1923-2023 CENTENARY CAMPAIGN NEWS SEPTEMBER 2022
Centenary Campaign
CAMPAIGN NOW WELL UNDERWAY The start of the Autumn Term marks the beginning of Belhaven’s Centenary year. Preparations are well in hand for a great Centenary Ball at Belhaven on May 27th 2023, which will stand as the high point of the celebrations.
with the Centenary Campaign to date. Such a milestone should be marked not just by celebrations, but also by investing in the School and in future generations of pupils. Having launched without fanfare in September 2021, to small groups of former Governors and old friends of Belhaven, the key aims of the Campaign were identified and developed with their advice and support.
It feels appropriate, however, to start this new academic year with a brief report on the progress made
Since then, we have continued in the ‘quiet phase’, inviting different generations of Old Belhavians and
former parents for drinks or dinner both at School or in homes around Scotland. We held our first London event, with a small drinks party in Pall Mall at the end of April.
fundraising target of £2 million Plans for the Centenary year were outlined to current parents at a Jubilee party at Belhaven on 26th May and a further drinks party is being held at the Drum in Edinburgh on 4th October, for current and former parents and alumni.
It has been wonderful to see how happy the generations of Old Belhavian families are to be brought together. The sense of fun, the love of the School and the loyalty it commands has been universal. It has been a privilege to meet so many of the people who have contributed to the School community over the century and to hear their stories (scrapes and mishaps). Olly Langton has spoken at each event about the Centenary Campaign and our plans for celebrating the Centenary with a programme of events and reunions and the response has been incredibly positive and inspiring. For a small School, with fewer than 2,000 alumni and four children in its first intake, a fundraising target
of £2 million is ambitious, but it has been gratifying that the warmth of the response so far indicates that it should be achievable. Archie Struthers, a current parent, has kindly agreed to lead the Centenary Campaign Committee and a committed group of Old Belhavians, former parents and Governors is organising the events, while a core team orchestrates the fundraising campaign. Michael Osborne, the School’s institutional memory personified, has been involved at every stage; putting us in touch with former pupils, participating in the video and attending most events. The Centenary Campaign is in two parts; with an initial target of £1 million to set in train phased Capital Projects investing in the
infrastructure at the School and a further £1 million to provide bursaries over the next few years (called Centenary Awards) and to create an endowment fund providing substantial and transformational bursaries to children in the future, whose families would not otherwise be able to contemplate a Belhaven education.
...plans for celebrating the Centenary with a programme of events and reunions
Two causes: Centenary Proj Having outlined the plans for the proposed development at Belhaven at the start of the Campaign, we have been working with Michael Laird Architects and focusing on the detail of Phase 1 and the creation of the Makerspace building. With a prototype temporary Makerspace housed in an existing classroom, our plans have been revised, informed by the way the children are using the temporary space and a clearer idea of the role it could play in School life and that of the local community. We have appointed a Project Manager and a firm of Quantity Surveyors. With them we have been working on preparing the planning application and ensuring that every aspect of
the building costs are identified, controlled and carefully managed.
enthuse and engage the pupils The Makerspace will be the hub for the School’s bespoke Digital Education Programme. A group of experts in the fields of digital technology and education were gathered by the School to advise on the creation of this Programme. After careful planning, two generous donor trusts gave the School a total of £100,000 to bring the Programme to life and recruit a ‘purplespotted unicorn’, or exceptional Computer Science teacher to lead it. Over the past two years the ambitious programme has been rolled out and the technological infrastructure introduced to enable it. The Programme was initiated to create an opportunity for Belhaven’s pupils to learn the
principles of coding and computing in a fun environment, free of the shackles of a national curriculum and formal exams (both of which constrain the teaching in senior schools). We all hoped that, once established, the Digital Education Programme would enthuse and engage the pupils and show them the practical uses for a subject that can appear very dry when taught in isolation in a classroom. In Spring 2022 a group of five elevenyear-old boys were inspired to enter the national PA Raspberry Pi Competition 2022. At the start of May, having been selected as one of three finalists in their age group, the Belhaven Project Polar Bear Team travelled to the Finals at the Science Museum in London. On 5th May it was announced that they had won the section for Years 7 to 9 (pupils aged 11 to 14). In enabling this project and supporting this
Prior to the start of the Centenary Campaign the School had reviewed and reinforced its bursarial provision. In the year 2021/22 we gave the equivalent of approximately 12.5% of our gross fee income in bursaries. It is central to Belhaven’s objectives as an educational charity that it should enable children from families who could not afford private education to enjoy the opportunities that the School can offer. Having already worked with donor trusts to match-fund a couple of transformational and significant bursaries to children in the School, we have extended this scheme for the Centenary. Thanks to some extremely generous early donors to the Campaign we were delighted to
be able to welcome three recipients of the new Centenary Awards to Belhaven this September for the Centenary Year. None of the three children could have conceived of a private education without 100% bursarial support; one of them is a local child from East Lothian, who will join the School for two years and the other two are from a Syrian refugee family (coming for one year and three years respectively) who have been living in distressing and difficult circumstances in Glasgow. We have been offered similar funding explicitly for a Ukrainian refugee child and have approached various charities, the East Lothian MP and the Ukrainian church in the hope that they might know of a family in need. We are also working with the Royal National Springboard Foundation and hope that if funding allows, we may be able to provide
100% bursaries to one child a year, identified and supported by their charity from 2023 onwards. The opportunities such awards will afford bursarial recipients are enormous and genuinely transformational. They will benefit from the security and comfort of life in a happy and welcoming School and be supported and prepared for entry to a senior school of their choice with equivalent levels of funding. In turn, the bursarial pupils will enrich the Belhaven community and contribute to the life of the School.
Two recipients of Centenary Awards are from a Syrian refugee family.
jects & Centenary Awards team of talented boys, Belhaven has achieved what the Digital Education Committee had hoped might be possible. Such publicly acknowledged success is wonderful for the School, it will show other younger pupils what they can aspire to and will be enormously helpful in our Centenary Campaign as we try and raise the funds to create the Makerspace. Donors and supporters have shown real enthusiasm for our plan to equip and offer the finished Makerspace for wider community use, both as a centre for teaching digital skills to others, but also as a hub for meetings and creative thinking for local businesses, charities and schools.
DONATIONS AND PLEDGES So far, we have received pledges and donations in excess of £675,000. £130,125 has been either donated or pledged specifically to fund the Capital Projects. Donations to the Centenary Campaign generally (with no designated purpose) amount to £213,706. We have received specific donations to support Centenary Awards amounting to at least £231,203 and a single founding donation of £100,000 to establish an Endowment Fund for future bursaries. All of the figures given include Gift Aid (where it has been applicable). Several donors have chosen to extend their gifts over a number of years, maximising the amount that the School receives and the personal tax benefits such donations attract. Others have used CAF accounts and in one case a donor transferred a shareholding to the School that would have attracted CGT if he had sold it, but was tax-free as a donation
to Belhaven. We have also been grateful for indications from a few donors that Belhaven will be left a bequest in their wills. Unlike most senior public schools, while it has received significant gifts over the years, Belhaven has not benefitted from an established culture of longterm support. We hope that the Centenary Campaign will encourage a spirit of philanthropy in the School’s community and while consideration of our own mortality is never appealing, bequests from Old Belhavians and their families will help secure the School’s future long into Belhaven’s next century. Thank you once again for your interest in and support of this lovely school. If you would like to discuss the Centenary or our plans for the School with Olly Langton or Camilla Gray Muir (the Chair of Governors), they would be delighted to hear from you. We very much hope to see you at one of the celebrations or reunions in the Centenary year.
£2M
£1M
£675K now raised