On Wednesday evening we held our annual Presentation Evening to award our Academy prizes. We were joined by Gary Lewis, Chief Executive Officer of the Lighthouse Schools Partnership, and Ben Hardy, the Chair of the Academy’s Local Governing Body. We also welcomed John Buckler, whose family continues to sponsor the Wildlife Prize in memory of Jean Buckler, and Vikki Caldwell who kindly donated the Soaring High, Going Further Prize for Geography in memory of her daughter Fiona Braidwood.

Presentation Evening is a very special event in the Academy’s busy calendar. This evening celebrates the achievements of our highest-performing students, the crème-de-la-crème of Churchill’s excellent student body. Quite rightly, the main focus of the evening is on academic success, and in particular those students who distinguished themselves in their public examinations, both at GCSE and at A-level. But at Churchill we recognise that a school is about more than just the examination results that young people achieve, so we were really proud also to be awarding prizes for service to the community, for progress and improvement, for compassion, for resilience, and for attitudes to learning, all of which often go hand in hand with academic success.

I often speak to our students about why we are here; why our school exists; what our purpose is. Based on our three core values of kindness, curiosity and determination, we have set ourselves the goal of inspiring and enabling all our young people to make a positive difference both in their time at the Academy and, perhaps more importantly, when they leave us. If we have done our job properly, our young people will go out into the world with the knowledge, skills, character and confidence to make the world a better place. Some of them will do it in small ways, others will change it in ways we can’t even imagine yet.

We live in an uncertain world, where many of the certainties that previous generations have taken for granted are in flux, and the way things have always been done doesn’t seem to cut it any more. To older people like me, this can be worrying; but to the younger generation, it presents an opportunity to make things anew, and to do them better. The young people we celebrated on Presentation Evening – and so many of their peers – should fill us all with hope for the future.

Click here to view the list of Prize Winners for 2024 and click here for past winners.