Year Book Wellington College 2011 | Page 9

the wellington college year book 2010/2011 In 2007 we had five Oxbridge/Ivy League places, 2008 seven, 2009 ten, 2010 nine. This year we achieved twenty-three, made up of seventeen Oxbridge places and six Ivy League. Our target for 2015 is fifty. Achievements Our A Capella group nicely introduce some comments about the achievements of the school. All the richness of achievement would be nothing if we weren’t doing the core things well, by which I mean academic standards, as seen in exam results. Our a Level results in 2010 were the best in our history, and show a spectacular increase since 2005, as measured by percentages of a and b grades. These figures are meaningless unless you factor in the ability intake for each school. It is here that Wellington does spectacularly well, coming in the top 0.7% of the country on the government’s ‘added value’ tables. Wellington is beaten by kcs Wimbledon, which benefits from the preferential ucas tariff of being an all ib school. But what of scholarship, which I said in earlier years we need to improve at?? In 2007 we had five Oxbridge/Ivy League places in total, 2008 seven, 2009 ten, 2010 nine. This year we achieved twenty-three, made up of seventeen Oxbridge places and six Ivy League. Our target for 2015 is fifty. Wellington will become much more scholarly, but without losing any of its excellence in sports, the Arts or service. What of the pupil achievements? They are listed in your programme, as they are every Friday in the Week Ahead. The girls have had an outstanding year and are only behind the boys in their filming technology, so the extract we are going to see is going to be only of boys’ sport, of our first team and victorious 7s side at Rosslyn Park. While we are looking at it, I would like the following, who are among those who have played for their country at sport this year, to come up to the stage to shake the hand of the Chairman of Governors. Let me also mention Will Leith who scored a century last week in the 1st X1 victory over Eton. In the Great Britain u15 athletics team: Morgan Lake. Scotland u17 rugby: Buchan Richardson. England u16a rugby: Charlie Wicks. England u16 rugby: Simon Sexton. Alex Peters and Heidi Baek playing for England at golf, the latter winning the us Junior Masters. Nick Hopcroft in the England u19 squash team. Harry Orpen-Smellie in the gb cadet rifle team. Hannah Joseph in the England u19 netball team. Madison Hughes in the usa u20 rugby team. Kieran Ball in the England u18 rugby club and schools team. Jake Oldacre in the England u17 rugby. The service achievement has been extraordinary this year from Wellington pupils, who have embodied the values of courage, respect, kindness, integrity and responsibility. The Arts have been a real highlight this year, and we are going to listen to Keshan Vaikunthanathan play one of his pieces on Sax, which made him one of the eight finalists of the Montgomery Music Competition. While he plays, we will see a medley of images on screen representing the best of dance, drama, music and visual art. The one art form missing, creative writing, can be seen in the magazine published this week, South Front, and in the online Wellingtonian. 9