Opening Remarks

‘A game of two halves’; one of the oldest sporting clichés, yet one that most accurately sums up the 2019/20 academic year at Wellington. Covid-19 ensured that this was a year like no other. This Yearbook will try and reflect most of what went on both before and after the lockdown. To set the tone, here are the forewords to the January and June editions of Wellington Today, a small magazine prepared for parents and prospective pupils.

Wellington Today January

September, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness — and for many a sign that the year is all but done — has its own special place in Wellington life. Far from signalling an ending, for us it is all about new beginnings, the spring of our academic year. 267 new pupils joined the College, along with 18 new members of the teaching staff, all ready to play their part in the ongoing story that is Wellington. And this year, perhaps most importantly of all, saw James Dahl, the 15th Master of Wellington, take over the leadership of College.

And with that came new purpose and vigour, and a reaffirmation that Wellington really is so much more than just a school. Medea The Musical, written and directed by one of our Sixth Form pupils, set the tone for the Michaelmas Term, and reminded us that anything is possible at Wellington if only the dreams are big enough. More great drama and dance followed with the annual dance show and a stunning performance of Our Country’s Good. The choir toured Germany, sang Evensong at Guildford, and graced no less thanfive carol concerts. Orchestral and Jazz concerts, singer songwriter evenings and regular informal soirees all played their part too, as did the Welly Fringe, a week-long celebration of creativity just before half term. Unbeaten hockey seasons for the girls, national rugby titles for the boys and unparalleled success for both boys and girls in the Queen’s Rackets Championships were but some of the sporting stories that our talented youngsters wrote. Festivals of Leadership, Service projects and Global Citizenship reaffirmed our values, while Remembrance Week allowed current Wellingtonians to pay respect to those who had gone before.

And as the term — and decade — came to its end with mock (and real) elections, so too came a sense that 2020 would see more new beginnings and even greater opportunities for all the girls and boys at Wellington, who, as these pages show, have already done so much to make the very best of themselves. It is, after all, only right that they should be the living proof of the words that greet all our visitors as they enter Front Quad for the first time. Virtutis Fortuna Comes.

Wellington Today June

‘Never such innocence again.’

It seems strange sitting here in glorious sunshine — just after Wellington’s first ever Virtual Speech Day — to look back to when it all began. 2020 dawned and with it a sense of real promise: a new term, a new year, a new decade. Exciting Oxbridge results, international sporting successes, and the annual Lent Term musical, this year the stunning Sweeney Todd, reminded us all that, as is so often the case at Wellington, anything is possible. But as academic study began to loom larger for those facing the reality of mock exams, so too did worrying news from across the globe as China, and our international schools there, went into lockdown. It couldn’t happen here, could it?

But as February morphed into March, and with it the European spread of the virus, it became quite clear that it would. Preparations for virtual school began in earnest: new software was installed, teachers were briefed, online lessons planned and practised. The penultimate week of term saw two major announcements on Thursday, 19th March: all UK schools were to be closed, all public exams cancelled. By Friday evening, every pupil had gone home; by Monday, 23rd March, Wellington had gone virtual, with all lessons delivered via Microsoft.

The Summer Term has seen Wellingtonians (and their teachers) increasingly confident with Remote Learning. For the Third, Fourth, and Lower Sixth Forms it has been very much business as usual, while the Fifth and Upper Sixth have enjoyed new courses bridging the gap between GCSE and A Levels, IB and Undergraduate work. The co-curriculum has continued to flourish, thanks to the prodigious achievement of two Computer Science pupils who set up the WellyHub: dance, drama, music, art, and sport have enabled fitness in both body and mind. Duty and service have remained central, with individual and school-wide examples of both great ingenuity and selfless generosity. Speech Day, while very different this year, has once again acted as a celebration of the way of life that is Wellington.

Wellington today is not quite the same as it was back then, but this Wellington Today seeks to record not just how College adapted to the new normal, but to celebrate the achievements of the school both before and after Covid changed all that we thought we could take for granted. It has been quite a journey, but one that confirms that a Wellington education remains as alive and as vibrant as ever.

It was indeed quite a year, and I hope that this Yearbook will in some small way capture the extraordinary spirit of the school — and will provide proof of the determination, imagination, and resilience of all Wellingtonians, both past and present.