John Marston with school officersIt was a delight this week to meet with the School Officers. These students are appointed to lead the student body and they are fantastic role models for all our students. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to meet with them as a group in June as they planned for this year and had a handover with last year’s Officers and they immediately impressed me. They have an exciting programme of events for the year – starting with today’s Sixth Form Macmillan coffee morning – and the school is already benefitting from their input and dedication.

Equally important to the smooth running of the school is our excellent Prefect team. Being a Prefect is a significant school honour – as embodied in the yellow prefect tie – but it is also a role which involves a selfless contribution to the smooth running of the school. The work which the Prefects do around the school in supporting the younger students is really impressive: they are caring and considerate but also firm in their expectations and highly effective.

Both the School Officers and the Prefect team play significant leadership roles within our school community and are key elements of the Wallingford “culture” and I can already see and feel the impact they have on the life of the school.

As ever, it’s been a tremendously busy week in school with a huge number of things going on from field trips to sports fixtures to the celebration of European Day of Languages. We try to showcase as many of these important aspects of school life as we can through our various media channels. To be honest, I am not a huge fan of social media but I would make an exception and encourage members of the school community to follow the school’s Twitter account as it has some great photos and images of the very many things which are going on daily both within the school and beyond.

Finally, a reminder that the Wallingford School Association quiz takes place on Friday 4th October at 7.30pm in the Hall. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the fundraising of the WSA makes a real difference to our students and their events are very much worth supporting. If you would like to attend or volunteer to support the WSA, please do get in touch This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.