The Lent Term is marked by a number of significant events: completion of coursework, mock exams, national sporting championships and the beginning of new tenures for house officers in Y10 to name but a few. In all these fields of endeavour, once again this term I have seen the hard work, ambition, leadership, teamwork, and determination to develop that I associated with Berkhamstedians. These are not attributes to take for granted, but features of a school community which, although it comprises fallible people, is a community of people learning with ambition, integrity and a well-developed sense of the collective. There are so many occasions when I have been privileged to see pupils achieving more than they might have expected, encouraged by their peers and by their teachers, and this term has been no exception - academically, athletically, aesthetically. Pupils' wholehearted commitment to the School, to their own development, and to their peers' has been a feature of the School in the last ten years which I have enormously valued. 

In particular this term, sporting national titles have been won and leagues have been topped, year group plays and examined devised pieces have been performed to great applause, the Yates Drill competition completed with great skill, and musical events have wowed audiences. And, of course, all the while the underlying academic rhythm of the school has pulsed with quiet, daily advance in capabilities. All those endeavours deserve congratulation. 

Of course, this also marks the end of my last term after a little over ten years at Berkhamsted. I would like to thank parents for their support - for many of you, we shared the journey through Covid, and still more through the application of VAT to fees, among other challenges to have faced schools in the last decade. I have enormously appreciated parents' support of the School in so many ways in those years: thank you.

My new role (finding excellent school leaders for schools, as Head of UK Appointments at RSAcademics) will involve paying closer attention to LinkedIn (this is among several new skills I shall be learning in a new part of the education sector). I have enjoyed seeing recent former pupils taking up impressive internships and graduate jobs in recent years, and I shall continue to enjoy looking to see the successes of the School, and its former pupils and members of staff via that medium in future. 

I am delighted to hand over to Martin Walker as Principal, who is extremely well qualified to lead the Group into its next phase. Of course, he has already experienced the support of our parents and the school community as Head of Sixth and Vice Principal, and I am sure both he and the organisation will flourish in the coming years with your continued support.

Goodbye, and thank you!

To watch the video celebrating Richard's time at the School, click on the link below:

Richard Backhouse A Remarkable Decade