FIONA BOLTON
Polymath Fiona has been a huge asset to the school, undertaking her varied roles with professionalism and kindness. Having joined in 2014, Fiona worked for several years in the Mathematics department, overseeing positive changes to the Lower School curriculum. She worked tirelessly to prepare and resource the department to deliver the UKMT carousel, and organised a Maths and Adventure residential trip, as well as many other initiatives. More recently, she has supported students who needed additional help in Mathematics. Qualifying as an access arrangements assessor, Fiona has been an enormously valuable member of the Learning Support department: highly efficient, incredibly organised and happy to drop everything to help students and staff alike. Her efficiency made her an obvious choice for the role of CAS Coordinator. She streamlined the process, allowing students to reflect more meaningfully on their CAS without writing 1000 reflections!
Fiona’ s passion is music and, alongside some music teaching, she has been an outstanding choir conductor, including joining a choir tour to Malta with around 30 students. She has conducted all of Year 7 right through to Chorus( the school gospel choir), and even the staff choir, enthusiastically conducting a recent performance of‘ You Can’ t Stop the Beat’.
Teaching a Social Leadership course as part of the Sevenoaks School Summer Programme, Fiona is all about building young people up to achieve and to be positive and happy members of society. As visiting tutor in GIH, she demonstrated endless support for the community, and great professionalism leading them on to the next stage in their lives. We have been blessed with such a lovely, kind, funny colleague and friend. She takes her three children this summer to accompany her husband on a diplomatic posting to South Africa. We wish them every possible joy.
Emma Delpech
JON DICKINSON
Anyone who brings custard creams as a prop for their interview lesson is worth taking seriously and Jon was duly appointed in 2012. Back then the new young thing on the block, Jon has matured nicely, taking on many roles along the way.
Within the department for many years he has run our Physics Forum, an extension and discussion group aimed at the keener and more ambitious Lower Sixth students, and more recently also a History and Philosophy of Science club. He has been on numerous AAAS Science conferences and led three tremendously successful trips to the States. Jon coordinated Bronze DofE for around five years, ran an Improv society, and having taught himself Italian, he has been invited on some Classics trips as the official interpreter. He received the pupils’ vote for best dressed Physics teacher 2024 with his turtleneck jumper and tweed jacket combo.
Pastorally, Jon is calm, considered and conscientious. He became a tutor in the IC in 2015, moved into the house in 2018 and has been ABHM from 2022. He will be missed by the boys in the IC for his careful and caring tutoring and in particular the attention and detail he has put into their UCAS references and US letters of recommendation.
Jon is a very good physicist and perhaps even more importantly, an excellent communicator of science. This was acknowledged by UCL who awarded him a distinction for his MSc and offered him a PhD place. Good-humoured and invariably friendly, he is great to have around the Science faculty and the campus. He debates and argues with thought and skill. Even if no agreement is reached, Jon’ s opinion is valued.
Our loss will be Cranford School’ s gain. I wish him and his wife Helen all the best in their next chapter.
Steve Sharp
150 VALETE