Within any school community - be it pupil, teacher, or indeed Headmaster - there’s a hum of anticipation as summer beckons. The final weeks bring their familiar rhythm: joyful milestones on the horizon, end-of-year rituals that brim with meaning, and a shared sense of growing lightness, even if grey clouds occasionally empty themselves overhead (which they are doing now, with near-theatrical gusto, outside my window as I write on Thursday evening). 

As a pupil, I always associated this season with some personal pleasure… my birthday, conveniently arriving just after summer exams, felt like a small festival of its own; a little reward following the period of summer exams. For staff, the feeling at this time is more complicated: the exam period may have passed for the pupils, but the heavy lifting of marking and report writing heaves into view. Birthdays, in this context, are perhaps better delayed! 

This week marked an especially poignant chapter in the life of our Year 8 boys, with the Common Entrance cohort just completing their exams - the final academic rite of passage before they move on from Pilgrims’. Watching them cross this threshold has been a pleasure: they have faced the challenge with seriousness, humour, and resilience. In so doing, they have not only honoured their own journeys but, alongside their peers who completed their exams earlier in term, have also provided an example for the younger boys who naturally watch their journeys with a sense of aspiration. 

Rudyard Kipling, in his much-quoted poem If, advises his son to "meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same." I have always found those lines both comforting and wise. Kipling invites us to see success and failure not as definitive verdicts on our worth, but as the temporary moods of life - constructs of perspective, as fleeting and malleable as weather. He reminds us that what truly matters is not the outward result but the inner posture: the character we display in both jubilation and disappointment. 

So while we celebrate the exceptional successes of our Year 8s, who have achieved 11 academic awards, including scholarships to Eton, St Paul’s, KES and a record cohort on roll to Winchester; 6 music awards to schools such as Eton, Winchester, Harrow, Sherborne and Churcher’s; and a fine drama scholarship to Bradfield to boot - we do so with a certain mindfulness. These are significant and wonderful achievements. And they are best understood not as endpoints, but as signs of a deeper and more enduring success: the full-hearted effort each boy made to stretch himself, to grow, and to do justice to his potential. 

Our pride extends not only to those whose efforts have been formally recognised, but also to those whose paths may have unfolded with equally important measures of success. These are often enjoyably tangible for the boys as they move into their senior schools, regularly finding themselves placed in top sets, as I am told by parents of the previous year’s leavers. These affirmations speak volumes about the deep roots they’ve striven to develop whilst here. 

And as the school year begins to fold itself neatly into summer, my thoughts turn from those achieving important milestones at the top of the school to the very youngest boys - those in Pre-Prep, nurtured by Mrs Hall and her wonderful team. Their world is still one of stories, play, discovery, and wonder. But here too, the foundations are being laid: of curiosity, of character, of kindness. One day, they too will sit their own exams, perhaps receive their own scholarships, and stand tall as role models. But for now, they are busy doing the vital work of simply becoming. 

It is, in all ways, a wonderful time to be the Headmaster of this remarkable school. And as I look back on these eleven months - full of growth, laughter, effort, challenge, and joy - I am reminded once again of the enduring purpose of a school like ours: to prepare not just boys who may one day go on towards awards, but thoughtful, curious, and grounded young men, capable of meeting both Triumph and Disaster with steady hearts and open minds. 

Tim Butcher
Headmaster