The Wellington Family

Eagle House

When we began the new school year, we were looking forward to the many exciting challenges and events as we always do, and for seven months all was well. With the extraordinary life changes that the global pandemic threw at us in late March, we have all been on a steep learning curve. The buzz, positivity, and excitement that usually echoes through the classrooms, buildings, and grounds disappeared in April and May, although over the last few weeks of the Summer Term, all pupils managed to have some time in school.

2020 is our 200th anniversary, the school having been founded in 1820, and it was to be a year of celebration. We managed to enjoy a wonderful thanksgiving service in Guildford Cathedral in January, where the whole school along with parents, friends, and former pupils marked the anniversary with a feast of music and readings. We also took the opportunity from our Make a Difference Day in February to look back at the school’s history and some of the events of the last 200 years. Many other celebratory events were planned but have been postponed until such a time as it is safe to hold them. It is certainly a birthday the school will not forget.

This year saw our first pupils embark on Curriculum 200 — our new, bespoke curriculum. With Eagle House no longer having to follow the Common Entrance syllabus, we were free to make our own choices and decisions about the learning that would take place in the classroom. Curriculum 200 incorporates five key aspects: a knowledge-rich curriculum promoting as many relevant cross-curricular links as possible, regular and rigorous modular assessment to assess progress and performance, standardised testing to assess pupils against national norms, independent learning projects to promote intellectual curiosity, and finally a focus on meta-cognition and the development of key learning and personal skills. There is now greater dialogue in classrooms regarding how pupils learn, with the children grading themselves on their levels of motivation, resilience, organisation, and engagement. Independent learning projects enable pupils the scope to develop their intellectual curiosity and their independent learning skills. It is an exciting time to be in the classroom.

The pandemic created the biggest change in education in the school’s history. Home learning for 3-to-13-year olds took over in April, and everyone adapted superbly to the challenges. There is no doubt that learning remotely has really tested the pupils’ learning skills. Through Curriculum 200, we aim to develop the children in key areas and for remote learning to have been successful, the children have had to develop in every one of these. We can only thank our wonderful staff and hard-working pupils for their resilience and innovation during lockdown.

In September, we welcomed everyone to our Children’s Literature Festival; our biggest ever! 23 top authors and poets attended, including Chris Riddell, Abi Elphinstone, Anthony McGowan, Marcus Sedgwick, and Onjali Q. Raúf. The two-day festival brought a reading buzz to Eagle House, and as well as our own pupils, 400 children from eleven different schools attended. Two days of talks, book signings, and masterclasses left us even more passionate about our reading.

Trips and challenges, workshops and competitions have inspired pupils of every age, and the breadth of opportunity continues to be a source of great pride. Over 50 activities are available each week, and pupils are encouraged to get involved with as much as possible. Service has developed further this year, helping children understand how fortunate they are, and encouraging them to give back to the community. Visits to care homes continued into the beginning of the Lent Term, and we welcomed friends from two residential homes to Eagle House for their very own carol concert. Groups have been in the local community, tidying churches and litter picking on the common, while the Global Social Leaders

organised the ‘Plus Two’ campaign to raise much needed provisions for the local food bank.

Sport at Eagle House is at the heart of the school, and this past year has seen an injection of energy and enthusiasm which has facilitated the tremendous successes achieved. U11 hockey boys and U12 netball teams won regional IAPS tournaments and qualified for National Finals. Our annual cross-country event saw over 650 competitors take part. Eagle House won the U12 open race and came second in the U13 race. Thirty-two children enjoyed a successful ski trip to Madonna Di Campiglio, Italy; four pupils qualified for the Prep School Lions football team; there were netball, rugby, and football successes at local tournaments, and an unbeaten season for the 2nd XI Football squad. The curtailment of sport in March deprived us of our cricket and golf seasons, and we look forward to resuming them next year.

Lunchtime Concerts have been excellent this year. There has been a huge amount of variety (including hearing an Erhu), showcasing both absolute beginners and our accomplished music scholars. Perhaps the musical highlight was the service of Thanksgiving at Guildford Cathedral. The whole school enjoyed a magnificent service of readings, prayers, and celebratory music. James McCarthy was commissioned to write a whole school anthem: The Eagle. Years 3 to 8 sang with organ and orchestra; it was an inspirational anthem and truly moved the whole congregation.

We enjoyed Wellington College Orchestral and Young Singers days, but our annual competitions for soloists and singers, as well as the showpiece summer concert, had to be cancelled. Nevertheless, our talented pupils were awarded seven music scholarships from a variety of schools, showing what great shape music is in at Eagle House.

In March, we were to perform the musical Seussical at the Annenberg Theatre, but Coronavirus stepped in ten days before the opening night and the show was cancelled. It was fortunate that we managed to mount a studio production of Treasure Island in November with Year 7 and 8 actors. This was a tremendous success and allowed us to use the Edleston Studio in a really flexible way. The cast of twenty-two worked very well together and our three shows were sold out.

Art and Design continue to thrive. The creative output of students before and during lockdown has been wonderful to see, with pictures, collages, models, and photographs all being produced. Our design team made over one thousand personal protective visors for the NHS in the early stages of the pandemic.

In September, the boarding house saw a complete refurbishment, and we opened to a record number of full, weekly, and flexi boarders. The refurbishment provided an excellent opportunity to redecorate and ensure the dorms were welcoming and homely. Enormous thought and care go into ensuring that whilst each dorm is carefully designed and decorated, there has to be space for each child to make their room their own. They have been renamed after trees that can be found in the grounds of Eagle House. The activities and events during boarding time continue to be some of the most enjoyed in school, and it was a shame that the boarding year came to an end in March.

The summary of events is a little lighter than usual, and although so many things have been cancelled or postponed, the Eagle House community has still delivered an extraordinary year with many highlights and achievements. It will be remembered for a long time for several reasons, but perhaps most importantly, for the reminder that people are extraordinary when faced with a challenge. Eagle House is testament to this.

Wellington College International

This year has seen our family of international schools continue to grow, both in terms of student numbers and their global reputation for all-round excellence. With five schools in China and one in Thailand, there are now approximately 4,000 students being educated within our international family of schools. All are leading schools in their region, and they continue to produce well-rounded Wellingtonians, with excellent public examination outcomes and university destinations.

Covid-19 has had a global impact on education. However, all our schools have been incredibly innovative with their e-learning provision to ensure academic progress, while at the same time supporting the wellbeing of their students. We have also seen the clear benefit of a network of world-class schools who can collaborate and share best practice to learn from each other in such unprecedented times for educational institutions.

Scott Bryan, International Director

Wellington College: Tianjin

Julian Jeffrey, Master

It has been a year without precedent in the school’s history. The public examination results were the best yet, with our graduates moving on to some of the world’s finest universities, and pupils in years 11 and 12 giving themselves the best possible preparation for their applications in the future. We have also welcomed some extraordinarily talented youngsters to the school through the various scholarship programmes on offer. As well as a crop of hugely exciting academic scholars, we welcomed two highly promising golfers to our elite athlete programme. This scheme not only offers generous fee remission and support with training, but also requires the scholars to hold their own among their classmates in terms of academic progress; no mean feat. As with our acclaimed sister school in the UK, we will soon have a golf team that represents the very best of Wellington’s values and reflects our emphasis on pursuing excellence. Music and performing arts have once again been highlights of the year, with memorable Christmas and Spring Festival performances, a programme of more informal lunchtime concerts, and a unique collaboration with the Tianjin symphony orchestra for a production of Carl Orff’s ‘Carmina Burana’ that will live long in the memory. In drama, the week-long Junior School showcase in October and the Chinese language drama Under the Roof of Shanghai once again showed the versatility and talent in abundance across the school.

Of course, the year will be remembered too for the global pandemic caused by the coronavirus. The enforced physical closure of the school from 3rd February meant that we shifted to an online programme of teaching and learning. Teachers and pupils, even those scattered across the globe after the Spring Festival, and hamstrung by the restrictions on international air travel, found themselves engaged in extended e-learning, including those as young as the pupils in the Pre-Nursery. It has proved a longer journey than anyone could have guessed, but it has been a time of new ideas, enlivened practice, and regular reinvention. Teachers, pupils, and parents have worked together to overcome the inevitable monotony of long stretches of online working. Our collaboration with Microsoft, as China’s first international school to be recognised with Showcase status, has provided us with the training and IT infrastructure to provide imaginative, varied, and challenging lessons to all our pupils. The progress and achievement made by our pupils has been mightily impressive — their commitment to their learning has done them all great credit — but as we now lift our eyes to resumption of learning within the estate of the school, we are determined not to forget the lessons of the past few months, and to build an ever-stronger learning platform for our community.

Wellington College: Shanghai

Gerard MacMahon, Executive Master

The Michaelmas Term was like any other: more growth for the College, more excellent teachers joining our wonderful pupils, and more parents welcomed into the Wellington community. Our October international food festival was testament to our diversity, with 46 countries represented. Christmas came, and as we prepared to celebrate the year of the rat, almost all staff and pupils departed for the Chinese New Year break in mid-January.

We did not know that it would be June before we would have all our pupils on site again. For almost four months, the learning of every Wellington pupil was online. Going online when almost all teachers and pupils were spread around the world presented new challenges. It is a credit to our pupils, staff, and parents that Wellington Shanghai continued so strongly through these months. On May 6th, we were finally able to welcome our Year 10 and 12 pupils back to the College for physical lessons. Week by week all our pupils, including our very youngest in the new Early Years centre, have returned to us. Unfortunately, we do not have all our families back with us yet. The borders into China for foreign nationals closed in March and have not yet reopened. However, we have still been able to bring those pupils into our Wellington classrooms, virtually. Teachers quickly learnt and implemented the new technology to enable the pupils in their classrooms to be joined online by their classmates stranded around the world.

The shape of the coming year is not yet clear, but we do know that the strength of the Wellington community all over the world will endure.

Huili School Shanghai

Gerard MacMahon, Executive Master

The Huili Schools offer a curriculum that follows the standards and syllabus stipulated by the Chinese Ministry of Education and the Zhejiang curriculum framework but deliver it in a manner that promotes the values and identity of an authentic Wellington education.

Huili School Shanghai currently has pupils from ages 6 to 13, and over the next five years will become a 6 to18 school. We have been watching the new, very large, high-school building growing, ready to open in 2021. We have our high-school licence, and the founding head of high-school, Lana Kulas, will join us in August 2020.

We were honoured to host the Cambridge University interviews for East Asia. Seeing the Cambridge team and all the prospective candidates in our school’s familiar surroundings has really inspired our young pupils to aim for the world’s best colleges after high-school.

Though making charitable donations to good causes can be difficult in China, we have now moved to a strong legal footing with our Friends of Huili charity, comprising parents, staff, and a charity advisor. Two charity projects, an organic garden and a special Olympics, are already under way. The Covid-19 period has required resilience and will make us all better prepared for future challenges. With the school closed for all from mid-January to mid-May, and our youngest pupils only returning in early June, everyone at the Huili Shanghai worked hard to make the most of this difficult situation. The three-month e-learning provision was appreciated by parents, and the school reopening was even more welcome, with 95% of pupils returning immediately.

Huili Nursery Shanghai has been working on collaborative research, with the Institute of Learning and Durham University, into the impact of StoryTalk for EY2 pupils. The resulting paper, Developing communication and language with young bilingual learners in China, was published in the International Journal of Bilingual Education.

Wellington College: Bangkok

Christopher Nicholls, Master

Returning to the campus in June, after an extended period of (what parents called) Remoted Learning, our students took ZERO time to get back in the flow. It was not exactly as if we had never been away — masks now hid every smile and a slew of signs told us to wash our hands — but we were reminded once again that being sensible and phlegmatic, and planning carefully, gets you a long way. And Wellingtonians take everything in their stride.

This was a year of success – our U11 boys won the Basketball League and Cup double, for example, displaying sangfroid and skill in a sport where we certainly did not start with a height advantage. After two decades of dominance in Bangkok, the Harrows and Shrewsburys have a new reason to look over their shoulder: here come Wellington.

In the classroom, it’s all been about the beautiful relationship between form and function, between environment and education. The increasingly dynamic and effective use of Learning Studios, the multifunction open areas that have banished ‘corridor’ from the lexicon of school life, has allowed a rich and free-flowing culture of independence and interdependence to develop and flourish. This in turn will be fully realised in the Senior School, which will be, without doubt, one of the world’s most wonderful places to study.

The Friends of Wellington carried all before them in 2019/20. An extraordinary Christmas Fayre brought the whole community together in a really amazing way. And the unfeasibly muscular House support we get, at every opportunity, is completely astonishing.

An enforced mutedness hung over the opening of our spectacular new Theatre at the end of the year; we were still socially-distancing and avoiding big gatherings. But we dare you to come to Bangkok, stand on that stage, and not feel a barely controllable urge to perform. My ageing guitar hands, made weak by time and fate but strong in will, are itching to sound a power chord to the rafters. What shows we will present to the world. What marvels!

Wellington College: Hangzhou

Paul Rogers, Executive Master

Wellington College International Hangzhou has shown impressive pupil growth during this academic year and looks well set to achieve impressive enrolment (during a difficult time) for August 2020.

With older pupils beginning their IGCSEs from August 2020, the school has employed a range of excellent specialist staff and is looking forward to starting this programme and further development towards A Levels in the future. Their bespoke campus continues to be built apace, and this transformative school building will be ready for pupils and staff in August 2021 for the academic year. Its distinct Wellington architecture compliments the existing campus buildings, which will very shortly become fully occupied by the Huili school, whilst at the same time adding that distinctive feeling as befits a Wellington College. Our school coped with the COVID-19 pandemic with great professionalism and the rapport with parents during this time was very strong, with 100% of parents in surveys expressing how satisfied (or better) they were with the teaching, communication, and progress of their pupils. The management structure within the school continues to expand, and retention of staff within the school is excellent.

Our working relationship with Wellington College in England continues to be very strong too, as does the close networking with

other international schools within the Wellington group as a whole. Our school looks forward with real enthusiasm to an even more successful year from August 2020.

Huili School Hangzhou

Paul Rogers, Executive Master

Huili School Hangzhou has also gone from strength to strength. We are proud to have started the year by becoming the first bilingual school to gain accreditation from COBIS. This followed a rigorous five-day visit, which resulted in over a quarter of the accreditation criteria being judged as blue riband status, and therefore recommended as the very best practice within the group.

We again had excellent feedback from parents, who in our surveys during the rigorous e-learning period, registered a satisfaction rate at almost 100%, deeming the quality of e-learning provided (including live teaching) from the beginning of February through to April when pupils returned, to be exceptional.

Huili started the calendar year with a new Head of Primary, who has made a huge impact within the school and as part of his remit, introduced a whole band of internal middle leaders in preparation for the new academic year in 2020/21, where with the nursery, we will welcome in almost 1,300 pupils.

In addition, Huili Nursery Hangzhou has once more excelled during the year, setting the benchmark for quality of provision not only in Hangzhou, but further afield. Working closely with Wellington College China Central Office, they have become a hub of excellence, and as a result hosted a large number of training sessions for external staff, as well as hosting various visitors from sister nurseries over the academic year. With the appointment of their new Head of Early Years, and internal promotions of year Heads, they have moved to strengthen the internal leadership structure within the school.

During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, they were one of the first schools to implement ‘supported home learning’ and were specifically praised and noted by Hangzhou Education Bureau for their efforts in this field. They were also one of the first schools in the province to successfully re-open their doors to Nursery children in Zhejiang, and the first in the Wellington group.