Year 6 Leavers’ Speech 2024
This year’s Year 6 will always be a special group for me as they have a unique place in my own personal history and association with the school. As the children, I am pretty sure themselves know, we both started our careers here on the same day, second of September 2017. Only seven years ago, not so long in the life of a school you might think, but I’ve been looking back over those short years and trying to recall some of the changes that we’ve seen together.
So let me take you back to dear old 2017.
Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party and had just lost an election to Theresa May who remained as Britain’s Prime Minister. Donald Trump was the new President of the United States. At least we won’t have to worry about that anymore. Oh, hang on...
No one had ever heard of a disease called Covid19, because it didn’t exist. In fact, we all believed that global pandemics had come to an end with the Black Death in the Middle Ages. Had anyone told me that we would be wearing masks in the classrooms and corridors of our school and the children would think nothing of it, let alone being closed for months on end with children learning on laptops, I would have thought them slightly bonkers or possibly having read one too many science-fiction books.
The United Kingdom was still part of the European Union, and we could travel to Europe with hardly a second glance at our red EU passports.
Gareth Southgate had just become the manager of England, but nobody really thought he had much chance of achieving anything interesting. They still don’t, to be fair. I would say, poor old Gareth gets the blame for everything, but I just can’t get past the fact that he didn’t pick Jack, so I am just as bad as everyone else. Gareth, you should try being a headmaster for some light relief.
Taylor Swift was an obscure country and western star. AI was simply the initials of Albert Isles who joined the school midway through the first term. The good people of Ukraine were still friends with the good people of Russia.
At Crescent School, we didn’t have a quiet area or a cosy corner, mostly because that space has taken up by the onsite nursery called Nature Trails. We didn’t have a forest school that we could use and the main corridor was a lovely shade of green the whole way down. No adventure trail, no break-out space, no climbing wall, no Steve the Mo-Bot, and a dark and slightly pokey IT suite.
Mr Phillips was Head of Games and Mrs Byrne was Head of Science. I have no idea who those other two characters are. Mr. Knowles was just another member of the Estates team at Princethorpe College.
So yes, a lot has changed in that time. But some things haven’t. Of the 23 children who are leaving us today 17 were already students at the school by the end of that first term. It is true they were smaller and cuter, sorry kids, but they walked through the doors, said hello and smiled at me each morning of that autumn term, just as they have done for the 21 terms since then. Very few children left, and new friends joined along the way, all of them just as welcome as the original gang.
Those bonds of friendship and mutual respect have held this group together over the years, and that inner sense of security they get from that feeling of belonging will set them on a steady course for life. That might feel like quite a big statement, but I honestly believe it's true. If you were at the performance of Midsummer Night's Dream last week and watched the body language between the children, you'll know where I'm coming from.
I'll tell you another little secret. Often, when the year six children come back from their residential trip in Devon, and I might be alone in this but I don't think so, I sometimes start to dread my lessons with the group. They come back perhaps a little big for their boots, with some innocence lost and arrogance gained. But that never happened this year. You guys have just got better and better as the year has gone on and you're still as great a class to teach as you ever were. You set the right example to one another and most importantly to the younger children in the school. You accept that everyone in the class has their own foibles or quirks, and you make allowances for them and get on with it.
I know that lots of the younger children will be really really sad to see you go, but like me deep down they know it's time and that greater things await you.
Back in the 19th century there was a group called the Luddites and they made it their job to destroy all the modern machinery and technology in the Woollen Mills that they felt would take jobs away from them and their fellow workers. They didn’t believe for a second that industrial methods of production could transform the lives of workers in a good way, lead to a society that is more wealthy and more healthy than ever before, although that is what did in fact happen. They only saw the bad.
It’s not easy to see the good in some of the changes that I’ve talked about above, but the fact is the one thing that is constant, is change. In our geography lessons, we learnt that beautiful rivers and mountains may look permanent but they change too. The change itself is a beautiful thing and not only that, it keeps geography teachers in work which any sane person would agree has to be a good thing.
So, change is inevitable, but those who embrace it will reap the benefits. I'm not a great one for giving advice, mostly because generally I think it's better to figure things out for yourself. For all of you, life changes today and you probably, and rightly, you won’t spend too long looking back but I hope that the grounding that you received here will help you to be OK with change, to steer a straight path through the storm, to ride the wave when it comes, and to be the best versions of yourself that you can be.
There will be a few rounds of applause this afternoon I'm sure but let's just start by thinking of all the wonderful work they have done in their final year here in the school, looking after the younger children, helping out with duties, in the lunchroom, in the corridors and just being a really fantastic example of what we hope and wish all Year Six children world provide for the school. Let's give them a really big round of applause, well done.
