What is great about many staff and students associated with the school is that many of them make major contributions to our local and international communities. Many students and staff volunteer for charitable events – some of them raising significant amounts of money to help those less fortunate than themsleves. Others help out with elderly relatives and other visit local care homes and give up their time to make someone’s life a little bit more positive.

Sometimes we come together as a community and raise money and awareness of things closer to home and last Friday was a prime example of this. Our staff also continue to inpsire us and our Deputy Headteacher, Ms de Groot, is one of these members of staff. In her ‘spare time’ she contributes a lot to the local and international community and in a variety of ways. As the Child Protection and Safeguarding Trustee for United World Schools (UWS), a charity that builds and runs schools in areas of education poverty in Cambodia, Nepal, Madagascar and Myanmar, she was involbved in a very prestigious event a few weeks ago.

The charity held their annual fundraising gala dinner at Claridge’s Hotel in London last Wednesday, hosted by comedian Rory Bremner. Ms de Groot was pleased to be able to attend, and witness the moment when the assembled guests pledged £500,000 to support education, including fully funding a new school in Madagascar for the next five years. This will change the lives of 1000s of children who would otherwise be without an education. Her work outside of school is making a huge difference in the world.

When we hear about this it perhaps encourages all of us to take a moment to reflect on how lucky we all are to have access to high quality, free education in the UK.