As our Year 13 students approach the summer examinations, we mark the transition at the top of the school from one generation of student leaders to the next. For the past week or so, Northampton High students have been represented by their new leadership team in Year 12, a formidable group of young women led by Olivia, who will, I am sure, make their predecessors proud.

The new team will introduce themselves to our families formally in due course, but some of you will already have had the pleasure of meeting some of them at Thursday’s Spring Collective. They are fizzing with ideas, with the new House Leaders busy putting the Houses through their paces for the House Singing Competition and the new SSLT planning a Summer Charity Picnic and Gala for students. Watch this space!

As part of this handover, we held a celebratory “thank you” lunch for our outgoing team this Friday, which was also an opportunity for the incoming Year 12s to be welcomed to their roles and to share ideas and experiences. I may occasionally have had to skip a song playing in the background, but there was a lovely atmosphere to celebrate the hard work of the Year 13 students in leading our school community so ably.

In exchange for pizzas and cookies, they also shared their thoughts on what leadership has meant to them. I was struck by the way they understood leadership to be a matter of service and developing positive, supportive relationships. They identified that their positions of responsibility had given them valuable opportunities, but that, as much as anything, leadership had meant giving others, especially in the younger years, opportunities to grow and develop. I was left feeling that the High School’s students are in good hands now and that the students leaving the High School will no doubt make their mark on the institutions that they will be joining next year. Best of luck to them all!