become aggressive, horizontal hail and high winds and, like a headache, when it is over, the team returned triumphal and relieved.

 
This week we have been delighted to welcome our entry and scholarship candidates for 2012. Early signs are that they are an extremely able group. Seven different Prep Schools were represented for entry to Year 9.

We also were delighted to have 8 talented youngsters competing for the Joanna Lumley scholarship for entry to the Sixth Form "A Servant to Two Masters" running currently in the West End and at Battle Abbey School enjoyed its first performance on Thursday and was a spectacular success. There will be three other productions this term for different age groups in the school. In addition, the annual Scholars’ Concert, which showcases the very best of BAS music takes place next Tuesday. All are welcome. It will be an excellent evening. At the end of term there is also Carols Round the Fire. Thus the Performing Arts department is once again in full swing and I have to record my pride in all that they achieve and take on.

A recent parental visitor to the school said that they had approached R.A.D.A. from overseas to ask them to recommend 4 good schools for the Performing Arts to suit their talented daughter. Battle Abbey School was one of those 4. Thus they came to visit us.

Do come along to one or other of the productions or concerts in the next few weeks. I am confident that you will enjoy your visit.

Best wishes

Roger Clark

October 14th - Message from the Headmaster

Dear Parents

Harvest Festival was the theme in Evensong as the boarders, some very welcome parents and the Chamber Choir assembled in the Abbott’s Hall on Sunday evening. "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosomed friend of the late maturing sun, conspiring with him how to load and bless with fruit the vines that round the thatch eves run" - I studied Keats at A Level (and can still remember!) and, by chance, it was national poetry day last Thursday. So we had our very own Ode to Autumn, led by Rev Bentham - Ben to his friends - and the husband of our present Head of English. Ben talked about the opportunity to store up our harvest in heaven and not on earth. Good deeds now and kind acts and respect for our fellow man - a great theme which reflects many of my Monday assemblies. Some visiting parents asked me the other day what the school was all about and I mentioned high academic standards, creativity and "love" - the love for your fellow man, which I hope will send many of our pupils out into the world determined to make it a better place. What a great ambition that is! But why not? It is today’s young people, who will be pushing us around in our bath chairs and suing for peace or saving the planet.

 

Before the winter arrives, we have two weeks of half-term to look forward to and then some exciting drama - the surreal drama of ISI inspection and the real drama of the second half of term, full of hundreds and thousands of human interactions and moments of learning, enrichment and hope.

Warmest wishes

Roger Clark

September 30th - Message from the Headmaster

Dear Parents

Tomorrow we celebrate the founding of the school now in its 99th year. I share with you today what the Head Teachers wrote about the school in their introduction to the first magazine in 1928. It will serve as a reminder to us all of our long heritage. You will find immediate echoes of our present school both in sentiment, educational philosophy and school procedures.

It has fallen to my lot to write the first words of the first number of our first magazine. Therefore I shall make this simply a greeting to girls both "Old" and "Present," in all corners of the world, from 1912 at St Etheldreda’s and the original girl (as she pleases to style herself) to those at Battle Abbey in 1928. We hope that the magazine will serve as another bond to hold our interests together. We want news of, and contributions form, everyone. Old Girls, we want to know where you are, what work you are doing, and whom you are marrying, - all of the utmost importance to those of us on this side of the Gateway.

Now, here on the terrace, looking down on thousands of white and purple crocuses opening their golden hearts to the sun, then up to our beautiful Gateway, I am conscious of our only ghosts-brown-tunic-ed and brown-legged. My thoughts stray from those who make a perpetual symphony of Youth around me to those who have passed through the Gateway to Life in the big World of Grown-ups, and to them I would send a special message. It is simply this, - To all who have loved their school, to them does it belong for ever. You are still links in a precious chain whose strength and work are drawing us slowly, but ever surely, up and always up away from the commonplace, nearer the Ideal. You wear our badge, and all you do does matter to us. In the hurly-burly of everyday life these things are not said, - they appear to be forgotten – they are not. The Gateway is ever open to you, you are ever welcome in our hearts and in our home.

Yours sincerely,
Margaret Jacoby

In the same magazine was a brief history of the school:

When St. Etheldreda’s was started, at Bexhill-on-Sea, in the summer of 1912, the School numbered only three pupils; in two years there were twenty three. In the Spring of 1922 Margaret Jacoby was taking some friends to see the grounds of Battle Abbey when it occurred to her that it would be an excellent place for a school, and in two months negotiations were completed, and the lease was signed on July 5th, 1922. When the move to the Abbey took place in September there were thirty five girls; the School grew so quickly that the next term there were fifty, by the following May seventy two, and very soon a hundred, the School’s full number.

By an interesting coincidence the School began its first term at the Abbey on September 22nd, the anniversary of the landing of William the Conqueror at Pevensey, and the first Hockey match was played and won against a boy’s school on October 14th, the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.

The article goes on to describe the founding of the house system in 1926. Still later in the magazine Helen Sheehan Dare, the other co-founder of the school writes:

When a girl comes to us we set about preparing her for life but who knows what that life will be by the time she is 18. It is to the task of keeping pace with its ever shifting problems that the modern educator sets him or herself…….. I am going to leave one word of advice – keep your minds young. Nothing hinders human progress so much as the attitude of those vast hordes of so called educated people to whose minds all things new are denied access. Never turn round on the rising generation and tell it it is going to the dogs. Try to keep pace with it and find out where it is really going. If there is one real blessing I would issue it is that your education may never be complete.

Today we look forward and back, we hold fast that which is good and adapt to the demands of the changing world.

Roger Clark - Headmaster

September 23rd - Message from the Headmaster

Dear Parents

I was thrilled with the success of Open Day, when 63 families came to look round from a significant range of local schools. I was especially proud of the student guides and very grateful to the parents who also supported the event. James Dennett deserves great credit for his very smooth organisation of the day. Partly as a result of Saturday, my diary is full up for the next few weeks with many more parental visits.

As in the Prep School, some of the prefects were officially appointed during assembly on Monday. The Bronzes are our school prefects and the Stars are house prefects. The Bronze and Star appointment and "promise" goes back to the early 1930s and I know of various former pupils of my age and older who still treasure their Bronze badge. The Bronzes this year are playing an even greater role in the school than normal. All 22 of them either have a responsibility with a form or for a subject and all are helping the younger members of the school in active and positive ways. Some are also running clubs to add to our extra-curricular programme.


Founders’ Day is next Saturday and this includes a service in St. Mary’s church at 2.30pm, where the House Banners are paraded and former pupils return to school. Helen Sheehan Dare and Mary Jacoby are remembered particularly on this day for their work in establishing our school from its earliest beginnings in Bexhill in 1912 to its rapid development following the move to Battle in 1923.


Some of their traditions are still with us (Stars, Bronzes and the house system). I hope too, from reading their various writings on education and the school that we are still continuing their strong traditions of pastoral care and innovative educational thinking. The pupils must remain at the centre of all our planning and development as a learning community. It was the case in the 1920s as it is the case today.


As we look back on 99 years of the history of the school, the words: "Hold on to the never-changing, important, human and educational values but move with the times," seems as good a motto for the school today as any.

I look forward to seeing many of you next Saturday.

Roger Clark - Headmaster

September 16th - Message from the Headmaster

Dear Parents

So much has happened already this term and it is barely ten days old.

I was thrilled to be there in the boarding house last night when the news came through that one of our Hong Kong boarders, who has been at the school for seven years, had won the emergent artist prize at the Battle Contemporary Arts Festival. (There were, incidentally, only two school-age artists in the whole competition, both from Battle Abbey School.) I was delighted to share with him his moment of triumph and also to hear Mrs Stewart’s excited voice at the end of the telephone. One of the great privileges of being a head teacher is being able to bask in the reflected glory of one’s pupils. David Cheng deserves great credit, as does our inspirational Art department. This award comes hot on the heels of the national awards for textiles won by Alice King and Harriet Pankhurst at the end of last term.

Our pupils have been enriched by two theatre trips to London already, by five inter school matches and by two "bonding days" for Year 9 and 12. Form Captains have been appointed and the new senior prefects are working very well supporting the learning and pastoral life of the younger pupils in the school. We have "Form Bronzes" and

"Subject Bronzes", who are assisting teachers in delivering the best possible programme for our pupils in Year 7 to 11. All the Sixth Form biologists are away to the north Norfolk Coast for a long weekend to sample rivers, rocky shores and study heathland succession ….. and now, tomorrow it is Open Day.

Very sadly, two key part-time members of staff fell ill right at the end of the holidays. We are in close contact with them and every effort is being made to avoid disruption to the pupils’ learning as a result of these unforeseen absences. I am sure that you would join me in sending every good wish for a speedy recovery to Mrs Halls-Bryant and Mrs Lloyd.

The Summer holidays are long gone! Especially for many of the staff here whose term began with the new boarders induction week which began on Bank Holiday Monday. Rak Patel is to be thanked for setting up a very stimulating week for our newest boarding recruits and I would also like to thank Sue Bonell, our extraordinarily hard-

working Bursar and her team of excellent support staff for all they achieved when the school was in summer recession.

As always, I invite your all to remember that we are a partnership. The staff here want to work closely with the parents to develop these wonderful young people – the pupils of Battle Abbey School.

Best regards - Roger Clark