Tag Archives: community

Dear School Photo

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Every couple of years, like most schools across the land, we carve out a little chunk of time for a major collective manoeuvre: the whole school photo.  Why do we do it? 

This is a question that the Senior Deputy Head may ask themselves as the meticulous hours of planning add a further metaphorical crease-line to their nobly furrowed brow.  It is a major piece of choreography to manage successfully.  And an investment of around 100,000 minutes of collective time. (Multiply the time taken to get ready, lined up, loaded on the staging, photographed, safely down and back into lessons by the number of pupils and teaching staff in the school).  All those hours to prepare and yet, as was the case in our recent whole school photo, it is all over in just over an hour.

Why do we do it?  Well, we do it because it’s important.  And curiously uplifting!

It’s important to capture a moment in communal time.  Schools are places of belonging.  A whole school photo is one of those most tangible expressions of collective belonging on the fullest scale.  Team photos, house photos – these too capture vital parts of the whole.  But, the whole school photo is every pupil and every teacher.

Marketing teams rightly get twinkly-eyed at the opportunity to send up the drone to follow this rare gathering from above.  Time-lapse footage fascinatingly accelerates the intricate process of loading up the multiple tiers of the staging.  Colleagues parade like peahens and peacocks in magnificent flowing gowns and technicolour hoods. 

It’s a barometer of school culture.  Can you get 850 teenagers to stand cheerfully, obediently in a confined and unusual formation; can the photographers capture the moment when all 1000 humans are at their personal bests.  Can we ensure every single name is rightly attached to every single individual pupil and colleague involved?  Can we get everyone in?  Can we get everyone up, set and down – and how long will it take? Last time round we managed to complete the whole process in 59 minutes – this time, with a few more pupils on the roll, we crept just over the hour mark.

 

And a key question for a Head… Do I take a selfie with the whole school massed behind me?  Some do; some don’t!  It’s certainly an opportunity…  Fair play to those more extrovertive Heads who have the necessary ‘riz’, the hutzpah, to take a selfie in front of the assembled whole school photo.  For me, it doesn’t quite feel like a moment for one individual to stand out in front of the rest.  Maybe I lack the gumption to take that shot.  And, admittedly, the Head does get the centre spot – there is some expression of hierarchy.  But, above all, it’s a total community moment.  It’s about us.  So, selfie opportunity declined on this occasion.  Maybe next time?

Parentally, a whole school photo is a lovely thing to have – to keep – to revisit.  For the family.  As a Shrewsbury parent myself, I can see the special smiling speck in the throng of Salopians that is my own.  It something that, years on, will be looked at by children, friends, future partners, grandchildren and on through the generations.  It is a formal record of school days – the formative years of an individual life. 

Institutionally, the whole school photo is an archival snapshot.  Set side by side, tracking back through the decades, you can see the shape of the school.  You can trace trends in hairstyles – the ignoble rise of the mullet in the 2020s; the shaggy locks of the 1970s; the apparently mandatory whiskers of the teaching staff in the 1860s.  In our case, school photos record the journey from all boys’ school; to co-educational in the Sixth Form (2008), to fully coeducational in 2015; to being over 40% girls in 2025.  In this way, the whole school photo helps chart the progress and nature of the school.

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When I was at junior school, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the whole school photo was a wholly different creature.  In those days of black and white, the camera would roll slowly from left to right to complete the image.  In those tensely elongated seconds, we all held still.  But, before the dawn of photo shop and instant capture, many things were possible.  The gust of wind raising a fringe comically aloft.  The eyes momentarily shut at the crucial instant.  The joker who looked sideways, upwards, or crossed eyes and ejected a tongue.  The prankster whose fingers made ears for the person in front. 

And the ultimate caper – if you were reckless and bold enough – and situated on the far left of the view…   To detach yourself after the camera had swept past your section, run around the back of the tiered block and appear, magnificently duplicated, on the right hand side of the image.  A friend of mine achieved this feat in 1983.  He enjoyed a hostile reception from the Headmaster and a week at home for his adventures.  And immortality.

Nowadays, of course, such exploits are not possible.  And, as has been our experience at Shrewsbury, folk rather enjoy getting it right together.  If, in the unlikely event that any minor moment of madness occurs, photo-shop will come to the rescue.  Knowing this, we all tend to behave ourselves!  And anyway, it’s a fundamentally innocent, joyful and good thing to get together and have a photo.  Why disrupt something so simple, so carefully organised?

When I was Deputy Head at Bedales School, I had the biennial pleasure of organising the school photo.  Bedales was the first co-educational boarding school.  As a progressive community, with no uniform and famous for individual self-expression, this was not an easy gig.  However, we struck a deal.  If the ‘formal photo’ was done well and in good order, we then reconvened in half an hour for an ‘informal photo’.  In that 30 minute gap, remarkable creative transformations occurred.  The Bedales informal photo [2010] sits on my wall at home.  Someone brought a horse; dogs, cats, babies (including my own youngest) were assembled, along with banners, fancy dress and personal totems of various kinds. 

The ‘formal’ one, which was a model of relative order, is not on my wall – I do have it somewhere.  However, the immaculate order of the Cheltenham Ladies’ College 150th anniversary photo [2003] sits proudly alongside the St Peter’s School 3-18 foundation photo of 2018.  I have a box of other school photos in the loft.  They sit alongside photos from the school days my father and mother, now no longer here, but their youthful selves look out hopefully at me.  You never throw school photos away, even if theirs is simply to sit quietly in the cellar, in a neat roll, waiting for their time.

I’ve said much about the whole school photo – but, in fact, I need to correct myself.  Whilst a photo of all the pupils and all the teachers is indeed whole in lots of ways, a truly whole school picture would include the hundreds of colleagues who work in support of the school day in, day out.  A true whole school picture would include Governors.  Arguably, it would include current parents, grandparents, guardians, carers, Old Salopians – the Shrewsbury Family of Schools.  All these people are part of the whole school in its fullest sense.

 In 2027, we will be 475 years old.  The perfect opportunity for an even more whole school photo.  Time to get planning… 

However, for the moment, it was challenging enough to get 1000 people in one space on Central, in golden September sunshine, for our ‘whole’ school photo 2025.  And the result is a lovely image of the school at the start of an academic year. 

To be stood together, all facing the same way, looking towards the tiny eye of the camera lens, smiling; a thousand souls, a thousand minds with individual thoughts, hopes and fears; a thousand bodies neatly packed together, dressed in our finest threads of belonging; chatting, joking, clapping, then falling silent for a charged moment of still and shared attention. 

It always gets me – the school photo.  I feel a surge of wellbeing; togetherness; a potent pang of love and hope for all the individuals and all the people to whom they are important. 

A deep sense of what it means to be seen – and to belong.

Applause at the Shrewsbury School Whole School Photo 2025

Older People: thoughts on living longer

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One day a year, it’s international ‘older people’s day’.  An interesting – and presumably deliberate – choice of words to talk of ‘older people’, rather than ‘old people’ or ‘the elderly’. This turn of language prompts some questions about what we mean by ‘older’. What is ‘older’? Who are these ‘older people’?

Of course, we’re all ‘older’ – you and I are all older than we were yesterday. And we will keep being older all our lives – presumably until the point where we are simply ‘old’: the point when the relative becomes absolute.

Older People’s Day is about raising awareness of the issues related to ageing. It aims to be a day to ‘respond to the opportunities and challenges of population ageing in the 21st century and to promote the development of a society for all ages’. (OPD Website)

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declares that: “Most developed world countries have accepted the chronological age of 65 years as a definition of ‘elderly’ or older person, but like many westernized concepts, this does not adapt well to the situation in Africa. While this definition is somewhat arbitrary, it is many times associated with the age at which one can begin to receive pension benefits. At the moment, there is no United Nations standard numerical criterion, but the UN agreed cutoff is 60+ years to refer to the older population.

Although there are commonly used definitions of old age, there is no general agreement on the age at which a person becomes old. The common use of a calendar age to mark the threshold of old age assumes equivalence with biological age, yet at the same time, it is generally accepted that these two are not necessarily synonymous.”

In other words, the term ‘older’ is relative to where in the world we are born and where we live and the kind of life opportunities open to us.  These are the conditions of birth that drive our life expectancy.  WHO use 50 to mean ‘older’ in global terms.

Respect for one’s elders used to be a given in pretty much every culture. This may have brought with it some rather brutal or disparaging attitudes to the young. The Victorian approach to children being visible but inaudible (‘seen and not heard’), for example, indicated a clear age-based hierarchy. But, it also brought a healthy regard for those of mature years.  This is less so now. Arguably, the young and vigorous attract respect; the ‘older’ and less vital are often viewed as a burden; a problem; or just out of touch.

We have an increasingly top-heavy population. The ‘younger’ have a growing duty to carry the ‘older’. And this duty is increasing. How much carrying will our children and grandchildren have to do? How much tax and NI will we have to pay to support the NHS and state pensions? How long will you have to work before you can retire? Will the notion of retirement disappear altogether?

Living beyond 100 will become the norm in your children’s generation, according to projections from the ONS. Within two decades, the average (that’s the average) life expectancy of a new born girl in UK will be 97 years and 4 months. Baby boys born in 2037 should expect to live, on average, to the age of 94. By 2057, the average life expectancy for a female will be 100. Average. You could consider yourself unlucky not to reach 100. For boys, that mark will be reach in 2080, according to the ONS.

The key, though, is not just life expectancy but healthy life expectancy. That is, being ‘older’ and yet being independent, healthy, mobile etc. Not just being alive but being able to live. This is increasing at a lesser rate. In other words, the old will become more and more dependent on the young. For longer.

We might feel that, being ‘younger’, these issues are not relevant. Older People Day might prompt us to reach out more to the ‘older’ population. Or it might, out of pure self-interest, spark a realization that the decisions, policies and attitudes that we promote and allow in our youth, will come back to affect us in our old age. When it comes to getting older, we will reap what we sow. And the reaping season will be longer than the sowing season.

So, thinking about older people, and issues to do with ageing, is in all of our interest.

Connecting for Happiness. Thoughts on International Happiness Day, the Eclipse and Comic Relief

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Connecting for Happiness

Yesterday the sun was obscured by the moon, the temperature dropped noticeably and the daylight turned to twilight at 9.34 in the morning of what was International Day of Happiness.  As a school, we were all out, with the help of York Astronomical Society, safely viewing and enjoying the passage of the moon in front of the sun.  It was a great communal event, and a wonderful thing to happen on a day of happiness that focused this year on connecting with others.

International Happiness Day came exactly a week on from Red Nose Day 2015, which we celebrated heartily at my school, St Peter’s 3-18, with our biennial fancy dress day.  Comic Relief is a wonderful cause: it fuels – as well as exemplifies – the sense of community that exists in a thriving school.  It is also a moment when the sense of internal community is completely in step with the community at large, indeed the national community.

Comic Relief is a great fund raiser and a great connector.  Whilst it is a day of laughter and legitimised silliness, its mission addresses squarely the fact that we live in a world where not everyone enjoys the same life chances; not everyone has the same opportunities to live happy lives.  Red Nose Day is also, founded on the simple and profound truth that laughter is part of our common humanity.  Laughter is a great connector.  And happiness is something that can be grown.  Sure, it doesn’t and can’t solve all the world’s problems.  But growing happiness actively and concertedly can help.

I spoke to the pupils about international Day of Happiness, suggesting that an awareness day doesn’t imply that everyone has to be happy that day; neither does it imply that happiness can be manufactured.  It doesn’t imply that every other day of the year is for unhappiness.  Rather, it’s a day to raise awareness that as individuals, with our good will and proper attention, can make a difference to the happiness of those around us, and therefore to our own.

The more cynically-minded may suspect such positivist occasions as being naïve and feeble – mere candles held out in the stormy night.  I would say simply that happiness is about action.  And action is what brings change.

As the Action For Happiness movement argues: “After years of happiness research, one thing has proved fundamental – the importance of our connections with other people.  Yet modern societies are built as if the opposite was true. We are surrounded by people, yet we feel genuinely connected to almost none of them. The effects are devastating.  Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death as smoking; and the epidemic of loneliness is twice as deadly as obesity. We could change this in a day if we all reached out and made at least one positive connection. The best place to start is with our own daily actions. Here are five simple but proven things that, according to Action For Happiness, we can all do to help create a happier and more connected world:

  1. Do something kind for others

What goes around comes around – and with kindness it really does. Research shows that being kind to others increases our  own levels of happiness as well as theirs. What’s more it has a knock-on effect – kindness is contagious, so it makes our communities nicer places to be.

  1. Volunteer your time, energy and skills

Whether it’s a one-off or something you do on a regular basis, volunteering is good all round. As well as making a positive contribution to the happiness of others, it’s a great way to meet people, get the most out of your local area and to increase your own happiness and wellbeing.

  1. Get to know your neighbours better

Getting to know the people who live nearby helps create a sense of belonging and shared identity in our local area. It also helps to strengthen connections and trust in our wider communities and contributes to a happier neighbourhood for everyone.

  1. Understand each other’s needs

Good communication is at the heart of happy relationships of all kinds. It’s about understanding others’ needs and having our needs heard. And it’s a skill that can be learned that will help deepen our connections with the people around us.

  1. Look for the good in those around you

It’s easy to take our nearest and dearest for granted. Constant criticism can be highly destructive, but we often fall into this trap, especially in established relationships. But if we take time to bring to mind what we value and appreciate about others, we can both get more enjoyment from our time together

Schools are in the lucky position of being close, day-to-day communities where you can see the immediate effect of actions, and where the words we use can change the way we behave.  Every day gives us a chance to grow happiness around us and inside ourselves.

@actionforhappiness @yorkastro