From Headteacher Mark Grady
So, here we are a week from the end of the most challenging year I think many of us in education have ever known. We have made it, we’re still going, and what has been at the heart of this fantastic achievement has been that Rugby High School ethos of kindness, care and respect. Since March, we have looked after each other via a host of online sessions, we’ve chatted over the phone, made videos and audio recordings, we’ve tried to stay in touch with weekly newsletters, and a daily greeting throughout the first full lockdown for staff and for students.
Education is about making connections, about the cut and thrust of debate and chat in the classroom, and to have that removed, and then only partially re-instated has meant that we’ve had to change and change quickly. Staff, overnight, got to grips with a variety of online platforms in order to continue to support student education. The pastoral team had to adapt where and how they continued to support the wellbeing of students, and as departments and teams, we had to work out how best to stay connected, and informed.
Not only did we have to ensure the safeguarding and education of our community, but we had to contend with the challenges of submitting centre assessed grades for exams, we had to support our outgoing year 11 and 13 students who lost out on those all-important rites of passage: leaving assemblies and Prom. We had to support the school and students through the ins and outs of DFE decisions about OFQUAL algorithms and make sure they got off to university, or onwards to A-Levels of their choice.
We had to find a way through the “return to school” in June for small numbers of students and in September for the whole school. We regularly clock up many many more miles of walking in the school day, due to the one-way systems, and our water and cleaning bills have gone through the roof as over a thousand hands are cleaned a considerable number more times a day than they ever used to be.
We have dealt with the occasional case of Coronavirus, pushing through periods of self-isolation, but staying connected through live lessons and remote learning.
We have ensured some aspects of the RHS calendar still happened: The Sixth Form Entertainment, Foundation Day, creative writing club, and we have used the words “unprecedented” and the “new normal” an unprecedented number of times, until the point where they really are, the “new normal.”
We have achieved so much as a community, we should be finishing 2020 positive that despite the great challenges faced, and the difficult times some of our community have faced, we have got through it together, with heights firmly set in our hearts.
As we see 2021 on the horizon, RHS is still going strong, still a beacon of joy and curiosity in learning, still a kind and warm place to be each day. I, of course, mean emotionally warm. Not physically. With all the windows open for ventilation, it is never warm!
Even in our year group and form group bubbles, even though we don’t congregate in numbers and we haven’t come together in one room as the school community since last December, we know we are all part of the one community of RHS. Each of our actions every day has the capacity to change the world, and, if we take each day as it comes, like we have done since March, then step by step, day by day and week by week, we will continue to grow stronger together!
Have a very peaceful Christmas, and I wish a safe and healthy New Year to you all!
