Head's Newsletter 25 November 2016

January and I would urge you to contribute to the campaign to raise funds for it. I will be writing to you soon regarding lunch arrangements after Christmas. It has also been a very busy time for trips. Year 7 visited London Zoo, Year 8 have been to visit classical remains at Fishbourne, and Year 9 have been to the Natural History Museum. On top of this our sporting programme continues with rugby, cross country, badminton and rowing fixtures in particular, and some notable triumphs including winning the Cross Country Borough Championship. In addition, our dancers performed for half time, at the rugby league international between England and Australia - an incredible opportunity. I am delighted that the School Council raised over £2000 for their chosen charity ‘The Lunchbowl Network’ on our mufti day, reinforcing one of the School’s aims to foster empathy and generosity towards others. Congratulations also to those students who were presented Jack Petchey Awards in recognition of their contribution to the community. I know parents found the excellent evening on keeping children safe online most informative. The evening is being repeated for years 9 to 11 parents who I'm sure would also value the opportunity to be informed by an expert on this issue. Yours, M D Gascoigne, Headteacher

Dear Parents It was great to receive this week official validation of our outstanding exam results in the summer. Not only was our GCSE attainment excellent but a letter from the Regional Schools Commissioner congratulated us on scoring so highly in the Government's new progress measure, called ‘Progress 8’, where Tiffin’s score placed us in the top 5% of schools nationwide for progress. What this means is that not only did our boys achieve very high results, but they also made exceptional progress across Years 7 to 11. Many congratulations to all the boys involved and to the hard work of the boys and the staff! We hope that the current Year 11, who are presently taking their mocks, will also achieve as highly. Last Sunday we also witnessed the fantastic performance of the Oratorio choir as they sung Mendelssohn's Elijah . The choir of about 250 singers involved very large numbers of boys, accompanied by the Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra, and in front of a packed audience which included our guest, Kingston MP James Berry. It has also been excellent to be involved in a number of Alumni events recently, including the Tiffinian Association Dinner, and the Old Tiffinian Rugby Reunion. We very much value our links to the Old Tiffinians, and I am delighted that they are also engaging with our fundraising campaign for the new building. The new building will be starting in

IMPORTANT DATES

Twilight PD—school finishes 2 pm

Friday 2 December

Y12 Parents’ Consultations; school finishes at 2.40 pm

Tuesday 13 December

Evening Carol Service, All Saints Kingston, 7.30 pm

Wednesday 14 December

School Carol Service, 2.30 pm, boys dismissed from church

Thursday 15 December

End of Term

Friday 16 December

Start of term

Tuesday 3 January

Y11 Parents’ Consultations; school finishes at 2.40 pm

Thursday 5 January

The Tiffin Oratorio Choir has been one of the defining features of Tiffin School since the early 1960s. The aims of the choir are many: to give new Year 7 students an immersive initiation into the world of choral singing and orchestral music; to develop a sense of community engaging young and old, students, parents, teachers and friends alike; to enable the largest number of people to sing with a professional orchestra and soloists; and, most of all, to share a love of great music with our local community.

Rehearsing for the performance

TIFFIN CAROL SERVICE ON CLASSIC FM With carols led by our Boys’ Choir, and an audience of Tiffin friends and supporters, this is always a highlight of the Tiffin year. This year it is even more special as the Service will be broadcast on Classic FM at 8 pm on Wednesday 21 st December. Taking part in readings are Old Tiffinians, Gethin Anthony, the actor of Game of Thrones fame and who has appeared in many other films, as well as on TV and in the theatre, and Arun Harinath, top-order batsman with Surrey who once shared a 180-run partnership with Ricky Ponting!

The performance on Sunday evening in the Sports Hall of Mendelssohn’s Elijah marked James Day’s second Tiffin Oratorio and was attended by a hugely appreciative audience of over 350. The choir was accompanied by members of the Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra and welcomed soloists Rebecca Hardwick, Amy Lyddon, Hiroshi Amako and James Oldfield. Next year celebrates the 60 th anniversary of the Tiffin Boys’ Choir which will be marked by several special events.

On Monday 21 st of November, Tiffin’s Jack Petchey Award winners were presented with their awards by the Mayor of Richmond and the Deputy Mayor of Kingston at the Richmond Theatre.

the Kangaroo, take place in a few weeks time. Special recognition should go to Navonil Neogi (Year 11) who achieved a perfect score of 125, Vincent Trieu (Year 11) and Hosouk Lee (Year 13) with scores of 121. Other students qualifying for the exclusive Maths Olympiad, representing the top 1000 students nationally, includes Jim Tse, Chris Rasmussen and Chris McDonald (all Year 13), Shovethan Murugathas (Year 12) and Kanishk Gandhi (Year 11). Four further students missed out by a single point. One of these, Year 7 student Ojas Gulati, achieved a score of 105 despite entering the competition 5 years early! We are delighted by the boys’ performance, and they should be immensely proud of what they have achieved. ROWINGNEWS Congratulations to Jake Lane & James Lawn who managed 3 rd in the Junior 18 doubles last weekend in a fiercely contested Hampton Small Boats Head. They also won the J18 category at Kingston Small Boats Head on the November 5 th . Adam Crowther and Henry Saywell also put in a really respectable 6 th place in the same doubles event at Hampton. BADMINTON Many congratulations to David Tam and his U19 A and B Badminton teams, both of whom dispatched a strong Charterhouse outfit on Thursday 17 th November. Both matches were won by Tiffin by a 6-3 margin.

These boys were nominated by their peers for these awards for their contributions to the Tiffin community. They were then chosen by the Jack Petchey committee of the School Council. Mr Williams was also given the prestigious Jack Petchey Leader Award for his phenomenal contribution to school badminton and cricket over the last 40 years. IT’SARECORD! On November 8 th 120 boys took part in the Senior Maths Challenge, a nationwide competition run by the UK Mathematics Trust, taken by over 100,000 Sixth Form students. The hour long paper consists of 25 multiple choice maths questions of increasing difficulty. This year Tiffin boys achieved a phenomenal 51 Gold medals (Gold representing the top 10% of entrants), smashing the previous school record of 32 Golds last year. 43 of these students were invited to follow on rounds, compared to 24 and 15 in the previous two years, nearly doubling the previous school record. These rounds, the British Maths Olympiad and

Year 7 undertook their first major expedition with our annual visit to London Zoo. Concerns about the weather proved unfounded as we were blessed with a fine day allowing us to fully enjoy the experience. We were able to explore the whole zoo and it was wonderful to see the boys so excited yet so well behaved. They loved the tigers and gorillas but their favourite experience was the close up encounter with the ring-tailed lemurs and emperor tamarins.

In addition to the simple fun of meeting the animals the boys were able to take notes and speak to zoo staff to help them with their task of evaluating the role of zoos in conservation. Many thanks to Miss Bond for organising the day and to the parents who proved such enthusiastic and capable helpers.

CROSS COUNTRY NEWS

The Cross Country Borough Championships took place on Thursday 10 th November on a challenging course. The Year 7s put in a tremendous effort, especially Joseph Dickinson, but unfortunately Richard Challoner proved to be strong opposition, with two of their students achieving 1 st and 2 nd place. The Juniors ran impressively with Eyoel Abebaw-Mesfin gaining 1 st place, Tom Armstrong 2 nd and Will Murphy 3 rd . Tiffin further secured 4 th , 5 th , 6 th , and 8 th place in the Juniors race, leaving the other schools astonished. Eric Williams came 3 rd in the Inters race, with Luca Jackson, David Mason and Anish Hussain following closely behind, running with determination and pace. Arthur Morris and Humphrey Allen put in a tremendous effort to secure overall 4 th and 5 th place. There was tough competition, with ten schools competing in the championships. Tiffin triumphed and won overall, gaining the cup for yet another year. Overall Tiffin won the Juniors, Inters and Seniors team races, which is a remarkable achievement. After a fabulous Borough Championships, the team took on the south of England in

the Junior Knowle run. The top four had barnstorming runs with Will Murphy a fine individual 8 th ; Euan Sinclair, Mathew O’Donovan and Jack Hartrey ensuring a brilliant top 5 team finish, which bodes well for the Cup Final in Formby in December. The B team of Tom Armstong, Joe Murphy, Alistair Brendon and Luis Bullinger also

closed out a superior B team performance.

Tom Armstrong, Euan Sinclair and Joe Murphy

Luke Sale, Nic Lan, Jonny Schafer and Alex Duffy also showed similar performances in the C team competition.

Jonny Schafer

LSE/UCL ECONOMICS CONFERENCE The Economist’s Society of the London School of Economics and University College London held its annual conference on the theme “Economics out of its Comfort Zone” on Saturday 19 th November. The annual conference, organised by current UCL/LSE undergraduates (including Pajmit Gulati (Tiffin 2013-2015) is aimed at Sixth Formers. It was testament to the intellectual curiosity of Tiffinians that 18 boys spent their Saturday listening to a range of outstanding speakers at UCL and asking pertinent questions of them.

Ormerod and Leon Fields, from the world of economic consultancy, debated the merits and limitations of behavioural economics before Johanna Thoma, Assistant Professor at LSE, in her talk on the topic of economic methodology pushed the Economics back into its comfort zone. NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM VISIT On Tuesday 22 nd November, all of Year 9 accompanied by the Biology and Geography departments, along with other willing volunteers, visited the Natural History Museum with the aim of investigating BioGeography as a unifying theory of life and Earth. The Year 9s are currently studying Plate Tectonics in Geography and Evolution in Biology, so this trip is the perfect opportunity to show the links between the two theories and how each supports the other. The day was spent collecting and organising evidence from the different exhibitions on continental drift and Evolution by Natural Selection and the time frame in which this occurred. By the end of the visit the students came away with a much deeper understanding of how biological evidence can be used to explain the movement of landmasses by plate tectonic forces and some comprehension of the vastness of deep time.

Distinguished economist Robert Michael, Professor at the University of Chicago, showed how standard economic theory can explain the economics of family life, and Alex Teytelboym, Research Fellow at Oxford University, illustrated how economics is being used in refugee

resettlement programmes. Tim Harford, broadcaster and journalist, had his audience spellbound as he showed through story telling how insights from a range of disciplines can unite to make economics a richer subject. Paul

Dates : Saturday 4 th February matinee at 2.30 pm (Concessions £5, Adults £8) and 7.00 pm (Concessions £7, Adults £10), Monday 6 th - Thursday 9 th February at 7.00 pm (Concessions £7, Adults £10). Tickets will be available through Ticket.Source.com from Monday 5 th December.

The day came to a delightful conclusion, with a visit from ex-Tiffinian and Director of the Natural History Museum, Sir Michael Dixon. Despite being very busy having to host a Royal visitor to the museum, he was able to talk to our Students about his time at Tiffin and how his career has developed since he left. This was followed by the students asking some insightful and quirky questions. This was an enjoyable and very educational day and thanks go to the students, who behaved impeccably, and the accompanying staff.

PUBLIC SPEAKING

Please join us on Thursday 1 st December at 7 pm in the JLT for the House Public Speaking Finals—quality entertainment and a glass of wine. Everyone is welcome—and it’s FREE!

DONATIONS TO NEW BUILDING

To donate to the new building fund, simply log in to ParentPay , click on ‘pay for other items’, then ‘New Building Appeal’ and put in the amount you wish to donate. Alternatively you can donate by bank transfer or cheque; please see the form to do so. Please also remember to tick the Gift Aid consent if you are eligible to do so as we are able to then claim back from the Government 25p in every £1 donated!

Between a pair of estranged twin brothers, Antipholus and Antipholus, and a pair of estranged twin servants, Dromio and Dromio, all ignorant of each other within a city of sorcery, only one thing is certain: chaos. As one Antipholus is astonished by his foreign hospitality, the other is enraged by the hostility of his native land. The earnest Dromios, caught and mistaken between the two, are soundly beaten for obeying all the wrong orders. Tiffin School presents one of Shakespeare's shortest and most farcical comedies, encapsulating a hectic tale of violent cross- purposes, mistaken identity, and social nightmare.

DANCE

On Sunday 13 th November 25 Tiffin dancers from years 8, 9 and 10 performed at the half-time show during the Rugby league match between England and Australia at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford. Tiffin dancers, together with 180 dancers from across London schools and South of England, relished this fantastic opportunity. Dancers spent the whole day at the Stadium and had an unusual insight into what it takes to put on a top game. The performance went really well and all dancers were buzzing after the incredible day; just a shame about the score: England 18 Australia 36!

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