Our Open Evening is an evening with a distinctive and special “buzz” to it – there are flames in experiments, people scaling the climbing wall, ukuleles chiming, plastic being filed and polished and a whole lot more.
There are, of course, speeches in the Hall and the way in which our Year 13 student leaders – who have been with us for many years – and our Year 7 students – who have been with us for just a few weeks – speak and talk about their experience at Wallingford School never fails to impress and this year was no exception.
I also have the opportunity to talk about our school and our values and this is a pleasure. The strapline of “Sending each young person out into the world able and qualified” lies at the heart of everything we do as a school and is valued and cherished by our school community. The “qualified” part is of course about results and destinations; our results are consistently excellent over time and in 2025 the bar was raised even higher. Students go on to their destinations of choice be it universities from Edinburgh to Exeter, colleges, apprenticeships or other forms of training. The “able” part is about the young people our students become during their time at Wallingford School and the experiences which shape them; it’s the trips and visits, the enrichment and extra-curricular, the things which support, challenge and nourish their progress into becoming young adults. All of these elements are important and cut to the core of what we are about as a school.
- Mr Marston, Headteacher