Baker’s Beacon Blog – Welcome Back

Dear Parents,

Welcome to The Beacon 2024-2025!

I trust everyone had a restful and enjoyable summer; judging by the scores of postcards in my in-tray, Beacon boys have been to all and every part of the UK and globe these past eight weeks.  The Bakers spent three weeks in Menorca, went to see Peter Kay, witnessed Lewis Hamilton pull off a stunning victory at a very wet Silverstone weekend, and, over the past couple of weeks received news of respective GCSE and A Level results.  A number of my colleagues, and no doubt many Beacon families, have had similar last month and I hope all went well.  My younger son Joseph managed to get very similar scores to his brother’s results of two years ago (Joseph says not unreasonably ‘Covid weighting assisted’) and can enter Sixth Form to study Maths, Economics and Business Studies at A Level – he got his results, shrugged and promptly nagged me to take him to Taplow to catch the train to Reading Festival, something I was more worried about than his GCSE outcomes.  Patrick meanwhile got the requisite grades he needed to read History at Birmingham in a few weeks’ time and appears unsettlingly eager and keen to leave home.  My wife Brigid and I are not quite so eager as we come to terms with this next stage of parenting, when it seems such a recent memory as that of when he put on his first school uniform…

There has been no holiday for our Estates and IT teams as they have worked tirelessly on all the new developments over the past eight weeks.  Though so much planning goes into the design of these projects, we are delighted that everything we have done looks so much better in reality than it did in plan form.  The new Early Years Playground has transformed that area of the school into a juxtaposition of Tellytubbyland and Alton Towers for 3 to 4 year olds; Kim Rowland’s newly refurbished Cooking and Nutrition Room looks unrecognisable from last year and more at home at an adult Catering College than it does in a prep school environment but that is how we operate here.  The completed pathway at the back of the site gives a far more aesthetic passageway to Oakway and the solar panels on the roof of the Sports Hall are already powering and energising all areas of The Beacon.  All on time and on budget; the boys will no doubt be full of excitement and similar levels of energy when they utilise and embrace their even more improved environment this week.

New developments and new staff to welcome the boys, but we will pause in Assembly tomorrow morning to remember our dear colleague Paul Clifton who passed away after a long illness in July.  Paul was a most interesting, witty and warm-hearted man who loved working here, and was better than anyone at embracing the complex Tetris game of car parking at The Beacon. He more than anyone would be looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow on the first day of term, and he so enjoyed seeing first-hand how much the boys joyfully walked into school.  We will forever remember him as a legend of The Beacon but particularly tomorrow at the first drop off and home time of the school year.

Rest in peace Paul.

Nick Baker

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