Together We Are Stronger

As I have said many times, St Julian’s is a very special place. A special place to learn, a special place to grow and a special place to work. My job as a Head is to ensure that that specialness is captured in everything that we do, for all aspects of our 3 to 18 school (just look at the amazing learning happening in our Foundation classes to see this!), but also to make sure that we move forwards, together, to ensure that the young people in our care are ready to take on the challenges of this ever-changing world and ready to make a difference. As any leader will tell you, and you will know from your own experience, leading in a global pandemic is no easy feat; the parameters have changed. The conditions have changed, and the ways that we need to interact with each other have also needed to change. As Dan Norbury points out in his piece on the importance of growing and developing as teams, as well as individuals, the importance of building and developing trust is even more important in the climate of change. 

One team that has been aiming to capture the specialness of St Julian’s whilst enabling us to move forwards is the Extended Leadership Team. This team includes the Principals and Deputy/Assistant Principals from each section of the School, in addition to myself, our whole school Deputies and our Bursar. Each part of the strategic plan is led by members of this team,  and next week we will join together as a team to hear about the progress made in different areas with Heads of Faculty, Heads of Year and Primary Subject leaders acting as crucial critical friends: in our next edition, we will share some of these updates with you. This team has led the school in extraordinary times: they will all tell you of the mistakes made, lessons learnt, things they would do differently (let us hope that we will not need to lead in a pandemic again to enact that!) and significantly, how they have grown. They have kept student learning, and the safety and well-being for all at the heart of their decisions over the last year and they deserve all of our thanks for leading in such complex times.

To move forwards as a school, to ensure that student learning and well-being is at the forefront of everything that we do, change is inevitable. As we all know change is not always an easy thing, but if the last 14 months have shown us anything it is our ability to cope with change that will allow us to be stronger as a result of it. We will have some key and exciting changes happening over the next academic year, one of which will be some changes to our timetable: to enable us to further improve student learning and pastoral care and to provide opportunities for professional (adult) learning and collaboration across the school. We will be in touch soon with dates for information sessions to share our rationale and the changes that will be in place.

Dr Nicola Mason
Head of School