from the Headmaster, Mr Martin Reader, MA (Oxon), MPhil, MBA

 

Wellington School is a vibrant community with a strong academic reputation where gifted teachers are committed to their pupils, nurturing and challenging them as they grow towards independence and adulthood. It has high standards of pastoral care and fine facilities.  Most obviously striking is the welcoming atmosphere founded on an ethos which stresses the importance of good and enduring relationships between parents, staff and pupils past and present. This is the essence of a school that is working well, for who can learn if they do not feel safe or valued?

 

As my son enters the nursery at Wellington Junior School, I am acutely aware that in an uncertain world the Wellington he leaves will look very different from the one he joins; and it is right that schools do not stand still. Yet pupils require compass points amidst the changes to enable them to learn what they need for fulfilled living and the values to discern what is right and proper. I would like Wellington School to hold on to and strive for the following principles:

 

• the needs of the pupils come first in all areas of school life; though never at the expense of self-centredness: pupils should be always looking to the needs of others;
• the academic programme should be stretching and rigorous and encourage pupils to be adaptable, to think independently and to ask difficult questions. It must maintain a view of the skills required beyond school and aim to stimulate, according to Scott Fitzgerald, the human ‘capacity to wonder’;
• the extra-curricular programme, physical, cultural and aesthetic, should be varied and provide the breadth of opportunity in which young characters flourish;
• all in the school should embrace excellence and respect it;
• education is a partnership between home and school.

 

As a Christian school, our motto, Nisi Dominus Frustra, ‘Apart from the Lord, all our labour is in vain’ remains our North. We hope all will explore its meaning for themselves and even if they choose not to accept it literally, that their education will enable them to begin to discover for themselves who they are, with all the responsibilities that entails in a changing world, and to leave school equipped for service and leadership.