It's finally done!
I have finally finished my speech for the Year 10 Awards evening tomorrow. You can read it here:
Good evening ladies and gentlemen and congratulations to all the Year 10 students who have won awards this evening.
I would also like to offer my congratulations to Ollie and Caroline on being selected as the new Head Boy and Head Girl and I am sure that they will do their best to carry on upholding the high standards and expectations that people have come to expect from students at Penrice.
In my final year at Penrice, I have been very busy with many interesting and exciting projects, which I will briefly talk through now.
As Head Girl, one of the most interesting processes that I was involved in was the selection of the new Head teacher. Guy and myself worked alongside the school council to devise a set of questions concerning issues that affected the students and the qualities that the pupils wanted in their new head teacher. The school council asked the questions whilst Guy and I made notes on each of the candidates and their answers. Everyone then fed back their views on each candidate and we briefly summed up the students views and opinions, which we then fed back to the panel of governors who had also been conducting interviews. Although there was disagreement among the school council, I felt that everyone’s opinion was noted and a fair report on each candidate was given back to the governors.
I think the fairness of the overall system used to choose the new Head teacher was strengthened by the inclusion of the student council to interview the candidates, as this meant that students were taking an active role in finding out from each candidate their views and opinions on student issues. It also meant that student issues were coming directly from the students and so it was a chance for every pupil to have their say in the matters that affect them and how the new head teacher will deal with them, which personally I feel is a very important aspect of an effective school.
I also gave my annual report to the governors about the different activities that students had been participating in and this was an opportunity to gain an insight into the way that the governors meetings operate and I also gained a clearer idea of how the governors system functions in the school.
In May this year the school held a mock election and I was the deputy candidate for the Liberal Democrats and I gave a speech to Year 10, in fact most of the students sitting in front of me now will have heard that speech. I’m not sure entirely how effective it was, but the Liberal Democrats came second overall in the election, so it must have influenced some students’ votes.
Whilst I was doing all of this, I was also involved in rehearsals for this year’s school production, Deadman’s Bottom, which is being performed next week. I know that many Year 10 students are involved in this and I am sure that many parents, some of you sitting in front of me now, even, will be coming to see the play. It has taken many hours of patience, preparation and dedication and I hope that you all enjoy it as much as we’ve enjoyed being a part of the process of taking it from script to stage.
Most recently, I have just finished my GCSE exams. It seems so strange that you spend 5 years studying hard for these exams and they are all over within a matter of weeks.
I had already decided before I even wrote this speech that I was going to try and avoid the cliché of “It feels like only yesterday that I was sitting there”, but in the end it boils down to the fact that there is no other way to describe how fast the time has gone.
I remember when I was in Year 10, heading into Year 11 and the constant reminders not to waste the final year at Penrice, as it will be the best, the shortest and the most memorable. There is no easy way to urge someone not to waste their final year at school, if someone has already decided that they don’t want to work hard or don’t need to, then you are going to have a very hard job dissuading them from that decision, all you can do is to keep repeating the need to them not to do that. I am going to draw on a very topical issue to help illustrate my point.
I would be very surprised if many of you failed to notice that Live 8 took place at the weekend, the main purpose of it being to raise awareness of the horrific poverty faced by millions of people in Africa. You’re probably wondering how this relates to not wasting your final year at Penrice or throwing away opportunities. Well the answer is this: when you see people who have absolutely nothing, not even a home to call their own, not even any food with which to feed their starving children, then you start to think about some of the things in your own life and suddenly you feel incredibly grateful for things which normally people take for granted. Everyone here knows that in the UK education is free up to the age of 18 and we take it as our right to be entitled to that. Here at Penrice it is no different. We come here so that we can achieve our very best and we have the privilege of doing that with support from teachers and outstanding facilities at our disposal. There are children in Africa who have never been to school and probably never will because Africa simply does not have the money with which to fund schools or the people qualified to teach.
So, my message is this: Don’t throw away your last year at Penrice. You will have many memorable experiences in Year 11; the one that you will probably all remember the most will be the Ball. (I know that my year 11 ball was fantastic) and yes, of course you will be taking your GCSE exams, but if you work hard and apply yourself then you will find that suddenly they don’t look quite as terrifying as they do at the moment.
Education is a very wonderful thing. It enables us to learn, to broaden our horizons and to reach for our dreams. It also gives us the skills and qualities necessary to make those dreams a reality. I am sure that you all have hopes and aspirations for the future, so build on the success of tonight as you have all done extremely well to win these awards out of over 200 students and don’t let that go to waste. The key to success in the future is, I believe, realising what you have and using that to your advantage to make your future a bright one. That key is right here. It’s all around us; it’s the very hall we’re sitting in. That key is Penrice. So use it to your advantage, work hard in the coming year and in the not too distant future, you will achieve your dreams.
Thank you for listening
Good Night
Hurrah...all I have to do now is actually give the speech tomorrow night...
Good evening ladies and gentlemen and congratulations to all the Year 10 students who have won awards this evening.
I would also like to offer my congratulations to Ollie and Caroline on being selected as the new Head Boy and Head Girl and I am sure that they will do their best to carry on upholding the high standards and expectations that people have come to expect from students at Penrice.
In my final year at Penrice, I have been very busy with many interesting and exciting projects, which I will briefly talk through now.
As Head Girl, one of the most interesting processes that I was involved in was the selection of the new Head teacher. Guy and myself worked alongside the school council to devise a set of questions concerning issues that affected the students and the qualities that the pupils wanted in their new head teacher. The school council asked the questions whilst Guy and I made notes on each of the candidates and their answers. Everyone then fed back their views on each candidate and we briefly summed up the students views and opinions, which we then fed back to the panel of governors who had also been conducting interviews. Although there was disagreement among the school council, I felt that everyone’s opinion was noted and a fair report on each candidate was given back to the governors.
I think the fairness of the overall system used to choose the new Head teacher was strengthened by the inclusion of the student council to interview the candidates, as this meant that students were taking an active role in finding out from each candidate their views and opinions on student issues. It also meant that student issues were coming directly from the students and so it was a chance for every pupil to have their say in the matters that affect them and how the new head teacher will deal with them, which personally I feel is a very important aspect of an effective school.
I also gave my annual report to the governors about the different activities that students had been participating in and this was an opportunity to gain an insight into the way that the governors meetings operate and I also gained a clearer idea of how the governors system functions in the school.
In May this year the school held a mock election and I was the deputy candidate for the Liberal Democrats and I gave a speech to Year 10, in fact most of the students sitting in front of me now will have heard that speech. I’m not sure entirely how effective it was, but the Liberal Democrats came second overall in the election, so it must have influenced some students’ votes.
Whilst I was doing all of this, I was also involved in rehearsals for this year’s school production, Deadman’s Bottom, which is being performed next week. I know that many Year 10 students are involved in this and I am sure that many parents, some of you sitting in front of me now, even, will be coming to see the play. It has taken many hours of patience, preparation and dedication and I hope that you all enjoy it as much as we’ve enjoyed being a part of the process of taking it from script to stage.
Most recently, I have just finished my GCSE exams. It seems so strange that you spend 5 years studying hard for these exams and they are all over within a matter of weeks.
I had already decided before I even wrote this speech that I was going to try and avoid the cliché of “It feels like only yesterday that I was sitting there”, but in the end it boils down to the fact that there is no other way to describe how fast the time has gone.
I remember when I was in Year 10, heading into Year 11 and the constant reminders not to waste the final year at Penrice, as it will be the best, the shortest and the most memorable. There is no easy way to urge someone not to waste their final year at school, if someone has already decided that they don’t want to work hard or don’t need to, then you are going to have a very hard job dissuading them from that decision, all you can do is to keep repeating the need to them not to do that. I am going to draw on a very topical issue to help illustrate my point.
I would be very surprised if many of you failed to notice that Live 8 took place at the weekend, the main purpose of it being to raise awareness of the horrific poverty faced by millions of people in Africa. You’re probably wondering how this relates to not wasting your final year at Penrice or throwing away opportunities. Well the answer is this: when you see people who have absolutely nothing, not even a home to call their own, not even any food with which to feed their starving children, then you start to think about some of the things in your own life and suddenly you feel incredibly grateful for things which normally people take for granted. Everyone here knows that in the UK education is free up to the age of 18 and we take it as our right to be entitled to that. Here at Penrice it is no different. We come here so that we can achieve our very best and we have the privilege of doing that with support from teachers and outstanding facilities at our disposal. There are children in Africa who have never been to school and probably never will because Africa simply does not have the money with which to fund schools or the people qualified to teach.
So, my message is this: Don’t throw away your last year at Penrice. You will have many memorable experiences in Year 11; the one that you will probably all remember the most will be the Ball. (I know that my year 11 ball was fantastic) and yes, of course you will be taking your GCSE exams, but if you work hard and apply yourself then you will find that suddenly they don’t look quite as terrifying as they do at the moment.
Education is a very wonderful thing. It enables us to learn, to broaden our horizons and to reach for our dreams. It also gives us the skills and qualities necessary to make those dreams a reality. I am sure that you all have hopes and aspirations for the future, so build on the success of tonight as you have all done extremely well to win these awards out of over 200 students and don’t let that go to waste. The key to success in the future is, I believe, realising what you have and using that to your advantage to make your future a bright one. That key is right here. It’s all around us; it’s the very hall we’re sitting in. That key is Penrice. So use it to your advantage, work hard in the coming year and in the not too distant future, you will achieve your dreams.
Thank you for listening
Good Night
Hurrah...all I have to do now is actually give the speech tomorrow night...