February 2013 archive

The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine

As I said to girls in Assembly last week, even when we are very busy, we must find time to read. Reading stretches the mind and fills the soul, and we are not complete human beings without it. This is true of books even when – perhaps especially when – they deal with subjects that …

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Schools: places of amazing professional learning

Schools are at their essence about students – the student sits (or should sit) at the heart of all endeavour in the school; schools are there in order to educate students and to assist in guiding their personal development and growth. Schools were invented to ensure that young people were well-prepared to play a role …

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Why it really matters that our athletes are free from drugs

Hot on the heels of Lance Armstrong’s confessions to doping, aired across the world, have come further revelations of drug taking at high levels of sport. Last week, the Australian Crime Commission released a report that effectively accused top level sportspeople (as yet unidentified) of taking drugs – and, to make the situation even worse …

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Why every school should have a school song

In our first senior school Assembly of term last week, the very first thing we did was to sing the school song. This song refers to the history of Ascham (which was named after the tutor to the great Queen Elizabeth I, Roger Ascham), and then continues with these words: With heart and soul we …

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