No . 131 The Trusty Servant
shared with other schools ; potential VI Book entrants need no longer be put off by a mysterious qualification ; and universities and employers will no longer need to be told that a D is actually very good ( Distinction ).
Curriculum reform
The lower-school curriculum is also undergoing a change . All pupils will now sit English Literature for GCSE in addition to Language , taking their total of examined subjects to ten . Maths , two sciences and one of French or German remain compulsory , but the other four subjects are a free choice : the third science , German or French , Spanish , Art , DT , Music , Computer Science , Geography , History , Greek and ( traditionalists , prepare yourselves ) Latin . Pupils will still have a year of compulsory Latin , so William of Wykeham ’ s ghost can rest easy that some ‘ faculty and science of grammar ’ will still be imparted to his sons . He would also be pleased that Religious Studies will be added to the mix in a year ’ s time .
Academic Successes
Sean Jaffe ( Coll , 16- ) won Bronze at the Balkan Mathematical Olympiad in November , following it up with Distinctions in both rounds of the British Mathematical Olympiad ( top 20 in BMO1 ). William Thomson ( Coll , 18- ) reached the top ten with his Distinction in BMO1 and just missed a top-20 place in BMO2 .
Rtvik Patel ( Coll , 16- ) was top of nine gold-medal winners from Win Coll in the Chemistry Olympiad , scoring 84 / 85 – the second-placed goldmedallist scored 52 . Unsurprisingly , Rtvik has qualified for the UK team for a second successive year . Sadly , COVID means that the trip to Japan which this should entail has been replaced with a five-hour theory exam sat remotely ; Rtvik says he is looking forward to it . Of the other gold medallists , special mention should be made of Christopher Leung ( Coll , 18- ) and Paul Apostolides ( Coll , 18- ), who are in V Book and thus took the paper two years early .
Rtvik was also one of three goldmedal winners in Physics . He modestly let two others take the limelight , however , in Biology .
Lucas Ali-Hassan ( Coll , 18- ) attained a gold medal in the Linguistic Olympiad , normally only open to VI Book pupils .
Dylan Brooks ( G , 15-20 ) won the Sam Hood Translation Prize for a version of passage from Euripides ’ Bacchae .
Internally , Sterling Blakey ( B , 16- ) won the Kenneth Clark Prize for his presentation on Anselm Kiefer ’ s Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom .
Sam Baddeley ( Co Ro , 16- ) has published a commentary on Sophocles ’ Ajax in the OCR Anthology Classical Greek AS & A Level ( Bloomsbury ). Former colleague Sarah Harden ( 13-19 ) wrote the commentary of Homer Odyssey 1 in the same volume .
Sport
With all attendees apart from the top year ‘ bubble ’ prevented from attending XVs , the school engaged a broadcasting company to film the event and live-stream it on YouTube . The game itself was a thriller , with OTH recovering from 1-24 after 18 mins to win 62-58 . Commentary was provided by Paddy Fisher ( B , 16- ), Michael Hawkey ( Coll , 16- ) and James Burridge ( E , 00-05 ; Co Ro , 09- ), allowing viewers to understand the rules and even the tactics more clearly than ever before . At the peak there were 599 concurrent views of the live game and at the time of writing there have been more than 4000 views in total , although it is possible that many of these represent the obsessive re-clicking of debutant OTH coach Ben Cunningham ( K , 07-12 ), whose team-mates from his time in the Commoner XV are not impressed with his switch of allegiance . Anyone who has not yet seen it can find the link on the Win Coll Soc website .
Perhaps those budding sporting journalists will follow in the footsteps of Rockley Wilson ( Co Ro , 1903-46 ), whose sports reportage during the 1921 MCC tour of Ceylon was quoted by The Times on 23 rd January this year while England were facing Sri Lanka . The outward journey featured the sight of some ‘ truly gigantic marrows ’ in Naples and victory for Jack Hobbs in deck quoits ; the tour itself was nearly ruined by a disastrous encounter with a prawn curry in Galle , which required an injection of morphine for one player . Rockley , as he was universally known , taught French at Win Coll , but spent the summer holidays playing first-class cricket , including one Test against Australia in 1922 . He is memorialised by Rockley Tent on Gater Field .
QEII Refurbishment
The QEII Theatre foyer has been refurbished , ready to throw open the doors to punters once conditions allow . The dressing rooms have also been repainted in softer tones ( to encourage a bit of calm backstage ) and had their furniture , fixtures and fittings upgraded .
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