Baker’s Beacon Blog – Week 16

Dear Parents,

Good to be back with my Beacon family today, after spending the middle part of this week inspecting a school for ISI. Inspection and Governance are two vitally important parts of the educational framework in this country and, together with my role as Governor of a girls prep school in London, I feel it is my duty as a Headteacher to contribute to this structure. I have learned, and continue to learn, a lot from the process and have come back today with a few things that I observed this week that will inform our school’s development going forward. Inspections used to be fairly combative processes and what schools sometimes perceived as ‘fault finding’ missions. These days, inspections are far more collegiate and have done much to make schools safer and more effective, pupil-centred institutions, whilst at the same time, giving parents (and the Department of Education) the assurance of accountability and ‘quality control’.

And of course, The Beacon convoy keeps on trucking whilst I have been away. In my absence, the Beacon Parents’ Society meeting on Wednesday granted over £25k towards four tremendously exciting projects that are going to enhance the school experiences of our Beacon boys. A new laser cutter for Mr Van Rooyen and the DT Department, a plethora of new games for Mr Langley’s Board Games Club, state of the art display boards and lighting for Miss Jackson and the Art Department and my personal favourite, an augmented reality ‘Sandbox’ for Miss Thomas and the Geography Department – I’ve only ever seen one of these on my school travels over the years (at Merchant Taylors’ School in fact) so our boys really are very lucky indeed. My sincere thanks to the Beacon Parents’ Society for funding these additions to our School, and apologies for my absence at the meeting this week…though if this is the outcome, I might stay away more often!

Have a good weekend,

Nick Baker

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