At the start of a new calendar year it was great to be able to listen to Deputy Headteacher Ms de Groot’s well-crafted assembly on the theme of commitment. She reminded students that commitment is an important part of improving, and growing and developing into successful young learners. She even shared some of her commitments or new year’s resolutions she made when she was their age.

She went on to speak about how important it is to make any targets, new year’s resolutions or new commitments smart ones: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time related. Rather than “I want to read more” state that “I want to read for 10 minutes extra each day.”

She also reminded everyone that we are not perfect and it’s okay to get things wrong and slip up occasionally – perhaps applying the ‘2 day rule’ will help though: if you miss 1 day with your targets or commitment don’t let it go into a second day.

She offered to support anyone who wanted to share their commitments with her via a google questionnaire and promised reward points if they could keep the commitment up until half term.

Finally she reminded everyone of the need to persevere!

It was a great assembly for this time and year and a chance for all of us to consider becoming even better versions of ourselves and making this term even more successful than the one that has just passed at the end of 2025.