‘Why do we need to know this?’ and, ‘Is this in the exam?’ are two of the most dispiriting questions to hear as a teacher. We want to reply like W B Yeats and say: ‘Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.’ We like to think that each lesson is like those adverts on the television where children stare in wonder at the magic their teacher is weaving and the ‘aha’ moments zip around the room like Christmas lights. We don’t want to face the fact that for some children the ability to solve quadratic equations or identify sibilance in a poem will never be needed as adults.

On Saturday, 27 November, Warwick School competed in the regional round of the National Concert Band Festival, which took place in Warwick Hall. Six bands from Warwick School entered the competition, all with the goal of impressing the panel of adjudicators and gaining a qualifying award for the National finals in Manchester in April. 

At the beginning of term, I presented a school assembly on Fred Mulley, an Old Warwickian, and a leading Labour politician of the 1970s. 

I told the boys that I thought he was the sort of person whom it would be good for them to emulate because he always pushed himself further to be the best he could – probably because of that early Twentieth century labouring background in Whitnash.

This Thursday saw us once again joining together in the school hall to commemorate the fallen from Warwick School. This year the event saw us looking back at the Second World War and started with an address by the current Head Master. He read out the Headmaster’s letter to the Old Warwickians (OWs) from the December 1940 issue of the Portcullis.

Junior School students showed racism the red card today.