BGS Sixth Form Newsletter

26.09.22

Dear parents/carers and students,

The theme this week is resilience and the need to risk failure in the pursuit of excellence. An
application of this can certainly be made to the UCAS process, which continues apace. We encourage
our students to approach the process in a positive, ambitious frame of mind: not automatically
settling for a comfortable, safe outcome if there is the chance of something life-changing being
accomplished.

It also applies to students’ studies. We are already collecting a great deal of data from A Level and
Btec teachers, to ensure all students are starting the academic year as they mean to go on. In some
cases, they are not. This is where the resilience comes in. Accepting the support on offer is not
always easy; it is sometimes easier to pretend there is no problem or to simply give up. Attending
support sessions, retaking that test, adding an extra hour of revision at the weekend is much harder,
but it is the only response we want!

Best wishes,
Mr Barker (Head of Sixth Form)
Uniform
Parents and carers are reminded that the only acceptable footwear is black shoes; skirts should
reach to just above the knee; and the solution to a cold morning is to remember your black jumper!
Where students fail to comply with these clear rules, parents and carers will be contacted in every
instance. We appreciate your support in helping to maintain high standards with our uniform and
ensuring that Sixth Formers set a good example to younger pupils.

Careers events
Here is a digest of some of the events happening in the near future:

2 October – NHS Allied Healthcare Work Experience

This online series of five work experience days costs £10 a day.

3-4 October – Create Your Future

This is a conference in London for a variety of creative, design, and technology disciplines.

8, 9, 29 October – Get Into Medicine Conference

https://airtable.com/shr66li3bqG3ZpkPM
This online conference is free, and more dates are being added, but spaces go very fast!

12 October – Higher Education Information Evening

There will be a contingent of BGS staff and students attending Boston College’s annual event.
Quote of the Week
This week’s quote comes from Nelson Mandela. A man of unquestionable significance at a global
level (as testified by his statue in Parliament Square, London), he is perhaps sometimes overlooked
as an orator and writer. As an English teacher, I always take any half-opportunity on offer to include
an extract from Long Walk to Freedom, which is an accomplished literary work, as well as
documenting a seminal period of history.

This is one of three Mandela quotes that feature on our inspiration wall in the Sixth Form Centre –
more than any other person. The others will undoubtedly feature in future newsletters! In this
instance, he casts his personal achievements in a rather different light. Success does not come easily,
is the primary message; if he had given up at the first obstacle or, indeed, the first outright failure,
the course of history would have run very differently. His reaction to those setbacks? “I fell down
and got back up again.” It is an image that makes one think of a rider re-mounting the saddle after a
fall; possibly Christ stumbling with his cross during the Passion.

Yet, the message has another dimension; it appears that Mandela defines his struggle – even his life
– by these reactions to adversity. He wants us to “judge” him on that basis, rather than a simplistic
highlights reel of his achievements.

What is the application to us, then, whose successes and failures seem so prosaic in comparison? To
value the journey and the struggle; not to expect desirable outcomes to come easily; and to take as
much pride in the resilience, stoicism and grit that take us to a destination as in the destination
itself. We have an Oxbridge scholar addressing some of our cohort tomorrow; I have no doubt he
will testify to the application and interview process as an ordeal of sorts; but one that can be
enjoyed as an intellectual feat in its own right, and certainly one that is worth the glittering prize at
the end.

I will demur with Mandela on one count only: I believe our Sixth Formers should be judged by how
many times they fall down and get back up again, and by their success!