Mr Pavis' Video Newsletter: Friday 5th June

This week we welcomed our Year 6 students and their families — from local primary schools and our own prep school — to the theatre for their first parents evening ahead of joining the senior school in September. We're looking forward to making that transition as smooth and exciting as possible for everyone.

Casting our minds back just two weeks, I want to celebrate once more the extraordinary achievement of Lincoln and Lily, who performed at the National Youth Monologues competition in the West End in London. Lily, Lucy, Martha-May, Wilbur and Grace were all commended as finalists in that same competition — a remarkable collective result. It seems Kingsley can do it not just on the sporting stage, but in the performing arts too.

And in art, we heard this week that Ryan, Olivia and Edie have all made it through to the National Rotary Art Competition finals, to be judged on the 10th of June. Good luck to all three of you.

At Speech Day just before half term, the point I kept coming back to was this: opportunity plus participation equals incredible outcomes. And what we're seeing here at Kingsley is students discovering talents, aspirations and potential they never knew they had. That's what this place is all about. We continue to look forward to national finals in swimming, athletics, gymnastics and judo in the coming weeks.

On Monday we welcomed a very special guest — Baasit Siddiqui, better known to many for his appearances on Gogglebox, who delivered workshops through Siddiqui Education with our Year 6 and Year 7 students, focusing on the future of AI in education and in all of our lives. He also addressed the whole school in assembly — thank you so much for coming down.
It's exam season across the school. Years 7, 8 and 9 have been sitting their end of year exams this week, while our Year 11 and Year 13 students are working their way through their GCSEs and A-levels. Keep going — the hard work will bear fruit, and we very much look forward to celebrating those results in August.

Our Year 10 Sport Science students had a brilliant day at Bath University yesterday as part of their course, and our drama students were at the Festival at the Plough Theatre in Torrington. Well done to all of you. On the sports field, our Girls Under 15 cricket team were involved in a nail-biting game against GTS, just narrowly missing out, and our Boys Under 16 Grenville Centre football team lost a thriller against North Devon College, 6-4. Well done to everyone who took part in both fixtures.

This weekend our Year 9 and some Year 10 students are out on their Bronze Duke of Edinburgh expeditions, our Swell Chasers are hunting waves, and our boarders are off to the Wake Park. Have a wonderful weekend — I look forward to speaking to you all again next week.