Head Master’s Final Assembly

Welcome to the final assembly for 2023; and before I start, a huge well done for all you have achieved this year. Believe it or not, it was the first academic year we have had without any COVID restrictions at all; and the energy with which you have thrown yourselves into life, both inside and outside the classroom, has been terrific. So, as usual, today we are going to sing our way out for the year, before tomorrow’s Speech Day, and start with Hymn Number 150, Who Would True Valour See.

ACADEMIC

So we start, appropriately, with the academic side of school life – and a number of reports, beginning with IB. Well done to those 14 boys who received their results this week;  I hope that things work out well for you in the coming months as next stages start to work themselves out.

Theory of Knowledge

Remove students have completed their Theory of Knowledge Extended Essays. The standard of the essays was extremely high. The judges were very impressed with level of engagement, depth of research and quality of analysis.

Runners-up prizes go to the following four students:

• Ivan Yu for a discursive essay on whether students should delay attending school until they are seven years old.
• Lucian Davies for an essay on the importance of psychology in tennis.
• Harry L’Estrange for a video on the influence of the jazz musician Bill Evans.
• Anton Gryaznov for a very well researched essay on the use of ferrofluid in genetics.

Winners’ prizes go to the following three students:

• Akram El Gabour for a thoroughly researched discursive essay on the pros and cons of a total smoking ban.
• Samuel McMurran for a sophisticated discursive essay on whether Francis Fukuyama was right in his 1989 essay ‘The End of History?’.
• Fraser Morgan for a project on how German nationalism in the First World War influenced constructed languages. The project involved authoring three Wikipedia articles and reflection on the research process.

HM Commendations 

• Luke Langridge (Lower Sixth) – for excellent learning behaviour grades and his willingness to support the learning of others.
• Fraser Morgan (Remove) – for continued excellence across school life, including the achieving three commendations this term.
• Ansel Chan (Remove) – for continued and consistent academic excellence across his subjects, exemplified by the two commendations he has received this term.
• Stirling Smallwood (Fourth Form) – for his unfailing commitment to the broad co-curricular life of the school, and his consistently high level of effort towards his academic studies.

Academic Merit Awards:

75 Academic Merits go to:

• Charlie Brett (Fourth Form)
• Charley Kopoi (Fourth Form)
• Leo Mathew (Fourth Form)
• Mike Halahan (Remove Form)

And 100 Academic merits to:

• Oscar Qualtrough (Fourth Form) 

Maths

Large numbers of boys from all year groups took part in the UK Maths Challenge competitions. This year, 134 students achieved an award in the Intermediate Challenge and 122 in the Senior Challenge. The top five in the Intermediate Challenge were Jason He, Sam McMurran, Erik He, Jameson Liang and Michael Moretto. Jason achieved the best result in the school and both Jason and Sam went on to achieve a merit in the next round. In the Fourth Form, William Chen went on to achieve a merit and the highest result in the second round.

In the Senior Challenge, the top five were Jason He, Charlie Dowrick, Oliver Jones, Frederik Simmen and Damon Yu. In the Andrew Jobbings second round challenge, the highest results were from William Reddy, Frederik Simmen, Charlie Dowrick, Oliver Jones, Cyrus Goddard and Jamie Wallwork. All should be congratulated. Jason, as top in the school, went on to sit the Mathematical Olympiad and performed well.

The Junior Maths Problem Solving club has enjoyed tremendous success this year. The students underwent training to proficiently apply their mathematical skills in solving maths cross numbers and taking part in relay races. Moreover, they received training to enhance their problem-solving capabilities.

Pythagoreans, our Sixth Form mathematical society, has had a great year, led by our senior boys Dylan Morgan-Jones, Charlie Dowrick, Tai Tsang-Goodwin, Nat Lord and Jamie Wallwork. There have been numerous internal and external speakers, with several of our students, as well as OBs and Bedford Girls’ School students giving excellent talks on areas of interest to them. The Christmas Quiz was once again incredibly popular with mixed teams from Bedford School, Bedford Girls’ School and Bedford Modern School. The highlight of the year was Alex Bellos coming into school to give several talks, both to the whole school during a Great Hall assembly and smaller groups on the origin of numbers, probability and how we all have a special ‘favourite number’ for a whole host of different reasons. We look forward to another exciting year ahead.

Computer Science

Computer Science has had a busy year. This year we ran the Bebras Computational Logic Competition with 664 boys from Year 3 up to the Upper Sixth – the highest number of boys who have ever taken part from Bedford School before. Fifty boys across the school achieved gold awards which puts them in the top 10% of the UK for computational understanding and logic. Best in School awards were achieved by Tahir Alom and James Robertson in the Fifth Form and Oliver Jones in the Lower Sixth.

We have also achieved recognition in both the Lockheed Martin Code Quest and Cyber Quest competitions, achieving first place in the elite level coding and second place in the standard level cyber security. A special mention in particular needs to go to Fraser Morgan (Remove) who was in both teams.

All of the Remove and Fifth Form computer scientists took part in the Perse Coding competition earlier in the year, with 10 getting through to the advanced round. The top team in this round was Chris Bonnington, Michael Moretto and Oscar White.

Next year, the department plans to install its own competition server to allow the boys to pit their coding skills against each other and perhaps even try inter-house coding competitions, so watch this space!

Outside of coding, two ethics debates have taken place between Bedford School, Bedford Girls’ School and Bedford Modern School on topics such as the impact of artificial intelligence on the modern workplace and discussion on how much a government should use technology. Keep an eye out for the next one in the autumn term.

Entrepreneurship

Enabling boys to take 100% ownership of their life, supporting them in making a positive impact in the world around them, and encouraging exploration of innovative ways of doing this, has been the focus of our self-leadership development and entrepreneurship opportunities this year.

The Ready2Lead? Conference, running in the autumn term, brought together over 80 delegates from across Bedford Borough to learn about leadership, and to develop project ideas for meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It ended with a networking and celebration event, that showcased projects that tackled issues as diverse as educational inequality and period poverty.

The Ivy House Award, now in its fourth year, challenged more than half the Lower Sixth to envision their future, to lead themselves towards it, and to develop the skills for doing so. As part of this, a number of this year’s Ivy House Award cohort took part in a first collaborative event with Biddenham Upper School, embracing the opportunity to put into practice their learning in a new context.

The Entrepreneurship Society has continued, including a recent meeting where OB Doug Worboys shared the story of his new sports fan app, Jostl, and involved the boys in some user interface testing. The year ended with Start Up!, Bedford School’s new Entrepreneurship Award. Aimed at Fifth Form students who had completed their GCSEs, the week started with OB and entrepreneur, Harry Beard, introducing the idea of a minimum viable product (MVP) and culminated with two fledgling businesses pitching their ideas to their peers, staff and members of the business community.

CREATIVE ARTS

Art

Head Master’s Art Prize and Best in Show
The Student End of Year exhibition is the major contribution by the Art department to the Creative Arts Festival and it is a real celebration of all of the hard work by boys at GCSE, IB and A-Level. On my visit to the department to choose the winner of the Head Master’s Art Prize, I was particularly taken by the work of two artists. For his exciting range of sculpture in a variety of different media including his giant ants and beetles produced for his final exam, Ted Ferris really impressed. However, for the scale, ambition and the ability to incorporate his passion for maths and physics in an exciting visual way, the Head Master’s Art Prize goes to Connor Hawthorne.  

The Best in Show is voted for by visitors to the exhibition. The opening was incredibly busy and lots of votes were cast, but the clear winner, by a considerable number of votes, was Tom Godber for his striking exam print of birds.

 The summer term got underway with the exhibition opening of work by Mark Bennett. Mark has retired from teaching at Kimbolton School and, on the evidence of the work on show, has been extremely busy. The exhibition opening was very well attended which, pleasingly, resulted in a good number of sales.

With a return to the first full GCSE and A-Level format since pre-COVID, the early part of the summer term was taken up with a packed and full exam schedule to ensure that the 10 hours for the GCSE and 15 hours for the A-Level were met in good time for the exam timetable and before the Fifth Form and Upper Sixth boys went on exam leave. The impact of this meant that talks for both the Architecture and Art Societies were delayed until these crucial components of the courses were completed.

For the first Art Society meeting of the term, Mr Croker spoke about a recent commission when he was asked to copy Gericault’s monumental and iconic masterpiece, the ‘Raft of the Medusa’. All boys have to do copies as part of their work at GCSE, IB and A-Level, so it was an opportunity for Mr Croker to explain what he learnt from the experience. The fact that all artists look at other artists is a good thing to remind the boys about, as there is sometimes a reluctance and frustration about the whole process. As Picasso himself said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal”.

During half term we welcomed the Bedford Sketchers, a group of local artists who meet regularly to draw at various venues around Bedfordshire. The group of 30 artists were given free rein to draw anywhere on the school site and, with the boys still on holiday, they were able to draw in peace and uninterrupted!

With his work hanging in school, we were delighted to welcome Mark Bennett to talk to the Art Society about his exhibition ‘Pathways’. Boys were fascinated by the rendering of details in his work, so to hear Mark talk about the whole picture-making process was incredibly helpful.

Louis Montgomery (Lower Sixth) is looking to do an Architecture degree, so for the Architecture Society he talked about ‘Building a Greener Future: A Guide to Sustainable Construction’. In an insightful and well researched talk, Louis really impressed by showing a design for a building he had been working on independently.

For his Art Society talk, Alex Ying (Lower Sixth) very ambitiously talked about Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo and their importance both to the Renaissance and the whole history of Western Art. Alex explained the historical background to their work and the importance of the Medici family in particular.

Stephen Leng (Lower Sixth) is another aspiring architect, and he talked passionately about his favourite architect, Kengo Kuma. Focusing on Kuma’s theory of the ‘Architecture of Defeat’, Stephen picked a selection of his most famous buildings including the V&A Museum in Dundee, highlighting just what it is about Kuma that makes him one of the most prestigious architects in the world.

Barnaby Williams (Lower Sixth) is specialising in printmaking for his coursework, and for his talk he focused on Edward Bawden. Barnaby has done some excellent copies of Bawden’s work, so it was no surprise that his talk was both informative and thorough.

Luke Dover (Lower Sixth) talked about the artist Ai Weiwei, explaining how controversial he has been throughout his career. Luke highlighted Weiwei’s use of ancient objects as part of his work and asked the question of whether this amounted to vandalism, which generated an interesting conversation between the boys. Luke’s engaging talk was a good way to round off the Art Society talks for the term and year.

Drama

It has been a very busy term for the Drama Department, undertaking some specialist workshops, GCSE/A-Level devised exam performances and trips. We started the summer term off with a production of John Godber’s Teechers. This was performed by drama scholars Henry Gillham, Stanley Breed and Matt Hackney. “Their timing and choreographed movements were faultless.” (Comment by review critic for the Bedford Independent.)

The main focus this summer term has been our annual Creative Arts Festival. Our keynote speaker, Rob Sloan (Creative Innovations Manager at Walt Disney), launched the Festival, engaging the whole school with his heartfelt message about the need for creativity in society. His drama background has clearly made a profound effect on him and we were delighted hear that his directing has helped him with projects, in terms of creativity, leadership skills and resilience.

In the Quarry Theatre, a cast of Fourth Form, Remove and Lower Sixth students performed Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, a piece of theatre with such complexity that it requires a highly skilled team of actors, and every actor was excellent. The ensemble nature of the piece was particularly dramatic, as well as some well-tuned singing from all cast members. This was the first performance that started as a workshop club at lunch times, entitled ‘Key&Bough Theatre Company’, its aim to work with a range of different age groups and promote student directors/designers. Students have been rehearsing since January and the Drama Department have been very impressed with all the commitment from each cast member. The cast were supported by a strong technical team: Jamie Eaves (tech support), Jacob Foster (sound) and Charlie Faulkner (lighting). In addition, we were delighted to have Louis Cooke as assistant director on this project.

The Cast:
Grusha: Matt Hackney 
Simon: Will Hayward  
Old Man Right: Oliver Quince 
Old Man Left: Ralph Franklin 
Singer: Giles Halsey 
Solider/Adjutant/Delegate: Jared Love 
Kato/Fat Prince/Corporal/Azdak: Millan Verwoert
Peasant Woman Right: Thomas Hudson 
Peasant Woman Left: Charlie Lawrence 
Doctor 1: Advik Mishra
Doctor 2: Daniel Hudson 
Governor’s Wife: Louis Cooke  
The Governor/The Peasant: Henry Gillham  
Maro: Charlie Gibson  
Cook: Thomas Hudson 
Iron shirts: Jared Love, Advik Mishra, Ralph Franklin, Charlie Gibson 
Lavrenti: Henry Gillham 
Sister-in-law: Advik Mishra
Mother-in-law: Daniel Hudson 
Monk: Oliver Quince 
First Lawyer: Charlie Lawrence 
Second Lawyer: Jared Love 

Auditions for our next major school production ‘Christmas Carol’ will take place in the first week of the autumn term. We look forward to seeing lots of students audition.

Our Academic Drama Society has continued to flourish and we continue to meet weekly. Thank you to our President of the Drama Society, Charlie Lawrence, who will be stepping down from the role at the end of this term. He has been an outstanding leader for the younger boys and his lectures have been excellent.

We wish to thank our Lower Sixth Drama students for their support with our Shakespeare stage combat workshops with community partnership schools.

Finally, we wish to congratulate drama scholar Henry Gillham on him securing a place with the National Youth Theatre for Great Britain. Henry will be attending a summer workshop in Glasgow with other successful candidates.

Music

This has been an extremely busy, but successful, term for the Music Department. The beginning of the summer term started with a quartet of concerts: The Bands’ Concert, the Composers’ Evening, the Prize Winners’ Concert and the Jazz Orchestra accompanying the Bedfordshire Independent ‘Everyday Heroes’ Awards. It was great to see so many boys involved in such contrasting styles of live musical performance, with some outstanding individual performances, in particular at the Prize Winners’ Concert. The Senior Young Musician of the Year was awarded to Aaron Lim and the Junior Young Musician of the Year to Ryan So. Weekly lunchtime concerts continued throughout the term giving boys the opportunity to hone their performance skills. Towards the end of term, we were treated to a delightful evening of folk music organised by Murray Silk in aid of a local music charity, which included an impromptu ceilidh at the end! That was followed last week with an excellent evening of jazz music in the Quarry Theatre provided by a number of jazz ensembles including the Jazz Orchestra. Yesterday, it was the turn of the singers and instrumentalists to perform in the Chapel and Great Hall. Mentions in dispatches must go to Gideon Chan and Daniel Hutchins for their starring performances as soloists in yesterday’s concert, and many thanks for their leadership of the Music Society this year.

CUPS

The McGavin Cup is awarded annually in the memory of David McGavin, an old boy of the school, who was killed in a car accident a few years ago. David’s parents wanted to have the cup awarded to someone they felt exhibited the same qualities as their son, namely integrity, kindness, perseverance and leadership, in a number of areas of school life. This year it is awarded, in absentia, to Kabir Singh.

CCF

The approach of exams in the summer term inevitably shifts the training tempo and focus in the CCF. The Lower Sixth assume the leadership roles in the Corps, and their skills received their first significant test in the Recruits Field Weekend on 24 June.

This involved 45 Fourth Form recruits learning to live in the field, cooking and building shelters; a process not helped by the fact that this was the hottest weekend of the year so far.

Routine Wednesday training continued for the Army and RAF throughout the term. The Navy sailed at Priory nearly every week and this term also saw cadet training begin with the CCF’s new Field Gun.

The customary CCF barbecue occurred on the last Wednesday of term, attended by more than 60 cadets, and we look forward to our Annual Camp on the Isle of Wight in the second week of the summer break.

Duke of Edinburgh

This term, the Bronze participants have undertaken a practice navigation walk, each group with a member of staff. They then completed their Assessed Expedition, which on the whole was completed with some excellent navigation. They took place in very hot temperatures and the participants coped with these conditions very well.

Over 90 pupils have signed up for the Bronze Award next year and these participants are starting their activities over the summer. After finishing their GCSEs, the Silver participants set off for their Assessed Expedition in the Yorkshire Dales. The weather conditions were varied, but the scenery was beautiful. The participants had learnt a lot from their practice expedition in October and completed the expedition in really good spirits. The Gold participants set off to the Lake District the day after Speech Day and we are hoping for good weather for them.

Sport

Athletics

The school competed in a number of events, which included relay, track and field and multi-events.  The team enjoyed a particularly successful day at the District Athletics competition. Danny Chapman, Sam Deardon, Sam Barnes, Ferdi Barnett-Vincent, Owain Harries, Novie Ikeneku, Shion James, Justin Fasanya and Oliver Sheldon all won their district event. The intermediate boys won their competition by some margin as top three finishes were commonplace. It was certainly fitting for them to win the 4 x 100m race, and in some style. Many boys went on to represent the district in the County Finals, where four were crowned as county champions, Ferdi Barnett-Vincent – hammer throw, Oscar Hayward – long jump, Alfred Wright – hammer throw and Justin Fasanya – 4 x 100m relay. 

Most pleasing aspect about the season was seeing boys try new events and work hard to beat their personal bests. All participants supported one another and there was a great team spirit. Kasper Yu must be mentioned for being most improved in every athletics discipline, particularly sprint and distance track events. 

Minor Sports Colours were awarded to:

• James Holliday

Beach Volleyball

The Sixth Form won the U18 Beach Volleyball tournament on 28 June and the shield Brighton College awarded them will be presented now.

Cricket

The cricket programme for the academic year started in October 2022 and the boys had access to first class coaching from the likes of Northamptonshire legends, David Sales (batting) and David Ripley (wicket keeping), Cricket East bowling coaches, as well as excellent coaching from the staff and local coaches. It has been a successful year for cricket, with most teams winning the vast majority of their games. Overall, 73% of the matches have been won and a special well done to the U14Cs, U15Cs and U16As, as they won all their matches.

The U14A team are in the County Cup Final, the U17s reached the regional final of the National Cup, whilst the 1st team did well to get to the quarter finals of the National T20 Cup and also win the local T10 competition. The U15s had arguably the performance of the season in the game against Tonbridge which, for the first time, was played alongside the annual 1st team two-day game. The U15s looked dead and buried when Tonbridge were 120-1 chasing 160 to win; however, leg spin twins Ben Bruce-White (7 wickets) and Leo Mathew (3 wickets) changed the game around to bowl Tonbridge out with just a handful of runs required. Bearing in mind that Danny Chapman has also been churning out the wickets for the 1st XI, leg spin looks like having a rosy future at Bedford.

Overall, it has been another very strong season for the Cricket Club, which has been thoroughly enjoyed by the boys and the staff. 

Honours Cap awarded to:

• Vedant Somal

Major Colours for cricket were awarded to:

• Charlie Blythman
• Zaid Faleel
• Jamie Dunk
• Max Hunt
• Harry Wootton Evans
• Eldon Craven
• Joe Mullaney
• Sam Bayley

Minor Colours for cricket were awarded to:

• Tommy Baddeley
• Freddie Drake-Lee
• Khush Shah
• Matt Weimann
• Josh Addo
• Jamie Welch
• Kush Katechia
• Luke Langridge
• Jonny Weimann
• Tom Bates
• Will Trobe
• Isaac Dutson

Fives

This year, there were fixtures in most cases home and away against Oundle, Derby Moor, Bedford Modern (at least twice), Berkhamsted, the Old Bedfordians (OBs) and Rugby School. In addition, Bedford hosted the East Midlands Regional Tournament in the spring term with students from Oundle, Stamford, Derby Moor, Rugby, Bedford Modern all attending on a busy Sunday. Our boys secured an outstanding finalist position in the U18 doubles for Sachin Kambli and Fraser Morgan and in the U18 singles as well for Sachin, narrowly losing to Rugby. But there was a recovery in the final fixture of the season, with Bedford’s First IV beating Rugby School’s First IV by 107 to 99 in a close game.

On the domestic scene, regular co-curricular Fives continues. Junior House Fives was won by Crescent, and Senior House Fives by Paulo Pontine. The Mellor Cup (supported by three-times winner of the National Schools, Peter Mellor OB) was won by Sam McMurran and the Dawes Cup by Sachin Kambli. Special mention goes to Finn Adams for coordinating the entire Year 9 and Year 10 summer tournament this year, and encouraging and training others, and to Will Spice for significant improvement.

Minor sports colours were awarded to:

• Karan Srivastava
• Callum Ward

Golf

It has been another incredibly busy summer term for the golfers with many successes, both individually and as a team. The first weekend of term saw the whole squad travel to the JCB Club for the HMC Strokeplay Tour Championship where the team finished tied for first place, losing on countback. From there, Fin Rennie, Jack Peters and Freddie Tucker travelled onwards to the ISGA Finals at Slaley Hall, where the boys ended in 3rd place – our highest finish in this event.

The team subsequently reached the HMC Foursomes National Finals by beating Culford in the regional final, in a very close game. It was here that the team achieved a milestone for school golf. In beating Radley, Gordon’s and Brentwood in the group stage, the team secured a place in the final to play Reed’s. Despite a narrow 1-2 defeat, the team of Ed Wade, Will Mowe, Freddie Tucker, David Wiltshire, Shaun Thomas and Will Wilkins, can be very satisfied in producing the best result for the school, in this prestigious competition.

The Golf Club thanks Shaun Thomas for his distinguished tenure as captain this season. He hands the role over to Freddie Tucker who has vowed to ensure we go one better next year and deliver our first HMC Foursomes title.

Minor Sports Colours were awarded to:

• Freddie Tucker
• Jack Peters
• Shaun Thomas

Rowing

The summer term focus for the rowers is always the National Schools’ Regatta at the end of May, where all age groups get the chance to see how they compare with their peers around the country.

The 1st VIII were disappointed to finish 11th at NSR, but they have had an extraordinary summer with wins at Marlow, Peterborough, Bedford and finally beating international competition from Green Lake USA, and Brisbane Boys School, Australia at Reading Regatta. The Henley Draw was not kind to the eight, drawing St Paul’s, who were the losing finalists, on day 1; this race however should not define their season which has been excellent.

The 2nd VIII group also dedicated themselves to the training program and received the reward of winning at Marlow, and then being the fastest second eight in the country at the Henley Royal Regatta qualifying races, where they missed out on a place in the Universities event by less than a second.

Stand out performers at the National Schools Regatta were the Colts group who took several notable scalps when winning a bronze medal, the first for the school in recent years. The Colts group also won many events around the country, including becoming inter regional champions; some boys in this group have collected as many as 10 trophies for the season, and so I apologise to parents who have had to put up new shelves, or trophy cabinets, to accommodate this silverware.

The Remove boys backed up their Schools’ Head victory, with strong rows in the B final at National Schools for both A and B crews, they also represented at the Inter Regional Regatta grabbing a bronze against the odds in a coxed four. Their season finished with some tough racing on the Thames at Thames Valley Park.

The Fourth Form boys had a slow winter, but once the summer came, they committed to the co-curricular sessions and soon saw the payoff with representation at the Inter Regional Regatta, wins in Bedford, Peterborough and TVP, A and B crews with B final wins at the National Schools’ Regatta. This year’s group have plenty of talent in depth, and we look forward to working with them in the years to come.

Thirty-five members of the Boat Club are now looking forward to the Australian tour, which leaves on Sunday.

Major Colours were awarded to:

• Jasper Walter
• Harry Tongue
• Barnaby Williams
• Harry Tolmie
• Archie Black
• Rupert Apps
• Dylan Mitchell
• Ben Edwards
• Scott Gildersleve

Minor Colours were awarded to:

• William Baker
• Will Tweedie
• Henry McCutcheon
• Sam Lock
• Hari Mistry
• William Cave
• Dylan Morgan-Jones
• Matthias Pascall
• Luke Pollen-Brooks
• Oliver Pritchett

Shooting

The summer term is usually the quietest in terms of competition as the pressures of exams make shooting multiple rounds of the BSSRA Leagues difficult.

The term did, however, see the conclusion of the House Shooting Competition. This is shot over the spring and summer terms, with the deceptively simple format of two 5-round groups and the winner achieving the smallest aggregate group size. This is a true test of marksmanship as a single mistake can send scores tumbling and competition was tight. Ashburnham achieved first place, with James Lumley-Wood’s aggregate group of 21.4mm, with Paulo Pontine 2nd and St Cuthbert’s 3rd.

Minor sports colours were awarded to:

• Alex Hayward

Tennis

With over 200 players this term, tennis has continued to develop at a rapid pace. The boys have continued to benefit from regular high-quality coaching and the opportunity to play regular fixtures means significant progress has been made. The Senior A Team has been outstanding and won 5 out of 7 matches. The Junior A Team won 6 out of 10 fixtures and won the Regional Division LTA Championships, as well as the Bedford Area Tournament. The B and C teams at all levels have also been highly competitive, with the U14B team also winning their area tournament, this week.

Last weekend, the Remove Form pairs and senior team played at the prestigious ISTA National Championships at Eton College, representing the school with distinction.

Minor Sports Colours were awarded to:

• Filip Arvinte
• Barnaby James
• Freddie Whittaker
• Tai Tsang Goodwin
• Matthew Pitt
• Max Pearson

Water Polo

A few friendlies were played during the term against Bedford Modern School and Stamford, with the players acquitting themselves well. Sam Barnes captained the East Region U16 team that finished 6th in the Regional Championships. Sam was also voted the Most Valuable Player of his team.

Gordon Guo was awarded his minor sports colours and will be captain for next year.

Head Master’s Scarves

There are two.

The first boy has only been at the school for the last two years, but he has made such an incredibly positive impression on the place in such a short time that I have had a number of different teachers write to me in almost unimaginably glowing terms! First and foremost, he is a House man. Coming in from a foreign country to be a full boarder not knowing what to expect he instantly threw himself into all aspects of Bedford School life. His positivity, kindness and genuine interest in others is seen in the House every day, whether this is during a game of pool, a conversation in passing or when he has helped others with their studies. However, he has also embraced school life. He has captained a Minor Sport, (squash), represented the school in cricket and always been willing to try something new; but it is his unfailingly supportive attitude which makes him stand out. To pick a few of many examples: Mr Vann was especially grateful when he filled in at Fives fixture at the last minute; he set up his own society which aimed to help others improve their study skills; he created numerous, high quality revision materials in geography (all of which would have taken considerable time) and actively shared these with his classmates; he volunteers to help all the time in his House; and he received this testimony from a parent of a younger boy, who recently told a member of staff that he had been instrumental in developing both his son’s love of the game and his self-worth. The parents said this: “We have spoken about how important it will be for our son to remember how he was with him, how he made him feel, and how he encouraged him. When our son gets to the Upper Sixth he now wants to do the same for the next generation of Bedford squash boys.”

I cannot list all of the tributes which have come his way, but the small acts of kindness add up every single day, and he is undoubtedly the most wonderful, selfless and kind young man. He is Louis Day.

When he joined us in the Fourth Form, this second boy was determined to try new activities right from the start, and he swam for the House immediately, despite knowing he would fall far behind the rest of the field (which he inevitably did but with huge support from the poolside). He was engaged throughout lockdown, cycling long distances and posting his rides on Strava, picking up Athlete of the Week and meeting regularly on Teams for socials when others were more distant. He was on the team for the online quiz which the Chaplain ran, and he has been involved in a huge amount outside of class ever since.  His main passion and interest is cornet, and he rounded off a fine music career at school with an amazing solo last night.  But it is worth listing his activities more generally, to get an idea of just how active he has been:  

Adrian Boult Society (president), Music Society (vice-president), Brass Ensemble leader, director of House Singing 2022 and 2023, tours team, House colours, arts colours (music), Housemaster’s Award for Outstanding Contribution, music scholar, minor sports colours (rowing), senior rowing four, National Schools Regatta, National Schools Head Athlete of the Term during lockdown, Chapel Choir, Symphony Orchestra (and concerto performance, summer 2023), Jazz Orchestra, Brass Ensemble, Concert Band,  Consort Choir, Ready2Lead?, choir tours (Benelux and Germany, Salisbury, Exeter), Detweiler Competition winner (music composition), grade 8 cornet (distinction), grade 8 singing (distinction), grade 8 music theory (merit), Bedfordshire Festival brass grade 6 to 8 winner, member of the National Youth Concert Band of Great Britain, Bugsy Malone (lead trumpet), 11 commendations, senior brass prize, junior brass prize, FJ Harrison Prize for German. How about that!

He has gone about all this in the most humble of ways, gaining confidence at every turn, and ending his time here as Head of House and leading by example in his ever-positive way. His time at school seems to have flown by, and he will be missed. He is Daniel Hutchins.

So, just before we leave, I want to acknowledge the wonderful hard work of all of your teachers, and indeed all of the support staff, on your behalf this year. They have been fantastic and I think you might like to give them a round of applause. Finally, can I remind you that Speech Day is a formal, and I hope enjoyable, event – please make sure you behave as brilliantly as you always do to round the year off well. I wish you all a very happy holiday.

I will now call the Chaplain to the stage to lead us in the School Prayer before we sing Domus Pater.