Baker’s Beacon Blog – Week 1

Dear Parents,

We are three days into the Autumn Term but it feels like three weeks; such is the ability of my colleagues and the boys to get back into The Beacon routine with such consummate ease.  Lots of smiling faces and typical Beacon eagerness and enterprise, giving an energy and soundtrack to the site that has been much missed over the summer.

The weather has been anything but autumnal of course.  Coming back to warm weather and hard pitches is not unusual for schools, but to such excessive heat is maybe a sign of where we are with our global climate and we need to get used to it and prepare appropriately.  Accepting that this contributes to the wider problem (and we only switch them on in extreme situations such as these), the school’s continued programme of installing air-conditioning in four more classrooms over the summer has been much welcomed.  As far as I was concerned, I would have been much more comfortable continuing to teach Year 5 Geography in their ambient and fragrant 18 degree classrooms than I was returning to my stifling office.  We will get round to them all in due course and be assured, my office will be the last.  I always remember my great hero, Graham Taylor, manager of Watford FC in the 1980s (and latterly in the late 90s, early 00s) stating that they would only put covers over the team dugouts when there were covers over all the spectator stands.  I always thought that was a great attitude…and he was true to his word.

Maybe it’s a sign of the lack of confidence from the media in the team’s chances of success, but I don’t think there has ever been a build up to a World Cup event of one of our key sports as low key as this month’s Rugby event in France.  Whatever happened to the legacy of the English victory in 2003?  The school children that watched that game should be in their prime around now, and it does feel an opportunity squandered.   But I love a global sporting event and even if England do have little more than a puncher’s chance of lifting the cup, it will still be a great event to watch.  If France win tonight, they win the tournament in my view…but I am historically hopeless with sporting predictions, so Madame Cook need not get too excited just yet…

Enjoy the sunshine,

Nick Baker

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