20th April 2020
Winchester Weekly
Cloister Time
A warm welcome to the school’s first weekly newsletter. It was planned for September, but has been brought forward by circumstance and the vigour of our Comms team.
For the last year, all employees have received a weekly newsletter called (for reasons I won’t explain) Winchester Waffle. It brings together our many employees. Each week it has a Guest Editor, and features about the community. It also contains a digest of the weekly staff briefings which I give in School.
My end of term letter (last term’s was my 64th as a Headmaster) had begun to drop yellow, sear, leaves. We now hope to give you information in a more regular and timely way, with less monotony of narrative voice. It will continue to connect us as a community around the every day. The Guest Editor will attempt to record the people who live and work at Winchester and what they regularly achieve.
While COVID-19 has radically altered the way in which our school operates, we all remain steadfast in our commitment to providing boys with exceptional teaching and support, and look forward to welcoming them back to their houses and (real-life) classrooms as soon as possible.
Dr Tim Hands, Headmaster
Academic Announcements
Planning for the provision of remote learning has continued apace over the Easter holiday. We were grateful to pupils, dons and parents for all of the valuable feedback received on their experience of the first week of remote teaching. We’ll continually be assessing our provision to ensure that we are giving the boys the best possible learning opportunities.
The process of generating calculated grades has already begun in earnest. It will be rigorous, objective and fair to pupils. It will also be time-consuming, complicated and needs to be subjected to rigorous internal scrutiny. We are specifically forbidden from disclosing or discussing calculated grades or the rank order with pupils, parents or guardians, but would wish to reassure you that the fairest and most objective measures are in place to achieve the correct result for your son and for all our pupils.
On the Parent Portal you will find the Headmaster's Beginning of Term video message. There are four sections beneath the video and explained within it. Taken together, all four sections are meant to gather all you need for the term into one single place. Included on this page is the mitigating circumstances form for parents of boys in V Book and VI Book 1. Parents are asked to return this to your son’s Housemaster and the Headmaster’s Secretary by Sunday 10 May.
BURSARY BULLETIN
Following my email to you at the end of March announcing the reduction in this term’s fees and commitment to pass on savings, I have been extremely grateful for the many emails of support. I’d also like to thank those parents who have offered to pay this term’s fees in full – these acts of generosity will allow us to be as flexible as possible, while also supporting those parents who may find themselves in financial difficulty due to the crisis.
If you are concerned about your financial position, please get in touch with the bursary team as soon as you are able to. We know that these are unprecedented and worrying times, so it is our intention to provide you and your son with the support and stability needed as quickly as possible, not least by enabling the continuity of your son’s schooling.
Learn more about the COVID-19 Hardship Fund here.
Steven Little, Bursar
Celebrating success
Goddard scholarship winners
Congratulations to this year's winners of the Goddard scholarship. This examination, which dates back to 1832, involves a series of rigorous three-hour examinations on Greek and Latin language and literature. This year's texts were Vergil Aeneid 2 and Sophocles Ajax. The examiner was Professor Richard Jenkyns, formerly Professor of the Classical Tradition and Public Orator, University of Oxford.
Goddard scholar: Oliver Roberts (College)
Proxime Accessit and HM Prize for Latin: Tristan Gauthier (Hopper's)
HM Prize for Greek: Frederick Smith (Freddie's)
Honourable mentions: Peter Brealey (College) and Felix Turner (Toye's)
Community contributions
Despite the lockdown, colleagues from across the school community have been busy volunteering their time for others. Science School colleagues distributed PPE supplies to Southampton General Hospital, Hampshire Ambulance Service and the Royal Hampshire County Hospital (RHCH).
Mill has been put to good use thanks to the efforts and skills of Head of DT Callum Barnes and DT Centre Manager, Adrian Ahmed, creating visors for the Wykeham Ward at RHCH, as well as Autism Hampshire.
Similarly our catering team have donated nearly 2,000 pairs of gloves and disposal aprons to local NHS colleagues. The Winchester Council Response Team receives numerous calls from vulnerable adults and families requesting help. Head of Spanish, Jan Hepworth is co-ordinating our support and the volunteer team has, so far, helped more than 30 local families.
Chapel
Beginning of Term Service
Rev. Justin White has prepared a virtual service for the beginning of Cloister Time for members of the Winchester community.
Watch his video on the Parent Portal.
Book of the week
Ian McEwan, Machines Like Me (2019)
Published last year, Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me is a wonderful meditation on consciousness, falling in love, parenting, and the tension between our ideals and the moral ambiguities of human nature. It is set in an alternative scenario for the 1980s: we lose the Falklands War, Tony Benn becomes Prime Minister, the Brighton bombing has a very different outcome, and Alan Turing is alive and has developed artificial intelligence some 30 years early.
The novel’s narrator acquires a prototype robot called Adam. Adam develops a life of his own, but unlike the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (to which Ian McEwan’s novel is deeply indebted) he remains morally principled, much more so than his owner. Adam’s moral transparency poses an unsettling challenge to both the characters in the novel and the reader, but there is a lightness of touch in Machines Like Me which makes it irresistible. Adam’s idealism is both touching and comically absurd.
McEwan succeeds brilliantly in evoking a 1980s which never was, but which somehow seems as real as its historical counterpart. He is unsparing about human nature, but the closing pages are as determinedly optimistic as anything I have read in recent years.
Nick Wilks, Second Master
Sad farewells
OW and comedian Tim Brooke-Taylor (C, 1954-58) died of COVID-19 on 12 April, aged 79. He had a very successful career as a comic actor and said he owed much to Winchester: “It made me work much harder than I would have done, taught me to analyse things well and not to be arrogant. I’m typical of the Wykehamist who plays down his abilities."
Tim Pride, Lay Clerk of Winchester Cathedral, and the manager of Kingsgate Post Office, died overnight on 5/6 April. He will be greatly missed by both colleagues and boys. The Headmaster has written to Tim’s parents to express the sympathy of the whole school community. We await details of a memorial occasion.
And finally...
While the Fellows’ Library and Treasury are closed, the collections team has been working hard to add to our online database.
Our ‘virtual museum’ includes all of the Chinese collection and most of the watercolours, plus some highlights from elsewhere.
Greek vases will be added soon. Oil paintings, sculptures and medieval manuscripts will follow over the summer.
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