Urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way: Kirkham Grammar School Founders' Day

Kirkham Grammar School Founders’ Day

Today, Wednesday April 1st 2020, at 2:30pm Kirkham Grammar School would have been holding its annual Founders’ Day Commemoration Service at St Michael’s Parish Church.

Founders’ Day is an occasion on which the school community reflects on and gives thanks for its long and distinguished history, whilst remembering in particular those who over the years have been supporters and benefactors of the School.

Holding the service in St Michael’s Church gives an appropriate reminder of the School’s earliest origins and its continuing links with the church: KGS was founded in the Sixteenth Century as a chantry school in the church grounds, in all probability before the stated founding date of 1549. For the next four hundred years, the School was situated next to the Church and the lives and work of the two institutions were firmly intertwined. The School moved to its present buildings in 1910 but has retained close links with the St Michael’s.

The Founders’ Day Service is actually a relatively recent tradition: it was instituted after the Second World War as an end-of-term event perhaps comparable to a modern Open Day, in that it was an opportunity for the School to display to the public something of its life and work and to celebrate all that it stands for. The day used to feature an inspection of the Cadet Force followed by a public parade of cadets to the Church, and the service was followed in the afternoon by a School against Old Boys cricket match.

The first recorded occurrence was on Saturday 26th July 1947, when the then newly appointed Headmaster Mr Dennis Norwood instituted the event as an end-of-term celebration of the School’s heritage. This extract from the newly-formed General School Committee in May 1947 shows the new Headmaster’s plans for the day.

In modern times, Founders’ Day has become a service of thanksgiving, normally held on the last Wednesday of the Spring Term, at which the school community gathers for a short act of worship, with music led by its choir, an address by a guest preacher and an act of thanksgiving for the School’s benefactors read by the Headmaster:

The names of those benefactors whose names are read out are somehow evocative of the school’s long and distinguished history: Thomas Clifton, Isabel Birly, Cuthbert Clifton, Thomas Westby, John Parker, Thomas Langtree, Thomas Hesketh, Arthur Greenacres, Henry Colborne, James Barker and William Grimbaldeston.

These names all have a role in the history of the school which is recorded by history, most notably Henry Colborne, whose bequest left in trust with the Drapers’ Company of the City of London in the seventeenth century led to the longstanding and still flourishing connection with the Drapers. Perhaps the most colourful story relates to Isabell Birly, daughter of a Kirkham alehouse keeper who apparently saved the school from falling into disrepair in the year 1621 with a donation of £30 (then a substantial gift) which she brought to the school authorities in her apron. 

Like so much else in our lives, today's Founders’ Day has fallen victim to the Coronavirus pandemic, along with the whole routine and rhythm of school life: like all schools in the UK and across much of the world, KGS is closed for normal teaching and learning for the immediate future, with pupils and teachers adapting to distance learning, and the school campus deserted other than for a handful of children of key workers. Public examinations have been cancelled leaving the GCSE and A-Level cohorts uncertain of their fate, and deprived of the bittersweet rituals of the end of their school days, with celebrations such as the Fifth Year Party and the Sixth Form Ball postponed to an as yet unplanned future date.

Founders’ Day is a perfect opportunity for all in the present and past school community - pupils, parents, teaching and non-teaching staff - to pause, reflect and give thanks for being part of an ancient, loved and resilient community. In its 470+ year existence, the School has been through difficult times and always emerged in the long term even stronger and wiser, and will do so again.

Let’s all take a moment today to pray for our well-loved school, to give thanks for the leadership and energy being demonstrated by the Headmaster Dan Berry and his staff, as well as the guidance and support of the Governing Body.

I have also always thought that on Founders’ Day, every pupil past and present should perhaps take a moment to give thanks for the financial and other sacrifices made by their own families to give them such a special education. We too easily take our schooling for granted, and I think many Old Kirkhamians will echo the thought that we appreciate and love the School even more as the years go by.

Since 1999, the Founders' Day Service has concluded with the School’s adopted hymn, the much-loved Lord for the Years. We're not singing it today, but here it is on YouTube - watch, enjoy and reflect on those words.

And in case you haven't seen it before, here is a link to a blog post I wrote a few years ago about Lord for the Years.

I've had the Time of my Life

This is an edited version of my address to the Class of 2016 at Kirkham Grammar School Sixth Form, delivered at their Leavers' Assembly on May 25th 2016. Some students asked if they could see it, so I am happy to oblige. If you're not from KGS, it's probably not very interesting, but if you want to read on, it's basically some reflections on leaving school at 18. And because I try to give all my blog posts a song title for their name, it has to be I've had the time of my Life because that's what I hope people feel as they leave school. I have removed names of pupils on this version for public reading.

So here we go..

If today has a hashtag, then surely it has to be #endofanera. I find hashtags strangely attractive, especially when small words stuck together look as if they might be another real word, looking like something from another another language: #endofanera.  If you’re a Twitter user, do a search and you’ll find that particular hashtag is very popular: I looked it up this week and saw tweets about schools’ leavers’ days, university graduations, retirements, old buildings closing down and much more besides. We are all over-fond of that cliché, probably because we like to impose patterns on time and events, retrospectively more often than not, to make more sense of our lives as they unfold. Nobody ever talks of the start of an era, because we don’t know it’s an era until it has ended, normally after a long time. I certainly didn’t know, when I walked into Kirkham Grammar School in May 1981 that it was the start of an era. I am managing to blur the end of my era by stepping down gradually, but as this is my 25^th and final Leavers’ Assembly, this is for me an era coming to an end.

But the real end of an era today is yours: you don’t realise what the era known as schooldays means to you until you are about to leave, and then suddenly you’re standing there facing the rest of your life, finding that seven years or more (or perhaps fewer if you have moved school along the way) have flown by without your ever realising that what you are watching is your youth flying by. Today really is all about the end of an era for you.

You are the 35^th generation of 6^th Formers to whom I have said farewell and the 25^th as Head of Sixth Form. Every year I stand up and talk about another era in the life of the school, or rather in the lives of a group of students within it, coming to an end. But this year is a bit special, and a bit different. You are leaving school at the end of two, four, five, six, seven, maybe up to fourteen years at KGS, but among the teachers gathered here today are some long-serving teachers all of whom leave with you. More will be said and written about them in due course, but please take a moment to join with me in wishing those stalwarts of KGS all the best in their future lives -  and for most of them, that is a life of retirement after long and dedicated service to KGS.

But the real end of an era is, indeed, yours. Some of you are the last child of a family whose association with the school goes a long way back: a quick glance down the list reminds me that nine of you are the younger or youngest of families who have associations with KGS dating back many years, and so for these and their families, the sense of end of an era is even more tangible. And of course there are four in your number whose parents I, and other teachers, taught here at KGS.

It all starts to make me feel old. But when you leave school, when your era ends, you are immediately condemned to reminisce in future years about “good old days” at school. You’ll get misty eyed about the smelly changing rooms from your 1^st year, cross country runs, CCF overnights hockey tours and lessons. Sadly, when people reminisce, they tend to remember the awful lessons and the awful teachers – there’s more potential for laughs there. Maybe you’ll even talk about the good old days of AS modules. Maybe you’ll all meet in forty years’ time and try to remember the name of that Headmaster who disappeared halfway through your Sixth Form. But whatever it’s about, you’ll be reminiscing like old age pensioners before you know it. You’ll probably be doing it this afternoon.

But reminiscing is rightly what today is all about, and it’s why we as a school like to make a bit of a fuss of our Sixth Form Leavers as we send them on their way into the world. As I stand up every year to speak to the Leavers, there is always something different, unique, and worthy of celebration about those sitting in front of me. I have never made any secret of the fact that you as a year group mean a lot to me. I have already shared this with some of you, but I can honestly say that when you were in the Second Year, and I was teaching a good many of you for either French or German, I did a quick mental calculation and worked out that I would be reaching my planned retirement age at around the time that you reached the Upper Sixth. I wanted to step down as the first and so far only Head of Sixth Form after a nice round number of years – 25 –  with the Sixth Form as good and as big as it’s ever been, and that is what I am doing this year. And it’s not just me who rates you as a very special year group.

I was chatting to Mrs Parkinson recently, and she told me that she had to do her trial lesson when applying for the Deputy Head job back in 2010 with a group of you, as First Years. She much enjoyed the lesson, got the job, and has always had a soft spot for you since then. And I have always rated you highly as a year group: not just because you were a more than decent set of students when I taught you for French or German, but because you collectively have always seemed to me to “get” what is good about a school like this. Basically, you look as if you enjoy it. Probably my favourite memory of your year will be when Ben hid in a cupboard, inspired by a funny story I had told about my own schooldays, and unfortunately I was delayed on the way to the lesson and in came a rather angry Mr Watson. You can imagine what happened next. Ben, I’ve felt guilty ever since and I’d like to make a public apology….

I bet right now you are all thinking about funny things that have happened, and how much has changed in your lives, and in this school, in your few years here. But more important than what has changed is what has stayed the same. And that, as we are so fond of saying, is far less tangible. It’s about values, an atmosphere, which can be greatly enhanced by buildings and facilities, but in the end rely on the accumulated wisdom of 460 odd years.

And you embody those values as well as any group has done. What defines the quality of you as a year group, like so many before you at KGS, is the way in which, probably without even knowing it, you have absorbed and exemplified the values of the school, whether you have been here for one year, two years, four years, seven years or, in the case of quite a few of you, fourteen years.

For a start you have welcomed and integrated newcomers into your friendship groups, at every stage of your seven years here. That’s the so-called one family ethos in action. It is easy to forget when I pass through the Common Room that people who joined just for Sixth Form have only been here two years – they always seem so much at the heart of things. And then I remember that about 25 individuals who have not been here since the First Year – that’s not far off a quarter of the Year group!

So whether you’ve been here for fourteen years, seven two, or even just one, you are to KGS the Class of 2016, and it is always a pleasure today to see this group of people sitting here for one last time as a group, on the verge of success at A-Level and beyond. To use a somewhat psychobabble term, there’s a real sense that you have been on a “journey” through school, and it is often the most difficult journeys that give greatest satisfaction on their completion.

But if you were in the First Year back in ’09 -’10, do stop for a minute and think about how much the school has changed in that time. You are one of the last groups to still remember the old gym and the smelly changing rooms. It is so appropriate that your year group has seen the opening of the new music facilities during your time in school, given that among your number are so many talented and dedicated musicians. And in saying that, I cannot avoid lapsing into what sounds like a string of clichés from a school press release when I refer to the incredible diversity of talent in this year group. There is something very right about a leaving cohort which contains not only all that star quality musicianship, but also NODA winning actors, award-winning CCF NCO’s, DoE medallists, a hockey team who were a match for anyone including Millfield and of course an unbeaten First Fifteen. That owes much, of course, to the talent of those of you involved in those activities, but a good deal also to the school which fosters, promotes and encourages that talent. I would contend that if you are involved in any one of those successful activities it will, over a lifetime, benefit you as much and arguably more than the A-Level results that you will achieve over the coming few weeks. That, dare I say, is what your families pay for.

So today - or the day when you finally complete your A2 exams - really is the end of an era. School, especially a traditional 11-18 school like this one, stretches quite literally from childhood to adulthood, and it is the pleasure and privilege of those of us who work in schools like this to accompany you on all or part of that journey. When you leave, many of you will leave behind a real hole in a subject, an activity or a team: the Music Department will greatly miss about a dozen of you of you, as will the Drama. As always, there will be some very difficult boots to fill on the sports field. You are certainly a year group who have done the school motto proud in its truest and fullest interpretation: you have entered, you have profited - but so have we. Remember this as you go through university and life beyond: If you set out to put in more than you get out, you will end up taking out far more than you put in. Through my work with the Old Kirkhamians, I often meet with people of all ages who have been educated here, and it is humbling how often they attribute their success to values, knowledge and skills learned in their teens at KGS. Most recently, I talking to Ranvir Singh, arguably our most recognisable former pupil, who willingly and publically assigns much of what she has achieved in TV journalism to her time at KGS. Ranvir was sitting in those same seats as you are in this very Hall 21 years ago with an ambition to be a TV newsreader. She, like many, is a “true Kirkhamian”, and this Hall is full of such people. You are a Kirkhamian for life, and as a reminder of this, on your way out today you will all receive an OKA pin badge. Please wear it with pride – why not start by wearing it for your A-Levels as a good luck charm?

You have been lucky enough, thanks mainly to the generosity of your families and others, to attend a very special school. I do hope that you have enjoyed it as much as we have, and that you will look back fondly on this day and all your school days, and realise that they really are some of the best days of your life.

Lord for the Years

If you've has ever wondered where my Twitter profile description of what I do comes from, you're about to find out.

"Teaches and trains, rebukes and inspires" seems to me like a pretty good summary of what a teacher should do, and it is lifted from the second verse of one of my favourite hymns, Lord for the Years.

I am an unapologetic hymn geek. I believe that the (largely) British tradition of hymn singing is one of our finest contributions to world culture, and is often overlooked and even derided because of its association with organised religion, a practice seen by many as stuffy, outdated and irrelevant to the real world. Yet in my view, English hymns have given us some of the finest melodic and lyrical works ever written. It doesn't get much better than Charles Wesley, Ralph Vaughan-Williams and Hubert Parry, to name but three.

It is easy to think of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as some kind of golden age of hymn writing, and indeed many of our finest hymns date from that time. However, some very fine hymns have been written in more recent years, and no, I'm not talking about some of the embarrassing happy-clappy pseudo-rock stuff that some strands of the Christian Church have embraced in a desperate attempt to appeal to a younger generation. That's a big mistake in my view. The Devil, they say, has all the best tunes and when it comes to rock and roll, he sure does - quite rightly and triumphantly so. Let's leave religion out of rock music, and just enjoy the music for what it is. Attempts to sing about God, Jesus, Heaven and all that stuff using the rock idiom are doomed to failure in my view. There are one or two honourable exceptions, but they just prove the rule.

English hymns in the traditional style, with their sturdy, dignified melodies and their often archaic, at times wonderfully incomprehensible words, are I believe  the perfect medium for taking our thoughts to a higher plane. Try hearing, say, Love Divine, all loves excelling sung by a large congregation to the tune Blaenwern and I defy anyone not to be moved. Try quietly listening to the "still small voice of God" as a good choir sings Dear Lord and Father of Mankind and you'll feel that voice talking to you. Or try singing Jerusalem in a crowd if you're English and you'll almost certainly feel good about yourself and your country.

Lord for the Years belongs in the same league: a dignified melody, memorable and singable yet containing some interesting chord progressions, combined with unapologetically orthodox Christian theology expressed in a concise and eloquent manner. It was only written 40 years ago, but sounds like it's been around for a hundred years or more.

It's a hymn I believe I would love anyway, but for me it has a particular appeal because it is the adopted school hymn of the wonderful Kirkham Grammar School, to which I have devoted an entire teaching career.

More than that, I can claim personal responsibility for the fact that it is the School Hymn. I have achieved a lot in my 35 years at the school, but as I approach the end of my career there, I can honestly say that my proudest, and I hope most lasting, legacy to the School is that we have Lord for the Years as our school hymn.

This is how it happened: Back in 1998, I was part of a committee making plans to celebrate the School's 450th anniversary in 1999. Among the ideas being kicked about, the then Headmaster,  very much a traditionalist, suggested that as there was no school hymn, we should perhaps have one. It was suggested that perhaps someone could write one, but for whatever reason, nothing ever came of the idea, and so we were spared the sort of embarrassing doggerel that some schools have been landed with. Now at around the same time, the Director of Music had started using Lord for the Years at our Founders' Day service, having heard it used at a diocesan education service. I was immediately attracted to this hymn, and suggested to the Headmaster and Director of Music that it would fit the bill perfectly as "the school hymn". Nobody had come up with a better idea, and so it came to pass, with no official announcement, that Lord for the Years became the the KGS hymn. Our school year starts and ends with it. It is sung at Speech Day and Founders' Day and other formal events, and has been used at weddings of former pupils. Every year in May, our Sixth Form leavers at their leavers' assembly sing it with gusto in a manner that brings a lump to the throat of even the most hardened, non-believing cynic.

What is it about Lord for the Years? Well, most unusually, both the the melody and the lyrics were written by Bishops, so its Church of England pedigree is impeccable. The melody, composed by former Bishop of Chester Michael Baughen, is quite literally uplifting, ending an octave above where it started, and reaching that conclusion in an interesting and original, yet reassuringly traditional-sounding manner. And the words, by former Bishop of Thetford Timothy Dudley-Smith, says all there is to say about compassionate, caring and grateful Christianity in five four-line verses. Lines like "Spirits oppressed by pleasure wealth and care" and "Loveless in strength and comfortless in pain" speak of the spiritual poverty which afflicts the rich and blinds us to the sufferings of those less fortunate than ourselves, yet in the first verse we are reminded of  the enduring and unconditional power of God's love for us: "Sought us and saved us, pardoned and provided". 

And the last verse contains as good a summary of Christianity as it is possible to give in just nine words: "Self on the cross and Christ upon the Throne".

So there it is. A wonderful piece of writing which has the power to "teach and train, rebuke and inspire" It's what I have tried to do over my teaching career, and what I hope and believe our unpretentious, almost 500-year-old school has done exceptionally well throughout all those years, and will continue to do. We do indeed "bring our thanks today"

Here are the words in full, and if you click on the title, you can hear is sung:-

Lord for the Years.

Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided,
urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way,
sought us and saved us, pardoned and provided:
Lord for the years, we bring our thanks today.

Lord, for that word, the word of life which fires us,
speaks to our hearts and sets our souls ablaze,
teaches and trains, rebukes us and inspires us:
Lord of the word, receive your people's praise.

Lord, for our land in this our generation,
spirits oppressed by pleasure, wealth and care:
for young and old, for commonwealth and nation,
Lord of our land, be pleased to hear our prayer.

Lord, for our world where we disown and doubt him,
loveless in strength, and comfortless in pain,
hungry and helpless, lost indeed without him:
Lord of the world, we pray that Christ may reign.

 Lord for ourselves; in living power remake us-
self on the cross, and Christ upon the throne,
past put behind us, for the future take us:
Lord of our lives, to live for Christ alone