A Brief History of Term
OA Bulletin - Spring 2007
Andrew Grant
Headmaster
It was a pleasure to see a good number of OAs in the Abbey for the Carol Service that closed the autumn term and to hear the Choir absolutely on top form. A week earlier, the hilarious Beauty and the Beast had played to full houses, ensuring an eventful term closed on a high note. The term’s successes were many and varied. If the biggest coup was unquestionably the visit of Professor Stephen Hawking, to address a Hall full of our students and those from 16 other schools, there were plenty of other highlights.
Though “highlight” is hardly the term for it, the steady trickle of upgrades following appeals against, particularly, some outrageous GCSE results in English, brought us to the point where the 2006 GCSE results are now, ironically, a record for the School, with the proportion of A*/A grades nudging 68%. Our team of Sixth Form Economists, Jason Suares, Heather Wong, Jessica Roberts, Jake Watson and Paul Sopher, won their regional heat of the Times/Bank of England Target Two point Zero interest rate competition, though they did not get beyond the regional final, whilst St Albans also provided – in George Goldberg, Gordon Tveito-Duncan, Nick Goldberg and Gerald Flahive, the individual silver medalist – the youngest team ever to have won the Open competition in the English Schools’ Ski Championships.
For the first time in our history, School rugby teams reached the magic total of 100 wins in a season – 111 in fact – and a record overall win rate of 79%. The First XV lost only three matches, for a 77% tally and the Second XV and Under 16s both kept an entirely clean sheet. Among the block fixtures en route to these statistics, we had a clean sweep against Bancroft’s, University College School and Verulam and came within one match of whitewashing Haberdashers’, Merchant Taylors’ and Stamford, so well done to all our rugby players. Some notable scalps were taken by the netball team and there were some good wins in badminton, while in swimming, all the teams made a good start to their Herts League campaign. The cross country squad retained all the term’s trophies, beginning with an individual win in the Abbots’ Langley 5km race for Dominic Easter and ending with a particularly impressive run in our own Geoffrey Pryke relay. Meanwhile, in the Varsity Match, 2004 captain Matthew Grant won his Cambridge Blue in helping the forces of light (blue) to vanquish the Dark Side.
This year’s round of Oxbridge applications brought 10 offers; three from Oxford and seven from Cambridge. After Christmas, among a number of new arrivals on the staff, we welcomed our new Bursar, Derek Todd, a graduate of Wadham College, Oxford and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, whose previous role was as Deputy Chief Executive of the Thinktank Trust and the Millennium Point Trust in Birmingham, the largest lottery funded project outside London. Following Ryan McIntosh’s defection to Haberdashers’ as their new Director of PE and Games, Martin Langston joined the permanent staff as our Deputy Director of PE and Games, having taught full-time here during the summer term 2005 and continued to coach hockey and cricket for us since then. Martin is a former England hockey international and an international coach, and adds to a wealth of hockey expertise in the PE department.The season began well for the First XI, with a win in a triangular tournament against Gresham’s and Oakham on the first weekend of term. Thereafter, things went off the boil a little, before a mid-season rally that saw them go from strength to strength to finish with crushing victories over some of our strongest rivals of recent years (5-0 v Hitchin; 9-1 v Stamford) and an overall win rate in excess of 75%, the best in recent memory. By the end of the spring term, our intermediate swimmers had won the Herts League, with the Juniors and Seniors each taking second place. Our basketball and badminton players had some successes, as did our football teams, particularly at more junior levels in District competitions and our U12 rugby players came close to sweeping all before them.
In orienteering, Adam Bennett, who also runs for South East England, finished second in the Senior League, whilst James Harrison and Craig Lye finished second and third respectively in the Junior League. The cross country squads completed their season with some excellent performances, the senior boys’ only defeats coming in the two events that attract a national entry: the Knole Run at Sevenoaks (won by Judd) and the King Henry VIII relay in Coventry (won by St Anselm’s, but with Judd well down). In both cases, St Albans took second place and Dominic Easter, this year’s 948 scholar, was individual second fastest. Both races were also notable for the success of a combined St Albans girls team, led by Lucy Yates to third place at the Knole and a win at Coventry, where for the greater part of the day, both boys’ and girls’ races were being led, unprecedentedly, by the same school – St Albans. A unique double appeared to be on the cards, but in an epic boys’ race, our last runner, Chris Graham, was caught 50 metres from the line for one of the most exciting finishes the event has seen. Despite having to settle for second, the team ran the fifth fastest time in the history of the race; only three other schools have ever run faster, so as defeats go, it was an heroic one. St Albans finished the season in fine style, taking the Senior South Eastern Schools Championship ahead of old rivals Judd. Individually, Dominic Easter won both the county championships for which he was eligible; he and Lucy won South of England Championship silver medals and Dominic, captaining Hertfordshire, went on to silver in the National Inter-Counties championship and fifth place in the English Schools Championship in his first year in the age category.
Just before the end of term, the whole School community was shocked and saddened by the untimely death of Anthony James, a member of the Economics Department, after which the intense activity of the end of term, and the holiday itself, provided a welcome opportunity to refocus. Anthony’s students in the Business Enterprise Group converted their planned balloon race to a memorial event which raised something in the region of £1,000 for Oxfam, his favourite charity, with the furthest-travelled balloon being reported in North Yorkshire.
Grayson Jones’s final Joint Schools Concert before he moves in September to take up his post as Director of Music at Guildford High School for Girls took place in the Abbey before a full house. The choir and orchestra gave an assured performance of some of the greatest works in the choral repertoire, and can be proud of their evening’s work in giving Grayson a fitting farewell to this particular event.
Author William Nicholson, known both for his world-wide best-selling fantasy trilogy The Wind on Fire, and also for the screenplay of Gladiator and the play Shadowlands, visited to speak to Lower School pupils about creative writing and followed this with a book signing in the library.
This was the beginning of a feast of literary activity for the First Form, who, a few days later, had their annual Creative Writing Day, on which pupils come dressed as their favourite characters for a day of workshops led by professional writers. Thus it was that writers Dominic Mieville, John Mole and Sandy Brownjohn were met by numerous Alex Riders, several James Bonds and a woad-stained Nac Mac Feegle, the competition for the most impressive outfit being won by a very impressive Mock Turtle from Alice in Wonderland.
The Drama department had a busy end of term with assessed performances at GCSE, AS and A2, each providing an entertaining evening in their own right, and the Lower Sixth offerings of two Joe Orton plays, Loot and The Erpingham Camp, delivering particularly high octane – not to mention high camp – comedy performances that were very funny indeed. The holiday was almost as busy as the term, with more than a third of students and staff involved in School activities of some sort over the break, including the music tour to the Czech Republic; a Classics trip taking in Rome, Ostia, Sorrento, Pompeii, Herculaneum and Mount Vesuvius; a CCF Duke of Edinburgh’s expedition in the Peak District and an RAF Easter Camp at MOD St Athan, South Wales; a ski trip to Vars and four days of coaching and competition at Windmill Hill for our Tennis and Golf players.
At the time of writing, the cricket season, rather unnervingly, is getting off to a start in the sort of weather for which one hopes, almost always in vain. There may be some interim benefits to global warming. Let us hope it continues to Founders’ Day, when I hope to see a good many of you up at Woollams.