“I love this school,” stated Sir Anthony Seldon when he spoke at Ryde School’s Speech Day earlier this week.
Sir Anthony, former head of Wellington College and vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, is also a historian, political commentator, author and co-founder of Action for Happiness.
Well known as an influential educationalist and writer on mindfulness and holistic education, he expanded further by stating that Ryde “ticks all six boxes that really matter to me about what schools are for… positive education, coaching, the International Baccalaureate, mindfulness, character and holistic education.” He went on to say that in a world where schools are “just working on people’s minds, not their students’ hearts, let alone their souls”, Ryde is “managing to ace the double of getting results and doing the holistic piece”.
Speech Day was an energetic celebration of individual talents, sports and exam successes, stories of school trips to far flung places such as Ghana, Durban and Cape Town and presentations of the many activities carried out during the academic year with a collection for the RNLI at the end.
Head Master Mark Waldron talked of the opening of the new Health and Well-being centre at Ryde, created to support physical, medical, emotional and mental well-being and commented in his address that “(at Ryde) we seek to provide every young woman and man who leaves here with not just the qualifications but the skills, character, resilience and values that will serve them well as 21st Century citizens.”
The morning started with a delightful guitar solo by Thomas Nash, who played Tatiana Stachak’s ‘Parisian Waltz’ and the morning was closed with a performance by some of the cast of the school Summer Musical ‘My Fair Lady’ with leading lady Hannah Brown singing ‘Wouldn’t it be Lovely’.