Highgate Primary School opened its doors to children for the first time on 20th December 1877. 100 years on, a plaque was placed at the front of the school to commemorate the school’s centenary year. In a few years’ time, the school will celebrate its sesquicentennial year (thank you Google) – Highgate Primary will turn 150 in six years’ time.
This may seem a long way off, but sadly I’ve come to appreciate that things in the distant future do come around, often sooner than you might expect.
When I started at Highgate Primary back in 2008, one of the first pieces of work we undertook was to establish our school values. We called this piece of work our Olympic Vision, addressing the question of what we want Highgate Primary to be like by the time of the 2012 London Olympics. At Highgate Primary we live by our school values:
These still trip off the tongue and, in my opinion, have more than stood the test of time.
The London Olympics came and went, so we moved on to think about what we wanted our school to be like in the Year 2020 (a date cleverly selected so we could adopt the rather snappy title ‘2020 Vision’). Here we ambitiously concluded that we wanted to be the best school in the world. Whilst most of our children are confident that this was achieved long ago, the reality is that there may be one or two things that need to be done before we can rest on our laurels.
So, the question we’re now asking is: what do we want Highgate Primary School to be like by the time of our sesquicentennial year?
This term I’ll be inviting all members of our school community to think about this question and share your thoughts. Please look out for the Highgate 150 questionnaire and get thinking!
William
