Education
ABOVE: “Our pupils are amazing because they’re encouraged to be amazing,” says Sacred Heart’s Headmistress Sr. Francis Ridler
Academic achievement and real lessons in life... Swaffham’s Sacred Heart School has just celebrated its centenary, but it still holds firm to the mission of its founding sisters to put service before self, as Headmistress Sr. Francis Ridler explains
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bove the assembly hall at Sacred Heart School in Swaffham hangs a large (and very competent) reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s famous 1937 painting Weeping Woman. On closer inspection, however, it’s actually comprised of over 100 separate square tiles, each one of which was independently painted by one of the school’s pupils. “It’s a perfect example of one of the school’s central strengths,” says Headmistress Sister Francis Ridler, who first became Headmistress of the school in 1979. “Projects that involve
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the whole school working together helps emphasise our ethos of ‘service before self’ and encourages the pupils to understand how they fit into a wider community.” Sacred Heart School started life over 100 years ago, when the first Sisters of the Daughters of Divine Charity arrived in Swaffham from Austria. It was June 1914, two years after Swaffham’s parish priest Father Joseph Vendé had approached the Superior General of the order with the suggestion of founding a convent in the town. The school’s first pupils arrived at the convent’s first home in Providence
Terrace in July, and despite the considerable difficulties caused by the outbreak of WWI just a few weeks later, Sacred Heart flourished. It moved to its present site in 1920, and both the educational and boarding facilities have been improved and extended considerably over the years. The gymnasium and dining room arrived in the 1960s, a new swimming pool and playground were constructed in the 1970s, the Lower School block and Middle School buildings were completed in the 1980s, and the sports hall was opened in 1997. In 2000, the Sisters bought the old
KLmagazine September 2014