From All Quarters 2020
From All Quarters is a yearly publication with updates from Alumni across the world. We have split up each of the updates in the ‘News’ section of the website, and this article has the Headmaster’s foreword and the Editor’s introduction.
All the articles and intros are in this PDF, should that be a preferred way to view: download here
Foreword form the Headmaster
As I write this piece from a temporary office in my spare room at home, I can’t help but think that we are living in quite extraordinary times. The announcement on March 18th that schools would close, and public exams be cancelled for the first time since their formation in the 19th century, has shaken us to the core. Trying to manage the emotions and anxieties of staff, students and parents over the past few weeks has been a huge task, but I am proud of the way in which the QMGS community has come together. We are currently starting programmes of home learning and there is some uncertainty about what lies ahead.
Looking back however, the past year has provided us with lots of moments to go down in the annals of QM history. The 2019 GCSE performance (a progress 8 score of +0.76) was a new record for the school and the sixth form recruitment was extremely pleasing. We sent almost 200 upper sixth students off to a wide range of exciting destinations, including a record number to read medicine.
We completed the science and Moss Close project, adding a third floor to the science block and expanding English and Maths classrooms. The DT and Art extension/re-fit was also finished and it was a delight to show around the alumni before the QMC dinner in September.
Before the enforced school closure, we were very close to starting the next building project, to add another classroom block and extend the hall, as part of the Selective Schools Expansion Fund (SSEF). I have really enjoyed the outreach work we have done over the past 12 months as part of this and been overwhelmed with how the primary schools have embraced our work.
As I have mentioned previously, the School’s website (including the newsletters page) and twitter give a full flavour of the busy extra-curricular life of the school over the past 12 months. Students have taken part in trips to the Indian Himalaya, China, Spain, France, the Belgium battlefields, Italy and to CERN in Switzerland. Farchynys has been extensively used and the CCF goes from strength to strength, now under the leadership of Major Hudson after the retirement of Lieutenant Colonel Law. Large numbers of students have taken part in music concerts (in conjunction with QMHS) and we were named in the top 100 English schools for cricket by the Cricketer magazine for the second year in succession.
Former students Faeeza Vaid MBE and The Very Reverend Matt Thompson, Dean of Birmingham, joined us for a very engaging Speech Day in October 2019. I have very much enjoyed meeting a range of Marians over the past year and look forward to continuing to do so. I do hope that you can make it for the QMC dinner in 2020, coronavirus permitting.
Finally, I wrote to the alumni several weeks ago to pay tribute to Gillian Columbine, in the year she retires. I am extremely grateful for all that she has given to the school, over many years and whilst wearing many hats! She will be missed, although, I’m sure, never far away!
I am delighted to announce her successor as Judy McCoy. Judy will be a familiar face/name to many of you and she has a rich understanding of the School and its community. I fully believe that she
will make a great success of the role.
Floreat Reginae Schola Mariae
Regards, Richard Langton
Editor’s Introduction
We are all familiar with the sentiment in a well known song...... “Though the seas divide us we will not forget...”. However, none of us could have predicted how members of our community would be separated so dramatically as we have been in recent weeks – and we are all coming to realise how we miss even the most mundane and routine social occasions. However, the QMC has survived many international crises and I am sure that it will do so again.
In the last twelve months many former pupils have called in to School and have been pleasantly surprised to see the significant improvements to the buildings. The Club continues to support Farchynys energetically and the improved facilities there have been welcomed by the present generation of Marians. The Barn provides a valuable annexe to accommodate greater numbers. We look forward to visits to Wales resuming as soon as circumstances permit.
If you have not been in communication with QM in recent years do please send me an email with an update of your news. You may find that you now have a little more spare time than usual. It would be really good to hear from you.
With best wishes
Tim Lawrence