Dear Parents and Friends,

The half term break already seems a long way away at the end of this busy first week back, but I would like to record the tremendous success of the 36th Royal Russell International MUN Conference held here over four days at the end of October. 450 pupils including over 100 from Royal Russell took part in a celebration of debating, discussion, lobbying, media, administration and organisation, led so ably by pupils, strongly supported by a terrific team of staff. The compliments we have received from those attending the Conference are testament to the organisational skills and enthusiasm of all involved and my congratulations to the delegates and officers, and particularly to Mr Keable-Elliott and his staff team for all they did to ensure its success.

Over half term we were also able to complete our Sixth Form French Exchange to Orleans where pupils enjoyed some truly superb hospitality and, separately, 70 CCF Cadets, NCO’s and Officers attended their CCF training camp at Pirbright.

The start of this week has been no less busy, with a full range of fixtures, events and activities running alongside our core academic curriculum and some internal and external examinations including entrance papers for Cambridge University candidates.

On Wednesday evening the Rush Hour concert, held in the Music Department, was a great success and included a range of performances from our senior pupils and also included new Year 7 pupils Hollie Taylor and Emily Ton.

At the inaugural Poetry Competition last night in the Library, we welcomed acclaimed poet Ros Barber, along with pupils from Year 7 to Year 13, parents, supporters and the Jazz Band for a wonderful evening of celebration. Each pupil read their poem which had been shortlisted from over 450 entries organised by the English Department as part of National Poetry Day in September. The richness and diversity of talent on show was hugely impressive and I’d like to congratulate those selected as category winners, including overall winner Tom King and all pupils and staff who contributed to such a successful evening.

Throughout the week we have enjoyed netball and hockey fixtures for a wide range of teams with some excellent results. Wednesday saw a trip to Premier League Bournemouth for a fixture against their U18 Academy side which our 1st XI won 1-0. I look forward to hearing results of our hockey and netball fixtures tomorrow against Ashford and Emanuel.

This evening, the Boarding Staff have combined with Ms Willis and the Catering team to put on a Halloween themed event with spooky decorations, face painting and fabulous food followed by a bonfire and fireworks, which I am sure will be hugely enjoyed by the all of the boarding community.

Tomorrow we look forward to hosting the first ‘Russellian Ball’ in The Great Hall. There has been a great deal of activity in preparation for this event, led by the 1853 Society team who have transformed The Great Hall into Narnia! I’d like to take this opportunity to say ‘Thank you’ to the 1853 Committee Members and all the Royal Russell staff who have worked so hard to prepare for this exciting event. On Friday 11th November, ahead of our Remembrance Service on Sunday, the whole school community will be marking Remembrance Day 1917 – 2017, with a gathering at the Memorial Garden and the observation of two minutes of silence. Parents will be very welcome to attend this Act of Remembrance. Please make your way to the Memorial Garden by 10:45am so that you can be guided to the appropriate position.

With best wishes,

June Year 8 CCF Induction Day

Headmaster’s Weekly

Newsletter

3 November 2017

Chris Hutchinson Headmaster

From the Chapel

School Services

We began the second Half singing the hymn, For all the saints, to Vaughan Williams’ stirring tune, Sine Nomine. We heard that Tuesday was the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Germany. As a monk, Martin Luther had come to hate the term, the righteousness of God in the New Testament letter of Paul to the Romans (1:17). He feared that God would punish him because he could never be accepted as right by God due to his sin. His fears turned to joy when he realized that God accepts us as right because of what Jesus achieved in his sinless life, death and resurrection. All we have to do is to accept this in faith.

Influential engravings, reproduced en masse by the printing press, included Luther as determined and defiant, both as a monk and as a Doctor of Theology.

Luther’s criticisms led to him being rejected by the Catholic Church and, subsequently, the formation of Reformed or Protestant churches.

Today the Vatican is about to issue a 1.00 euro postage stamp, which depicts leading German Reformers at the foot of the cross: Luther, holding a Bible, and Philip Melancthon holding the Augsburg Confession. 500 years ago both Luther and the Pope were described as the Devil by their opponents. How times have changed … at last!

Chapel Quiz 116

What is the Augsburg Confession? Prizes for pupils.

All Souls’ Day

On All Souls’ Day (November 1st) the Church celebrates the countless heroes of faith who have gone before us. On the following day the Church honours all the faithful departed. In Chapel we remembered in prayer departed relatives and friends of members of the School and candles were lit.

Thought for the week

Happy is the youth, because he has time before him to do good. St Philip Neri (born 502 years ago)

Remembrance Day Service

Sunday 12 November, 10.00am in the Chapel All are most welcome.

RRSiMUN 2017

We welcomed over 400 students from 32 different schools from twelve different countries to the 36th Royal Russell MUN conference over half term. The annual conference is an amazing undertaking with 100 Royal Russell students helping to set up – making beds and turning classrooms into committee rooms – and then run the international conference.

As always, it was an intense, fun, emotionally charged and exhausting few days, and enjoyed by all the students. The conference itself attracted a high level of international debaters and the nine committees, Security Council (chaired by Ella and Meera) and the ICJ saw some impressive discussions. Pippa proved herself to be an exceptionally able Secretary-General who was firm and professional with the way she dealt with the General Assembly and she was ably supported by Stevie, Lucas and Thalia. 24 Royal Russell students acted as delegates with Megan winning a Distinguished Delegate award in the Security Council representing Japan. Thea, Ayo, Maksym and Polina ran the Secretariat with calm efficiency and the Press team led by Peter and the Media teams led by Sam, Amisha and Max did an amazing job. The Press published a daily newspaper whilst the media team put on a Friday night gameshow, a MUN’s Got Talent show on Sunday night whilst also live steaming the conference and producing a number of short films throughout the four days.

The films can be seen at: https://www.royalrussellmun.co.uk/muntv/

Rush Hour Concert

On Wednesday we enjoyed the first ‘Rush Hour’ concert of the year, which took place in Room A10 in the Music Department. These concerts take place at 5.00pm, and provide an opportunity for students to perform in a relaxed and informal atmosphere.

The following students from the whole of the Senior School age-range offered vocal and instrumental pieces in a variety of styles:

Lily Addis, Year 13, Voice

David Cherry, Year 8, Voice

Alexander Franklin, Year 10, Oboe

Emma Ozeki, Year 9, Piano

Anjani Poopalasingham, Year 9, Flute

Thalia Selby, Year 13, Voice

Hollie Taylor, Year 7, Violin

Oliver Tchum, Year 8, Violin

Emily Ton, Year 7, Piano

Daniel Zhang, Year 11, Piano

Very well done to everyone. A big ‘thank you’ to Mrs Ford, Mr Ford and Mr Bell, for organising the event and providing accompaniment, and to all the other visiting and external music teachers who helped students to prepare their performances.

The Guthrie Cup - CCF On Sunday the 8th Royal Russell CCF took part in a very important event. The Guthrie Cup, at Harrow; Hogwarts in its own right. It is a competition bringing together schools from around London to take part in an annual event in which all the contingents were tested. Some of the schools there included Wilsons, Harrow and Dulwich. All schools arrived with a mindset focused on winning. Waking up was the hardest, we left school at 6.30am. After a brief early morning speech, we set of to our activities. The first activities were pretty intense and physical. We had a three and a half kilo rifle along with a viper vest and full kit. It got quite hot in the multiple layers of clothing, but that was immediately cancelled out when we learnt we were going to be jumping, stomach down, onto cold, wet, muddy fields. In the end it was fine as we shot through about 60 blank rounds into the woodland each, it was extremely immersive and well worth the journey. Later we moved onto command tasks. This was where it didn’t go so well. Our team put in a lot of effort and we had a blast. We managed to finish every obstacle yet we just didn’t have enough time. Another command task was to stack barrels. It had many complicated rules but Staff Sergeant Edgar used his mathematical skills to arrange them correctly. We finished only 15 seconds over the clock, which is still very good. The bleep test was harsh, the levels accelerated quickly and it felt like time was getting slower. Our squad did decently in the test but the thing we were excited to see was the Staff attempting it. It was great watching them go through what we went through, we all had a laugh afterwards. One of the most difficult stands was the shooting. It was a Cadet GP rifle fitted with a conversion kit to shoot .22 cal rounds. Coming back to do the shooting was hard as you needed a lot of focus to get your shots on point. We were shaking and some of the shots were going off target due to our heart rate and energy, arriving from a physically enduring stand. Overall, the day was fun and packed with action. Everyone in our group, no doubt, had a great time, but the real heroes were the staff team that helped get Royal Russell organised and into the event.

Cadet Daniel Campbell

Brunswick Camp CCF

On Friday 20th October the CCF went on their training weekend to Brunswick camp. This was the first time any of the cadets had been to this base which added a layer of excitement to the weekend as we hadn’t experienced anything in the camp before.

For the army, the weekend was structured around a scenario. This was that the UK government needed to stabilise itself in order that it could perform checks and reconstruction in all areas. This meant that the B and C squadron cadets had to not only 'refine the skills of the new training cadets' by teaching the A squadron “skills and drills” such as basher building. They also had to do an overnight exercise in order to gain intelligence on General Fish Finger. They did this by performing recce patrols in and around the area of Hawley as well as dealing with present situations such as moving a nuclear weapon from location A to B without letting it touch the floor and only being allowed to touch the weapon when wearing the ‘special gloves’.

The camp as a whole was a great success, many of the new cadets learnt new skills required to advance their training and all the objectives of the night exercise were achieved to a high standard. We also had many promotions on this camp! Special congratulations to the army cadets - LCpl S Wyncoll, LCpl Dickens, LCpl deGuingand LCpl Potger, Sgt Pickup, Sgt Wrigley. This was well deserved by all.

The RAF spent most of the weekend helping the new recruits settle into military life, especially when the army section was away on exercise. The NCOs started off by teaching the recruits some basic skills and lessons, like orienting and how to apply cam cream properly. They then used them in patrolling exercises late on Saturday evening, when it was dark, which was run by the NCOs. The Recruits also did other activities over the weekend that included air rifle handling, command tasks, navigation, orienteering, drill and bush craft that senior flight also joined in with, and some were run by the army section. Senior flight also did an exercise that meant we had to throw 'Grenades' into enemy territory, without being caught which meant we had to crawl around in the woods to get close enough. There were also a few promotions on October camp so well done to LCpl J Longhurst, Cpl Opoku-Owosu, Cpl Yanker, Sgt Brown and Sgt Jodhun.

Cadet Sergeant M Longhurst and Cadet Sergeant S Palmer

Sixth Form Assembly On Wednesday, Year 12 were visited by Emma Cole who has been living with HIV for 26 years. After receiving the positive result when she was just 22, she was told she would only have 8 to 10 years to live. However she has defied all odds, going on to form a career in informing young people about HIV and AIDs, being a part of the 2001 BBC documentary ‘Positive Women’ and even becoming engaged in recent years (which received a lot of ‘aahs’ from the audience!). Emma was a highly informative speaker, answering all our rather interesting and fairly personal questions about the disease and how she got it. Her very frank way of speaking and frequent jokes gained lots of laughs from the pupils and it was her honesty about broaching the subject that made us really value her talk – often these subjects are brushed over. We learned about transmission of the disease and what it’s like to live with AIDs but we also really appreciated how attitudes towards it have changed over the year, and how far treatment has come – although there is no cure for HIV yet. Emma was by far one of the most enlightening and enjoyable Sixth Form assemblies that we have had so far. She can be found at positivevoice-emmacole.co.uk/

Art of the Reformation This Tuesday was the 500th anniversary of the start of the German Reformation, which led to some Christians leaving the Roman Catholic Church and forming Protestant Reformed Churches in Germany and beyond. Unlike other leading Reformers, Martin Luther did not oppose the use of art to further the Reformation cause. Illustrations for Luther’s German Bible, portraits of Luther, art meant for teaching the true faith and images used as propaganda were reproduced on the printing press to help spread the Reformation. In the Library seven images were shown and their significance explained. One painting (shown here) depicts Luther in a pulpit preaching in church about the significance of Christ crucified and risen (symbolised by his swirling garment).

PUZZLES AND GAMES CLUB

IN THE LIBRARY

EVERY FRIDAY: 4.00pm to 5.15pm

ALL WELCOME

Annual Poetry Festival It was wonderful to welcome parents, pupils and staff to Royal Russell’s first annual poetry festival on Thursday evening. Inspired by this years National Poetry Day theme of ‘Freedom’ every pupil in Years 7-11 and the Sixth Form was asked to use their creative juices and respond in poetic form!

For Year 7 we asked them to see the freedom in their environment, the world around them. For Year 8 we looked at freedom of speech and expression. For Year 9 we explored political freedom, including sexism and racism, something which seems very relevant in the wake of the Weinstein revelations and the recent Lamy report into racial inequality in Britain today. Year 10, Year 11 and our Sixth Form had a little more freedom; they could write on anything around the theme.

30 poems were shortlisted by the English and Library departments from around 450 entries. Ros Barber, award-winning author and poet, had the difficult task of choosing the winner and runner-up in each year group and selecting the best poem overall in Years 7-9 and Years 10-Sixth Form. There were some extremely moving and heartfelt renditions of the poems on the night and recitation prizes were also awarded.

All the shortlisted poems were compiled into a booklet which is available here and can also be downloaded from Firefly. The prize-winners were: Year 7 winner - Lara Flint - Queen’s, runner up - Bethany Long - Reade Year 8 winner - Anastacia Allen - Buchanan, runner up - Nancy Burgess-Gibbs - Reade Year 9 winner - Cameron Leishman - St Andrew’s, runner up - Calum Firth - Oxford Year 10/11 winner - Thomas King, runner up - Connor Launder - St Andrew’s Sixth Form winner - Anna Armitage - Queen’s Year 12, runner up - Max Shirley - St Andrew’s Year 13 Overall Winner Year 7 - 9 - Anastacia Allan, Year 10 - Sixth Form - Thomas King Recitation Year 7 - Rosie Jacob - Hollenden, Year 8 - Nancy Burgess-Gibbs - Reade Year 9 Calum Firth - Oxford, Year 10/11 - Julie Lin - Queen’s Year 10, Sixth Form - Anna Armitage - Queen’s Year 12

Year 8 Mechanical Toy

Project Year 8s completed their first D&T project, entitled ‘The Mechanical Toy’. The purpose of the project was to further develop pupils understanding of mechanisms and motion, within the manufacture of a Gorilla push along toy.

From the Sport Department

NETBALL Netball has a very exciting couple of weeks ahead. Both the U15s and U19s have qualified for the Surrey finals in March. A huge congratulations to both teams for making it to the finals! The U19s have also qualified for the regional national schools tournament, it is the first time Royal Russell has ever got a senior team to this stage. This tournament is going to be played on Sunday 12 November so look out for updates on that. Next week the U19s have the second round of the independent schools where they take on Bradfield College away. The girls are working so hard to progress to the next stage and in preparation have matches against Emanuel on Saturday and Coloma on Monday. All teams from the U14s to seniors have matches against Emanuel on Saturday away. Any support would be more than welcomed.

FOOTBALL On Friday 27th October our 1st XI visited Reading Football Club where they played against their U18s, some of which are currently training with their first team. One of the main spectators of the game was Reading FCs first team manager Jaap Stam, who was very complementary on how well Royal Russell conducted themselves and played. We lost 4-1, however it could be said that we lost the first half 3-0 but drew the second half 1-1 after being 1-0 up for a large proportion of the game. We more than match Reading in possession, but their quality in front of goal was the ultimate difference. Station was as follows: Royal Russell Reading FC Possession 43% 57% Shots on target 8 9 Corners 4 7

HOCKEY Hockey training has started back up this week with U14/U15 and Seniors on a Tuesday after school, U12/U13 Boys on a Wednesday and U12/U13 Girls on a Thursday. We still have lots of fixtures to play, so if you are wanting to come and have a go, please come and join us on those nights! A special mention to Thomas Lang, who has made it to the County Academy Centre squads for Surrey. A fantastic achievement to get through a number of trials to gain a place within the squad. Also, congratulations to Saffron Wood and Alistair Haslam who are training regularly with the England Hockey Performance Centre, where they are working towards being selected for the next stage in their pathway to England. Some fantastic achievements for all! This weekend we have Ashford School visiting us to play the U12AB, U13AB teams, starting at 9:15am.

GAMES In House sport this week we started the first rounds of the Junior Boys 5-a-side football. Two exciting games were played; Keable v Cambridge and Madden v Oxford. Both finished with score lines of 2-1, so Keable and Madden currently head the table. We take a break next week and restart on the 14th November; St Andrew’s play Cambridge and Keable play Madden. After school on Tuesday we also played the Senior boys football semi-finals. In the gathering gloom, Keable ground out a 2-1 victory over Cambridge while St Andrew’s were too strong for Oxford. The final is currently scheduled for the 14th, but we will need to consider the light so please look out for updates.

1853 Society Christmas Fair

Saturday 18 November 12.00pm – 4.00pm

Our biggest and best event of the year is here!

Put the date in your diary now. Come along with the kids and bring friends and family as there’s something for everyone…

Fun and games on the stalls… Santa Claus…a magnificent raffle… great prizes to be won… the famed Secrets Room

[where the kids can buy nice Christmas presents for their parents]… grand raffle and auction… artisan sellers…and not forgetting, warming, Christmassy food & drink.

Come and be part of the fun.

To make this year’s event bigger and better than ever, WE NEED YOUR HELP. We

always ask and help is always willing given from our amazing Royal Russell community. So, thank you. Here’s what we need…

Donations for the Secrets Room or for a stall that the Parents’ Association will run alongside the wonderfully imaginative stalls that the classes, parents and Houses run. Anything from gift sets, toys, new books, toiletries, perfume, or any other unwanted items for men, women and children. There is a Teddy Tombola, so any grown-out of cuddly toys would be appreciated. Please bring your donations into the Junior School Office or the Performing Arts Centre Reception.

Prizes for the Raffle - Anything from a bottle of wine/champagne to a meal for 2 at a local restaurant or a day out at the races. If you can give something special, big or small, please get in touch - Emma Thistleton, Chair 1853 Society, 1853society@royalrussell.co.uk

Your help - to set up the Great Hall the day before, to help out in the morning of the big event or to run a stall with other parents. Please get in touch and let us know if you can spare an hour.

Happy half term everyone…if you’re clearing out your cupboards, think Christmas Fair!

Royal Russell School Parents’ Association [1853 Society]. Our mission is bring the Royal Russell Community of pupils, parents, staff and friends together with a wide range of social events throughout the year. We also aim to raise money to contribute some of the extra things that will help enhance our children’s school lives.

We look forward to seeing you at some of our events this year.

Royal Russell School

Coombe Lane : Croydon : Surrey : CR0 5RF

www.royalrussell.co.uk Patron: Her Majesty The Queen

Diary Dates

Saturday 4 November 1853 Society Russellian Ball

Thursday 9 November 2nd Hand Uniform Sale 3.00pm to 4.15pm

Sunday 12 November Remembrance Day Service 10.00am Chapel All Welcome

Wednesday 15 November Year 8 Parents Evening

Saturday 18 November 1853 Society Christmas Fair 12 Noon to 4.00pm

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