With an inspection happening Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, this has inevitably been a somewhat busy week.  Feedback from the inspectors was given on Thursday afternoon from 15.00 to 16.00 and as soon as I am able to do so, I will of course put the outcome of the report into the public domain.

On Wednesday evening I attended this year's Music Scholars' Concert.  It was a superb evening of musical entertainment (30 items altogether)!  Many thanks to all our music scholars and of course to Peter Crompton, our inspirational Director of Music, together with the rest of his staff.

Unfortunately, due to inclement weather, all of our sports fixtures have been cancelled this week, much to the frustration of all concerned.

The week ended with a very important Year 11 parents' meeting – there is much to be done at that level between now and the GCSEs this Summer!

I wish you all a very pleasant half-term break.

Another very busy week has flown past.  On Wednesday we hosted the visit of Rear Admiral David Steel, CBE, Naval Secretary.  Admiral Steel arrived mid-morning and had a tour of both the West and East sides of school, and he was also treated to an excellent concert given by our Choir and Band.  He was most complimentary about both the staff and pupils he met – I do hope that it will be possible to tempt him up to RHS again.

During the weekend we had three keynote events.  On Saturday afternoon we hosted the Anglian Cross-Country Championships.  On the coldest day of winter so far 600 of the top runners from the Eastern counties arrived at RHS to brave the frozen course and -15ºC wind-chill factor.  Our runners did extremely well and I was very pleased to be able to present Harrison Jeffries, Jack Rennison, Claire Cuddihy, Georgie Harmer, Molly Stuart, Sean Cuddihy, Matt Brown, Georgia Tindale, Robert Cowper-Coles and Grace Tindale with Suffolk Cross Country shirts in assembly on Monday morning.

On Saturday evening we held this year's talent show masterminded by Clive Rennison and compèred by Adam McGlynn.  It was a fantastic evening with all sorts of mostly musical acts taking place.  Mattie Todd and Toby Seabright got the evening's entertainment off to an excellent start, but the undoubted star was Rion Shirayanagi (Year 8, Drake) who entertained us all with a masterful performance of a Schubert sonata – he is a real star. 

On Sunday afternoon we held this year's senior Swimming Gala.  It was an excellent event.  Very well done to Collingwood for their overall victory in the boys' event and likewise, well done to Hood for their overall victory in the girls' event.  Commiserations to Howe who pushed Hood all the way.  Plenty of records were set both on the day and prior to the event.  Congratulations in particular to Arabella Murrison, Felicity Slatter and Josh Allday, all of whom were in record-breaking mood.  Many thanks to all concerned, Emma Cook, our swimming coach, Simon Warr (commentator), Jeanne Wilby (scorer), John Snoddon (starter), together with our timekeepers, lifeguards and judges.

Inevitably, much of the week was taken up with last minute preparation for this week's ISI (Boarding) Inspection.  Thank you very much if you took the trouble to complete the parents' questionnaire.  The inspection this week will run from Tuesday to Thursday in snowy, slippery and crystal clear conditions!

Apologies to all those of you who are regular readers of my blog for last week's "air shot".  Events overtook me and by the time I had realised that I had forgotten to write my blog, it was too late.

I have had an extremely busy past two weeks, not least because we are in the season of admissions/scholarship testing for new pupils, and I have been very heavily involved in the process.  In the first three weeks of term I have seen in excess of 50 sets of prospective pupils and parents, and I have also been part of the team hosting the entrance and scholarship tests, all of which has been time very well spent, and I am optimistic that we will have a significant number of new pupils joining the school in September (we generally recruit in the region of 170 pupils at various levels, but principally into Year 7, Year 9 and the Lower Sixth Form).

Much of my time in the recent past has also been taken up preparing for and attending important Governors' Meetings (Property Sub-Committee Meeting, Education Sub-Committee Meeting, Finance Sub-Committee Meeting and Strategic Development Sub-Committee Meeting).  All of these meetings inevitably take a great deal of preparation time and it will be no surprise for you to hear that for all Heads, liaising with governors is an important part of the job, and quite rightly takes up a significant amount of time.

Last week I attended an HMC East Anglian Group Meeting held at The Leys School in Cambridge (HMC represents the 'top' 250 boys'/co-educational independent schools.  It is sub-divided into regions and further sub-divided into local groups such as the East Anglian Group).  For the first time, Heads were asked to bring their Heads of School (in our case Monty Beaton and Chloe Crismani), and whilst the Heads had a meeting, a parallel meeting was held for Heads of School.  I am delighted to say that both Monty and Chloe thoroughly enjoyed the occasion and were reassured that the sorts of things they do at RHS as Heads of School, are not dissimilar to their opposite numbers elsewhere.  The two meetings were followed by a splendid dinner held in the upper dining hall at The Leys School in Cambridge, all hosted by my opposite number, Mark Slater.

There is a great deal of effort being placed on raising the school's academic profile at present.  This process is being co-ordinated by the new Director of Teaching & Learning, Matthew Christmas, in liaison with our Heads of Department.  Working parties have been established to review our academic policies and procedures, lessons are being observed, marking is being scrutinised and the sharing of good practice (an educational cliché I know), is taking place.  Sarah Williams, Head of Academic PE, led a first class session last week for teachers on the subject of "Making lessons more exciting/accessible", and she also gave the Education Sub-Committee Meeting of the governors an excellent presentation on work being done within the PE Department.  My own Year 7 pupils are now being subjected to a diet of up to date PowerPoint presentations and instead of saying "yes Sir" when I call the register, they are giving me the name of an island around the British Isles!

No doubt you will be aware that we have been struck down by a virus which has swept through the school community during the first three weeks of term.  Our Health Centre staff have had no less than 500 medical appointments since the beginning of term, and illness has been rife both within the pupil body and amongst members of Common Room.  I am confident that we are through the worst of it, but in the absence of a hard frost, which I have been reliably informed by Anne Thompson, our Health Centre Sister, would help with the situation, I hope that the forthcoming half-term break in a couple of weeks' time will "knock the bug" on the head.

On Saturday evening I attended this year's Parents' Burns Night.  It was an outstanding success so many thanks to the RHSPA, to Sophie Braybrooke and on the night to William Bowry, all of whom made a major contribution to the evening.

As ever, pupils and staff at RHS are extremely busy and in spite of the odd blip, I can report that all is well.

Term has started extremely well and in particular with the very good news that

Olga Zadvorna (Upper Sixth, Nelson) has secured herself a conditional offer to read Physics at Corpus Christi, Oxford.  All that Olga now needs to achieve is A*, A, A at A2 level!

There was an excellent diving trip during the holidays run by Andrew Wynn (Housemaster of St. Vincent House).  Further details of the trip can be found elsewhere on the school website.

During the course of the holidays work began on the creation of a new school archive adjacent to the gymnasium.  The new archive will be the centrepiece and long-lasting legacy of our RHS300 celebrations which will take place during the academic year 2012/13 – Rob Mann's excellent work as the RHS300 Co-ordinator are beginning to take shape.

There is much to do this term, not least for our examinees who are already into public exams and in the case of our Year 11 pupils, mock exams beginning at the start of next week.

My address in school assembly at the start of term was as follows:

"The beginning of a new term, a new year, a new dawn.  This is the moment when we make resolutions, and if Friday's Daily Telegraph is to be believed, a large number of us, particularly those of us who are over 40, often resolve to do something about our fitness and our physical wellbeing.  In January gyms and fitness clubs up and down the country are filled with 'sinners' in search of salvation flagellating themselves on a treadmill or with a few weights to atone for all the turkey they ate and all the alcohol they drank during the Christmas break.  This means that this month the gym is roughly ten times worse for you, i.e., more busy than at any other time of the year.  Apparently, as a result of treadmill tyrants, rowing ramblers, over zealous personal trainers and changing room exhibitionists, it is not unknown for serious disagreements to occur.  In 2008 a mother and daughter were banned for life from David Lloyd clubs after a fight in an aerobics class, and a year before, a Wall Street banker threw a man off a stationary bicycle breaking his leg in the process.

Gym clubs are clever.  The sign up fee is often as little as £20 for January, rising to £50 per month thereafter, and of course by February the vast majority of those New Year training enthusiasts, having paid for a year's membership, have given up.  They want quick, noticeable results, a firmer behind, toned quads or a rippling six pack, and when that doesn't happen in the first few weeks of the year, they lose the will.

All resolutions, particularly those of a physical nature if they are to mean anything, require a sustainable, long term approach – a regime which over a lengthy period of time will produce results.  By definition a resolution should be seen as a long distance race, a marathon and not a sprint.

There are all sorts of things you might resolve to do here at RHS and in a general sense I trust you will all resolve to enjoy yourselves in this wonderful school and help me to maintain the high standards of behaviour and dress and conduct, and so on, with which we are all familiar and which we probably all take for granted.  More specifically, I hope that you are resolved to push the bar academically and achieve the best possible grades you can, particularly if you are facing public examinations at GCSE and A level later in the year, or in some cases, as soon as tomorrow morning.

It is, of course, a cliché for someone like me to say that a consistent, sustained effort is what is required if you are to maximise your academic potential, but it is nevertheless true.  A few lucky pupils do little work until the last minute and then pull a rabbit out of the hat, but for the most part, delay, prevarication, procrastination, putting things off to another time, results in under achievement and boys are particularly adept at finding other things to do when they should be studying.

The antidote to the Telegraph's report on Friday was the Matt Roberts New Year fitness plan, subtitled "Exercise better, eat better, feel better", which was inserted into the Telegraph on Saturday.  It sets out a programme of physical activity which will in time deliver results.  You need something similar as a programme of study both here at school, but more particularly during the holiday periods when your time is so unstructured, to help you deliver those all important academic results.

I haven't said anything remotely clever this morning, I've simply said what needs to be said at this time of year.  It's now over to you.  Make the commitment, make the resolution and see it through and in so doing, you will achieve academic success and you will open doors and opportunities which will otherwise pass you by.

I wish you all a very happy and prosperous term."

I write to you at the end of another long but highly successful term.

We began the term with a roll of 705 pupils, the largest that RHS has had for at least 20 years, and although this presented one or two logistical problems at the sharp end, it was of course a very good way to begin the term.

As ever, this has been a very busy term as in spite of the somewhat hard ground that met our rugby players at the beginning of the season; our U16B XV, 3rd XV and 2nd XV have had splendid seasons, as indeed have our junior girl hockey players.  It was also noteworthy that the 1st X1 girls’ team finished the season with three straight victories.  On big block fixture days we have managed to field 14 rugby teams and 9 hockey teams, and in addition we have run an extensive programme of house leagues.

Other highlights of the term have included the Remembrance Day Parade and Service attended by 1,400 people, two very successful Open Days, a superb inter-house Drama Competition, an outstanding Trafalgar Night Dinner and an excellent Junior Drama Production (Winter Wonderland), which was presented at the end of term.

This has been another keynote term for our Choir.  Earlier in the term the Choir performed in the National Seafarers’ Service at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and in the Admiralty Carol Service in St. Martin-in-the-Fields, following which I received a highly complimentary letter from the First Sea Lord, Sir Mark Stanhope, and as I write, the Choir is preparing for the end of term Carol Service.

RHS remains in fine form, pupil numbers are healthy, the academic work rate of both staff and pupils is impressive, and our pupils continue to behave/conduct themselves in a manner for which we can all be very proud.

I wish you a very pleasant Christmas and Happy New Year.