Annual Review 2010

ANNUALREVIEW 2010 Academic Success in Year 8 W

e can feel justly proud of our Year 8 boys who have successfully negotiated their way through the rigours of their final exams to secure places at the most sought-after independent schools in the country.

Of the 257 Common Entrance papers taken in English, Maths, Science, French, Latin, Ancient Greek, History, Geography and Religious Studies, 83% were graded A or B and 51% graded A – a record that stands comparison with the outstanding achievements of leavers in recent years.

The competition for places in the leading independent schools grows fiercer by the year, these results confirm however, that Arnold House boys not only win their places but do so in some style and gain inclusion in higher sets when they arrive.

The key to this success is threefold: the commitment of the boys, the support from parents and the expertise and guidance of the teaching staff as the boys progress

through the school.

Particular congratulations must go to the five boys who had the honour of being entered for scholarships: Andrew Lewis (Music), Ned Lutyens (Sports and All-rounder), and Nat Philipps (Music) all performed strongly and will have benefitted greatly from their experiences despite missing out on an award. To the delight of us all, Hugo Fry (Cricket) and Wilf Wheeler (English) were recognised for their talent and potential by St Edwards, Oxford and Mill Hill respectively. John-Ross Tan was also rewarded by Harrow with the Clay Prize for his outstanding set of Common Entrance results.

Above: Years 7 & 8 boys take part in the annual Twenty/20 Cricket Match at Lord’s

ANNUAL REVIEW | JULY 2010

Senior school destinations

Number of boys transferring

Bradfield

1

Bryanston

2

Charterhouse

1

Eton

2

Harrow

1

Marlborough

2

Merchant Taylors’

1

Mill Hill

2

Rugby

2

St Paul’s

8

The Harrodian

1

Westminster

3

Winchester

1

Curriculum Development and Innovation Drama Our Drama programme has improved significantly over the last year with the introduction of Drama lessons in Years 3,4, and 5. Higher up the School, Year 6 boys produced two plays on the Greek Myths as part of their Compass Course and Year 7 took part in four Canons Park Drama Days leading to a summer term production for parents of the themes studied.

In November our Year 8 boys took part in a memorable evening at The Unicorn Theatre in Southwark. They were part of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, performing an abridged version of Macbeth, and were joined by three other schools on the night. The Festival brings together 10,000 young people across the UK, performing in sixty seven professional theatres. The audience included one of the writers of the abridged texts, Penelope Middelboe, who gave feedback after their performance.

She complimented the boys on their atmospheric production and the way they conveyed the ‘power play’ between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth at the heart of a ‘filmic’ rendition of one of Shakespeare’s blackest plays.

Drama in the Pre-Prep with performances at the Harvest Festival, Christmas Nativity and Summer Concert are well established as is the Years 3 & 4 Arts Festival in the spring term. We are now in a position to provide a similar level of opportunity for Drama to thrive in the senior school.

Science Week Our new Head of Science, Jenny Lyons, introduced a programme of events for our first Science Week in March. Activities included dissections, science based pub quizzes, making ‘silly putty’ and a series of ‘Eggsperiments’, culminating in Year 6 hosting a Spaghetti Nest competition for Year 3. Many of the Years 7 & 8 boys took part in the Royal Society of Chemistry/ Bill Bryson competition and the rest of the School responded to the National Science and Engineering Week “Endangered Species” poster competition with much enthusiasm.

The Pre-Prep and Junior School boys also enjoyed a plethora of events including exploding coke bottles , volcanoes and perfume making.

Music Technology Since their full installation in the music room over February half-term, the iMacs have been used predominantly by boys in Years 7 ANNUAL REVIEW | JULY 2010

Above: Year 8 composing music on the new iMac computers

& 8 for project work involving the preinstalled ‘Garage Band’ programme. This is a virtual music studio which has replaced the previous Windows-based Sequel and O-Generator programmes, offering the boys a much wider canvas to mix, record and multi-track their own compositions in digital quality sound. Thus far, topic work has comprised composing music and synchronising this to a television advert, remixing tracks to a well-known pop song, designing music for a whacky product, radio and TV jingles, musical clichés and 12-bar blues pieces.

Using a line microphone, boys also have the option in future projects of recording live instruments, or combining iMovie with Garage Band to create a multi-media presentation.

With the connection of the existing Yamaha keyboards to the iMacs, boys have been able to compose their own pieces, send them complete to iTunes or burn them onto a CD, and then listen to what they have created on their iPods only a few hours later.

Madame Stones. The introduction of this technique means that boys and parents can listen to the native French pronunciation of these words as they learn. The boys can pause and repeat the words and can also download material onto an iPod which is particularly useful for boys higher up the School in preparation for their Common Entrance examinations.

Netbooks After a successful trial period in the autumn term, all boys in Years 7 & 8 were issued with their own Latitude 2100 Netbook – small laptops created by Dell and adapted to the classroom environment. These are recharged every night and carried by the boys to their lessons during the school day.

The introduction of the Netbooks has, in effect, created four mobile IT rooms. This in turn has alleviated pressure on the use of the main IT room by senior boys and enabled classes in the Junior School to use computers more widely in their work.

With such an enviable facility in place at Arnold House, there is now the scope to include younger boys in occasional music technology lessons as an extra dimension to their learning.

French Technology Our boys learn to pronounce and spell French vocabulary from as early as Year 3.

The weekly spellings are not only issued to the boys as a hard copy for their homework, but the words are recorded and downloaded into our Pupil Intranet Site (Drop Box) by

Above: Year 7 using their Netbooks in the classroom

Visiting Speakers The number of visiting speakers to the School has increased over the course of this academic year in our efforts to broaden the boys’ interests and awareness of life outside the school gates. Visiting speakers have included: author Guy Bass who gave an interactive presentation to Year 3 about his ‘Dinkin’ Dings’ series, an Internet Safety talk by an external expert aimed at boys in Years 5 to 8, a number of visits from our charity representatives enlightening the boys on how small amounts of money can make a big difference and a visit from Father Malcolm Hunter who spoke to the Year 8 boys about working with the homeless.

Above: Author Guy Bass visits Year 3

Residential Trips Programme It has taken a while to put into place but we now have a coherent programme of residential trips for boys to take part in during their time in the Senior School.

We are fortunate to have many members of the teaching staff who believe in the value of these trips and willingly volunteer to take the boys away.

Year 5

Teamwork Week to Devon

May

Year 6

Leadership Week to Devon

May

Year 7

Art & French trip to Paris

February

Year 7

Geography Field trip to Dorset

June

Year 8

French trip to Burgundy

September

Year 8

First World War Battlefields trip to Flanders

June

Years 5-8

Ski trip to Switzerland

April

1st XV

Rugby Tour to Bisham Abbey

March

1st XI

Cricket Tour to Jersey

June

Above: Year 8 visit the Battlefields in Flanders

ANNUAL REVIEW | JULY 2010

Communication with Parents We have encouraged all parents to make a point of reading up to date news and information about School events in our weekly newsletter - ‘In House’. Sent electronically on Friday afternoons it is our key means of communication with parents on all general school matters.

With the increasing uncertainty of the post we have increased our use of email with letter attachments to communicate more effectively with parents. All copies of letters, those relating to school trips for example, are saved in a parents’ file on the website and parents are alerted to letters sent by the School via the Clarion Call text messaging facility introduced at the beginning of the year.

Form Teachers remain the first and most important point of contact for parents regarding their son’s well being and progress. Whilst many issues or concerns can be dealt with by email or on the telephone, it remains the case at Arnold House that informal chats or formal appointments between staff and parents take place as a matter of course during the busy working week.

Bursary Scheme

Charity

Bursaries at Arnold House are now available to new entrants to the School in Years 5, 6 or 7. Such awards are intended to extend the benefits of an Arnold House education to boys with sound academic potential and strong personal qualities whose families would not otherwise be able to afford the School’s fees.

With the help of the Parents’ Association, the School continues to support its designated local, national and international charities with great fundraising success.

This year saw us break all records raising a total of £13,834 through a number of events including: themed charity days, tuck shops, raffles, the Autumn Festival and end of term church collections.

Bursaries are funded through a combination of the School’s fee income and donations from current and former parents, old boys and friends of the School.

By September 2015, it is hoped that the number of bursary places available at any one time in the senior years at Arnold House will increase to eight.

A thorough selection and consultation process began in April 2010 and from that we expect to have a total of three boys with us in September benefitting from the scheme. We wish them well as they follow in the footsteps of the School’s first Bursary pupil who is having a very promising first year at Rugby School.

Parent Handbooks, one for each of the four sections of the School (Pre-Prep, Years 3 & 4, Years 5 & 6, Years 7 & 8) are now distributed at the start of the academic year to provide parents with an aide-mémoire to curricular changes and new routines for the year ahead.

At the end of the last academic year, the boys chose to support ‘The Homestead’ in South Africa as our International charity.

A number of the boys and their families visited the charity in Cape Town over the Christmas break and Eddie Villiers (current parent and AH old boy 1968-76) recently reported back that many parents have added significantly to donations raised through School events to bring the total to over £40,000! A fantastic effort, which has enabled the charity to start building a new block for the street children.

Money raised through School events The Homestead

£8,465

St John’s Hospice

£2,689

Haiti

£1,815

Poppy Appeal, Marie Curie & Lifeboats

£865

Total £13,834

New Events November ‘Open House’ for current parents May Grandparents’ Day Years 1- 6 June Headmaster’s Forum for Year 4 ‘Life in the senior years at Arnold House’

Above: Raising money for ‘The Homestead’ on South African Day

Arnold House School 1 Loudoun Road St.John’s Wood, London NW8 0LH Telephone: 020 7266 4840 Facsimile: 020 7266 6994 Email: office@arnoldhouse.co.uk Website: www.arnoldhouse.co.uk Arnold House School Ltd (Limited by Guarantee). Registered in London Number 889424. Educational Charitable Trust Number 312725

ANNUAL REVIEW | JULY 2010