This week we hosted our annual Y9 GCSE Options evening at Oberon pavilion. Every Head of Department set out their market stall, literally, and enticed visitors to come and find out why their subject was the best on the curriculum. Our students being as wonderful as they are, every teacher wanted every student to take their subject as an option!

Education can sometimes seem like a race to the finish line – a hurdle race at that. Every obstacle cleared gets you closer to deciding what you’re going to be when you’re older. Whether it’s GCSEs, A Levels or BTECs, it’s tempting to believe that the choices you make now will affect the vocations you find yourself in when you leave school.

To an extent this is true, but I have never perceived this as the sole purpose of school. More important to me, especially in an age of portfolio careers and changes of direction, not to mention the rise of AI, is to establish who you are before deciding what you are going to be. Achieving your career goals is almost always possible with hard work and dedication. The difficult thing is knowing what you want in the first place. To do this, we must first know ourselves.

At HSW, we believe in a culture in which students have space to be themselves, feel happy in their own skin, self-confident, self-motivated and able to work as part of a team. These attributes apply to any subject, any career – they form part of your toolkit for life.

So I hope that our students do not feel too nervous about choosing the right subject. With self-belief and commitment, they will make a success of whatever they turn their hand to. And for this, we are so very proud of them!