From the Headmaster
Welcome
Welcome to our Summer newsletter, sharing insights into life at the College and all that makes Winchester unique.
Whilst exams are currently a focal point across all schools, Cloister Time - the name given to the Winchester summer term, remains a favourite for many of our pupils. In addition to the cricket, rowing, sailing and athletics fixtures, there are long evenings spent outside with friends playing basketball, tennis, football, or relaxing in the house gardens. There are also plays, concerts, exhibitions, a Sixty Second Film Festival, and our annual Wykeham Day where the whole school community gathers to celebrate and enjoy sport and music.
Visit Us
Book a Tour
Visiting a senior school is the best way to get a sense of its community and culture. Does it feel right, will my child be happy? Year 5 is the time to start these visits and our advice is to get organised and visit early in the new academic year. We currently have space on our Registrar's Tours in the autumn term and an Open Day for Year 5 families on Saturday 7 October. We hope to welcome you to Winchester soon.
ISI Report
In March, the Independent Schools Inspectorate visited the College to carry out a routine inspection of our regulatory compliance and educational standards.
Over the course of a week, the eight inspectors saw all, or part of, more than one hundred lessons and scrutinised our policies, premises and plans.
We are delighted to say that the findings of the report were overwhelmingly positive. On the Educational Quality section of the report, schools can be rated excellent, good, sound or unsatisfactory. We achieved a rating of excellent across all categories assessed.
You can read an excerpt below, and the full report via the link.
'The excellent attainment of pupils reflects their positive attitudes, their inate driving curiosity and the zest for learning. They value learning for learning’s sake and fully engage with the college’s stated aim to educate individuals to be thinkers who respect the ‘life of the mind’.'
The Earth Prize is an annual, global, environmental sustainability competition, run by The Earth Foundation, for teenage students that rewards the ideas and projects with the most potential to tackle environmental issues. There were ten finalists chosen out of 1,290 entries from across the world. Just two teams from the UK reached the finals. In the Final awards ceremony, held online on Monday 24 April, the Bactoplastics team from Winchester College was named one of three runner-up teams, securing US$25,000 prize money, which will be invested in the pupils' project to enable them to continue their research.
Hear from Eren and Maks about their vision for the project in the short film below.
Sports
Cricket Tour & Rugby 7s
Two squads from the College consisting of mixed year groups travelled to the United Arab Emirates to compete in the 1st XI Arch Trophy and U15 Arch Cup.
The Lords Squad performed superbly, recording a 100% record to bring home the Arch Trophy, with the team captain being named Player of the Tournament.
Playing a mixture of T20 friendlies and 40 over Arch Cup matches, the junior squads ended the tour with an extremely promising 50% win record.
RUGBY 7S
Recently, the College's Senior Sevens squad travelled to London to compete in the National Schools Rossyln Park Sevens competition.
Despite a lack of live game experience in the build up to the tournament, the team performed admirably, securing a dominant win over Repton School and some valiant efforts against the unbeaten Richard Challoner School and some other powerhouse schools.
Trips
Classical Greece
Over the Easter holiday the Classics department took 35 JP and MP classicists to mainland Greece for a ten-day tour of sites of historical and cultural interest.
After two days in Athens, the trip ventured north to Delphi, then west to Naupactus on the Gulf of Corinth, before undertaking a five-day anticlockwise loop of the Peloponnese. While the main focus was Ancient Greece, the places the pupils visited allowed them to explore Greek history from Mycenaean times to the 20th century.
Highlights included: catching sunset at the temple of Poseidon at Sounion on the first night; visiting the Athenian acropolis and its stupendous museum; enjoying the view from the slopes of Parnassus at the sanctuary at Delphi; riding the rack and pinion railway up the Vouraikos gorge to Kalavryta; exploring the Venetian castle and playing beach football at Methone; and surveying Agamemnon’s Mycenae.
Duke of Edinburgh
Participants from the College undertook their qualifying expedition for the Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award in the Lake District during half term.
The two teams started their trek in Wasdale and camped in the mountains for the first two nights of their trip, before finishing near Keswick.
They were entirely self-sufficient for four days, purifying water from the Lakeland tarns and streams and cooking the food they carried with them in their packs.
Whilst participants are expected to travel independently throughout the expedition, they were nevertheless supervised by staff who met them occasionally throughout the day. Mrs Talks and Mr Fraser were very impressed by the determination and enthusiasm shown by both teams.
Sports
Rowing
In May, the College Boat Club competed in the Avon Regatta. The Senior VIII finished the day raising the Jamaica Cup. The J16 4+, Girls 4x+ and J14 4x+ all recorded wins, with a strong performance from the J15 8+ rounding up a successful trip.
Academic
UK Linguistics Olympiad
Recently, five College pupils took part in Round 2 of the UK Linguistics Olympiad. One pupil came in the top 8 entries in Round 1 of the UK Linguistics Olympiad (out of 89 competitors) for the second year running, which means he progresses to the national training camp in Edinburgh, from which the 4-person UK Linguistics Team will be selected.
His top-8 Distinction result places him in the top 0.29% of all candidates that entered (2,700 total Round 1 entries). The top 25% of our Round 2 entries received distinctions with the next 25% awarded merits.
Academic
Extended Project Qualification
At Winchester, all pupils in VIBk2 (Year 12) undertake an EPQ alongside their A-level choices. This year-long independent research project gives them the freedom to pursue their own interests, with the support of an academic mentor, alongside dedicated teaching in the development of research skills (which can be applied to other extended writing both at Winchester and beyond).
Pupils value the opportunity to delve deeply into primary literature and have found it allows them to speak from a position of real knowledge at university interview. You can read more about one pupil's recent experience of the EPQ, via the link below.
Lectures and Events
Winchester runs an exciting and diverse lecture programme to which you are warmly invited.
Speakers this year have included Sir Brian Cox discussing the natural history of the universe, Ross Braun speaking on his time in Formula 1, and Sir Charles Burrell and Derek Gow detailing the rewilding being undertaken across the UK.
In May, leading Shakespeare scholar Professor Emma Smith addressed a large audience of pupils and visitors on the importance of the First Folio.
With fewer than 240 copies remaining in the world, the College is extremely fortunate to own one, which is currently on display in Treasury.
Professor Smith spoke engagingly about its significance in the evolution of English language as well as our understanding of the playwright and his contemporaries.
Please do look out for more talks from September.
Back to Previous Newsletters