Focus on Education Prizegiving October 2021
Alongside all the staff at HGS, who have worked hard over the last couple of weeks to ensure that our school is ready for a new term, I want to formally welcome you all to Prizegiving 2021. It is great to be back – albeit in a scaled back way.
A special welcome to Professor Cameron who will say a few words and present the prizes shortly:
Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Aston University
Grammar School Boy – Captain of School and Captain of Rugby
University of Sydney – University medal 1986
Rhodes Scholar – Oxford – Doctorate from the Robotics Research Group – Rugby Blue
Harvard Business School 2015
Aston 2016
2018 one of 5 candidates for the Guardian University Award for the most inspiring leader
2020 The Guardian University of the Year
27 students to Aston this year and 6 First Class Honours Degrees by HGS students
Although we have rightly relaxed COVID restrictions around the site in terms of no longer having bubbles, we are still very conscious that your lives at school will not be like the days you experienced before the pandemic. Your wellbeing and health is central to our plans for this year and we still have some precautions in place that will be familiar to many of you.
Last year was at times a very strange experience. We were surrounded by Covid information signs, one-way signs and floor markings, had to navigate changing Government advice, had to manage the move away from exams to Teacher Assessed Grades, were required to wear masks, and had numerous restrictions on socialising. However, as I worked alongside some quite remarkable colleagues in the thick of it, I kept reminding you (and myself for that matter) of a mantra that I have used a few times in the past but somehow resonates so strongly with the past 20 or so months.
What I explained was simple: success in life is measured not by how high you fly, but by how well you bounce. It’s about how well you come back from adversity and upset, and how you don’t ever let the fear of failure stand in your way.
HGS and our wider community of the King Edward VI Foundation and you, the students within it, have this last year bounced back with immeasurable boldness and flair. You have collectively proved to be the most adaptable and resilient of people, impressing your teachers at every turn with your constant determination and can-do attitude. I have previously said that we shape our surroundings, and then our surroundings shape us. Clearly, I was in part referring to the buildings in which we study and learn be that Big School or the Sixth Form Centre. We are fortunate to have a wonderful blend of the old and the new on our site. Indeed, this year we will be celebrating our 160th Anniversary and it should not be forgotten that HGS is Birmingham’s oldest Grammar School. But dig deeper, and I’m referring to something far more cerebral than that.
Stones and cement, lime and mortar act as a mould to the understanding of our place in history.
But it’s how we mould ourselves, as people, as individuals, which ultimately moulds our surroundings and, in turn, how we mould each other.
You are all HGS students. What does that mean?
It means that you are expected to work extremely hard. Your teachers and I will never accept mediocrity.
We will never be satisfied with the satisfactory.
It means that we expect you to have a love of learning, to be inquisitive, to be positive.
But most importantly, in addition to hard work and determination to achieve exceptional academic results, it rests on five values.
You will be constantly reminded of these in the months and years ahead. You’ll find them on posters, forming part of your learning and the House System and they will serve as a foundation for how we believe you need to live your life at school, and how you subsequently live your life when you leave.
Community, Aspiration, Respect, Endeavour, Service.
HGS CARES.
If you embrace these values, if you show ambition in everything you do, whether it is in Geography or Football, if you keep resilient and determined whatever challenges life throws at you, if you’re humble and can walk with Princes and Paupers, if you show love and care and kindness in all your dealings, and if you can really support others in their darkest of moments by showing compassion in your words and your actions, you will not just simply be a fine young person, you will be a role model to others – a true Handsworth Grammar student who leads by example. A force for good through your actions and deeds, which will stay with you your entire life.
A word about exam results:
A Level and GCSE Exam Results Summer 2021
As a school we have had to endure (and I use the word endure quite deliberately for another year) a disrupted Examinations season which has been (again) full of uncertainty and mixed messages from Ofqual, JCQ and the various Examination boards. We have navigated our way through the maelstrom and we have acted with compassion, fairness and kindness throughout with our student’s best interests at heart.
At A Level nearly 45% of all entries were A*A grades, 70% of all entries were A*A B grades with an overall pass rate of 99.8%. Nearly 40 students attained all A* A grades and 60 students attained all A* A B grades or higher.
At GCSE we enjoyed an overall pass rate of 99.8%. 33% of entries were at grade 9 to 8, 62.1% at grade 9 to 7, 87% at grade 9 to 6, 97% at grade 9 to 5 and 99.8% at grade 9 to 4. Our Progress 8 score was 0.91 and our Attainment 8 score was 72.2.
Our teachers and support staff have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic to do their best for the students in their care – whether in school or at home. Not only have they provided a high quality of creative teaching, both online and in person, but they have shown the greatest concern for the well-being of those in their care.
A word about activities outside the classroom:
Charities supported are:
Birmingham Age UK, BID Services, The Trussell Trust, Children in Need, Cancer Research UK, Comic Relief, Parkinsons’, Woodland House Birmingham Women’s Hospital Charity, Let’s Feed Brum, Royal British Legion, Movember, Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, Guide Dogs for the Blind.
We cracked the Enigma Code using a raspberry PI and secured a Computer Science Digital Enterprise Award.
We held Digital Concerts – fantastic!
Music and LAMDA results – fantastic too!
Clubs and Societies slowly coming back – Tropical Fish Club!
Art, D of E Expeditions.
SF Rewards Trips, Cannock Chase, Twycross Zoo, W Lakes.
At KEVI Foundation Athletics Competition our Year 7 4x100m Relay team won Gold!
House sport was back as part of the House Cup competition – Cricket, hockey, Athletics, Handball, TT and so on – Nelson!
Cricket T20 Finals.
Equality and Diversity Committee.
Biology and Physics Big Quiz – beating local rivals!
Site Update – D4, Wall art, façade, Stained Glass Window – 160th Anniversary. Oldest (original) Grammar School in Birmingham.
Back in the classroom:
T&L Action Plan, KRC, Evidence based approach, Literacy AP, PD, CPD (collaboration and sharing BP), Reading Plus, Outreach.
Priorities, SDP, DDP, SEF, MERTL, CPD Plan – joined up thinking which puts:
People at heart of what we do at HGS.
I finish with the famous words of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th American President between 1901 to 1909. He promised the people of America fairness through his policy of the Square Deal. He wrote a piece called ‘The Man in the Arena’. It sums up our five values. It sums up the determination of someone who never lets the fear of failure stand in their way. It sums up the importance of bouncing back from adversity. It is about resilience and grit. It sums up what being a HGS student is all about.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
I wish you all a hugely successful, happy and enjoyable academic year.
Stay well and safe.
Be kind to yourself and others.
