If I were to explain what a school is to an alien – a favoured test for me, though I’ve never needed it yet – I would begin by likening it to an airport, safe in the assumption that our alien would already be familiar with air travel.

A school has both an Arrivals lounge and a Departures lounge. Our travellers, whom we shall call learners, arrive eager and ready to get going. Some bring luggage, some travel light. Of course, many, or even most, of them do not yet know where that destination is when they check in at Arrivals. It is our job, as dedicated staff in this airport, to help them work out which departure gate is the one for them.

And how do we do that? The answer is very simple, and yet so often it is made to appear complicated. We get to know them – really know them. Imagine the most sophisticated baggage check-in: one where the scanners are not looking into the contents of your suitcase but into the deep-down things that make you you – your hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes, strengths and skills, worries and fragilities, things you think you’re good at and things you believe you’re no good at and never will be; your motivations and ambitions, the view you have of yourself, of the world, and your role within it.

Unlike the baggage that travellers bring into a traditional airport, the deep-down-things that our learners bring into school can change, even whilst they’re in the building. This is why the time between arriving at, and departing from, our airport takes a little longer than your average connection time. It can take years. Ten thousand hours is the average waiting time in an airport like ours.

We hope that our travel hub is the ideal place in which our learners can spend time, availing themselves of the facilities and using all the resources available to map out their life journey and find out where their gate is located. And above all, we hope that every single person who comes through our doors knows – really knows – that they can catch a plane to anywhere in the world from this airport. Anywhere at all.

I hope you enjoy a good weekend with your fellow travellers. Soon we will be putting our Christmas decs up – and everyone knows that airports at Christmas time are special places indeed.