Rising to the challenge of a difficult year

WELCOME to the final edition of this academic year’s RGS News. It is great to see so many exciting ventures still happening despite the limitations placed on us this year by the global pandemic. It is also very encouraging to see so many of our students contributing articles and opinion pieces to this publication.

We are, of course, all truly hoping that September will allow greater freedoms to return and some sense of normality to be in place. It is with sadness that this year’s commemoration in the cathedral had to be cancelled. Whole school events like these are an important marker in the school’s calendar. Nor can we hold our whole school prize giving event which has had to be postponed for a second year running. Instead there will be a series of assemblies in the final week which will focus on commemorating the school’s long history and its place in the present and future of wider Ripon society, as well as a distribution of prizes to the year groups which this year, as a new departure, will award overall attainment and relative progress in each subject in equal measure. In addition to this we are looking forward to sports day on July 9.

We will be saying goodbye at the end of term to several members of staff, some with long service to the school. I will be writing in more detail to parents in my end of year letter about this and some further updates about the year ahead from September. 

However, I would like at this point to say a huge thank you to the whole of the staff at RGS who have had to battle through a long academic year, which has involved changes in working practices, adapting to online learning as well as the additional responsibilities of assessing work and grading for our A-level and GCSE students. 

The awarding of grades has been completed with great professionalism and we all sincerely hope that our Year 11 and 13 students, who have worked extremely hard in these final weeks, will achieve the grades they need for the next phase in their educational journey.

Best wishes

Jonathan Webb