The Week Ahead

Saturday 17th January until Sunday 25th January

A big week in Wellington's history when on Tuesday 20th January, we celebrate the 150th Anniversary arrival of the first pupils at Wellington. Unfortunately there are no photographs available and the best I can do is a description of that first day, copied here from David Newsome's "History of Wellington College".

All turned out well.  The boys arrived on the 20th, a little bewildered at the strange, gaunt structure which waited to receive them, with its smell of paint and numerous traces of last-minute activities by workmen and decorators.  Great Gate was not in position, the gas not yet turned on.  'It was as miserable a winter day as could be,' recorded one of these boys, 'sunless, with a steady drizzle.'  The boys reported to their respective tutors - G F Wright, E W Sergeant and R J Donne - and were duly fed on bread, cheese and small beer in the Dining Hall, and despatched to bed.  A curious episode took place during the early hours of the next morning.  The whole school rose at 3am, thinking that it was time to begin morning operations (the turret clock had not yet been installed), and began to wander aimlessly about the Quad and surrounding heath.  The first appearance of Benson with a characteristic display of magisterial wrath quickly redeemed the situation.

With the fire alarm getting the in-college pupils up (erroneously) on Thursday of this week at 4:20 a.m some things haven't changed. Catering however certainly has!

The day is being celebrated with the formal re-opening of the Wellesley House and special dinners for all the pupils  in the evening.

The Master's Voice

One of the six areas in which Wellington is trying to provide a lead on the national stage for other schools is in the forging of partnership schemes with state schools.  We have just received £250,000 grant from the Government for a partnership with Berkshire and Surrey schools to promote educational excellence, we partner state schools in our Confucius Classroom mandarin teaching project, at the Wellington Academy in Wiltshire, and in many other areas.  The partnership activity that has caught the public imagination, however, has been the relationship between Wellington and young people from Burnley.   I attach links from BBC television and radio from Tuesday night as well as an article from the Observer. This Observer article  is in three sections: section 1; section 2; section 3. The other links are here: the 31st minute on Newsnight : Radio 4 - click here and go to the 30th minute. Radio 5 Live - click here and go to 41.33.

On Tuesday evening, I found myself defending partnerships and indeed independent schools for an hour against Alastair Campbell's partner, Fiona Millar.  It felt like a bear pit in places, but here is the link anyway: Radio 5 Live - click here and go to 9;00

General Events

Sunday 18th January  sees a full school Service of the Word at 8:00 p.m. at which the preacher is the Reverend Trevor Watt, Chaplain of Broadmoor. Parents of the Hill are invited to this service.

The second WCA event of the term is a Golf Morning on Saturday 24th January.  Do come and join us for a relaxed and sociable morning.  If you are interested please contact David Rennie.

The WCA is looking to expand its network of House and year representatives.  These are members of the parent body who support the Committee in liaising with the Co-ordinator and HMs to help keep parents informed about events that may be of interest to particular houses and/or year groups, and who have ideas which will contribute to the ongoing development of WCA as a parent body.  If you would like to be involved, please contact Denise Cook  

The Fifth Form Parents Conference is on Friday 23rd January and the relevant  parents should have received a letter about it - if not a copy can be found here. Parents are requested to respond to Sally Yarnton by Saturday17th January as per the letter.

The weekend is a weekend leave starting at 4:20 p.m. on Friday 23rd January for all pupils other than those involved in the Fifth Form conference. We look forward to welcoming back the boarding pupils by 9:15 p.m. on Sunday 25th January.

We are aware that for some parents it might be easier for their son or daughter to travel by public transport to avoid Friday traffic and it is of course also a more environmentally friendly option. We will therefore be trialling a system of using minibuses on this occasion to take pupils to Wokingham station. From there, pupils can get trains to Reading (which is a major hub for the rest of the country and also has a Rail air bus link to Heathrow) or across to Guildford / Gatwick Airport and beyond or to London Waterloo. The most obvious train times for us to focus on will be those leaving Wokingham between 5:00 and 5:30 p.m.. There is also the Crowthorne service to Wokingham (taking just 5 minutes) which runs at 4:43 p.m. and 5:38 p.m. which some pupils could use. Those pupils wishing to take advantage of a minibus trip need to inform their HMs by the evening of Tuesday 20th January  at the latest, indicating what time train they would hope to catch from Wokingham and their destination. We can then work out the logistics.

Parents are most welcome to have a school lunch in the Main College Dining Room on Saturdays. Lunches will be available to parents between 12: 30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. and the cost is £2.50 per head ( cash please) for a two-course lunch. Even if you will not be staying for a match do come along, make yourself known to the Duty Catering Manager who will guide you through the system. 

On Saturdays in the V & A the counter is open for coffee, tea, milkshakes and goodies between 9.00am - 12.00 Noon Between 12.00 and 10.00 pm the catering department will provide flasks of coffee and tea in the V & A for people to assist themselves. If you have any queries concerning these arrangements do either e-mail the Bursar ( 01344 444020) or the Catering Manager, Phillip Stockwell.

Do you use AOL web-mail to view this newsletter (and more particularly talktalk)? AOL's software seems to mess up the URLs for inline pictures, asks for the wrong thing.   The net result is the user sees the text only and lots of little red x's where the pictures are meant to be. We also get hundreds of error messages. To try and help we have emailed AOL's support address, but they bounced it saying they only deal with customers.  Therefore if it's happening to you, please do complain to AOL. To help us get an idea of the scale of the problem, if you could contact Derek Grainge here that would help too.

This term's calendar is now available on-line - click here to get to it. Unfortunately we were let down by the printers and were unable to include a copy with the end of term material. You should however have received a copy by now. In one major change, we have rescheduled  "Chorus Line" to the Summer term, so the performances in the calendar for the week beginning Monday 9th February are postponed.

Letters Home

To try and cut down on the amount of paper we send out and to try and not bombard parents with large numbers of posting, e-mails and information generally, we plan to use this section of the Week Ahead to include letters we would normally send out - either electronically or by post. If there are parents who would still rather receive everything on paper, please e-mail the College Secretary. We still anticipate sending out paper copies  of reports, bills and the Master's letters. To open some of these letters you will need to log on to the intranet as the page they are saved on is only viewable to those in the Wellington community. Do contact me if you need the password - details are further up  in this Week Ahead. All letters home of this sort are stored here . If for any reason you want to see a back copy of the Week Ahead they are all available on the internet.

The WCA January list of events can be found here.

The Master wrote to all parents this week. If you have not received a copy, it can be found electronically here.

On Saturday 14th March, there is a Sports Dinner for the girls and their parents. Here is a copy of the invite with more details.

Sport

On Saturday 17th January we have a block netball fixture with Sevenoaks, hockey against Charterhouse and football against the Oratory. It is also the Berkshire Schools cross country championships, shooting at Abingdon and basketball against Bradfield. In a calendar addition,  the show jumping team are competing in  the Berkshire inter schools tournaments at Kennert.

Because of the Weekend Leave, Thursday 22nd January is the big sports fixtures day in the week. The hockey teams play Cranleigh, the netball  teams play Hurstpierpoint and the footballers play Haileybury. Also on the day, the rackets team welcomes Radley, the shooting team welcome Harrow and the badminton team welcome Eton whilst the basketball team travel toBishop Wordsworth School and the fencing team travel to Winchester.  

On Friday 23rd January the boys ski team departs for the boys' British inter schools race at Meiringen whilst on Saturday 24th January the girls ski race team departs for Flaine to compete in the girls' British inter schools races.

Netball, hockey and football fixtures and results can be found on the Wellington College Intranet.

Further Ahead

On Tuesday 3rd February from 7:30 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. in the Theatre there will be a talk on drugs and alcohol abuse amongst the young, open to all 4th and 5th form parents. After this there will be a chance for parents to talk further if they wish over a coffee or a glass of wine. A letter about this event can be found here.

As part of our 150th celebrations we are trying to raise £150,000 for Hope and Homes - a charity that helps children whose lives have been ruined by war. We hope that one component of this will be an on-line auction. In particular this summer, inspired by an idea from the pupils, a group of pupils and staff are swimming the Channel in aid of Hope and Homes for Children and Berkshire Air Ambulance.  To help raise money for such worthy charities, Eunice Gillan and Kitty Jack are organising a Promise Auction on Thursday 19th March at 7:30 p.m. in the Old Hall.  Your help would be greatly appreciated by all!  If you have a promise that could be auctioned that evening please contact Eunice Gillan .  Many thanks for your help in advance!  Tickets for the event will be available from the beginning of March - more details to follow.

Places on the WCA trips to Paris (24th to 26th April), the Trenches (15th to 17th May) and Waterloo  (September 26th to 27th) are filling up fast.  Contact Denise Cook to reserve your place.

There is a diving trip being run to the Red Sea between 26th June and 3rd July of this year. Currently there are twelve places left of this 'live-aboard' diving expedition out of Hurghada which is open to both parents and pupils. Interested parties should contact Eddy Heddon for further details. Dive qualification training will take place on Wednesday afternoons in the summer term. To get some idea of what the trip involves please view http://www.blueotwo.com/red_seaitineraries.cfm?itid=6

If any parent is interested in becoming involved with the Wellingtonian sailing trip between Cannes and Elba in early July to celebrate the 150th anniversary, raise funds for Hopes and homes and retrace Napoleons Bonaparte's return from exile plea e-mail Ian Frayne.

The geography department are running a trip to Japan in the Exeat of the Michalemas term 2010. If you want more details they can be found here.

From the 150th Anniversary Archive Collection