Invited Guests, Mr Chairman, members of The Board of
Governors, parents, staff of Wallace and young people, may I
take this opportunity to welcome you to our Senior Prize
Giving Ceremony.
I am extremely pleased that we are joined today by Brian
Irwin. Brian is Chairman of the very well known, successful
company Irwin Bakeries which celebrated its centenary in
2011.
It is easy to lose sight of the success of a brand when it is an
every day ‘norm’ in our households, the eponymous “Nutty
Crust” loaf and other well known brands have reigned
supreme through the growth of large supermarkets in
Northern Ireland with in-house bakeries, economic boom and
bust and the digital era.
Whether it is the use of innovative social media marketing or
mentoring future entrepreneurs in an All Ireland Masterclass,
Brian’s leadership has been pivotal in the success of what he
modestly refers to as a family business.
I first met Brian and his wife Moira as parents in Portadown
College when I was Principal there. Subsequently, Brian
became a member of the Board of Governors and Moira a
member of the PTA Committee.
Brian’s passion for education – and rugby! – his respect and
appetite for learning and his genuine interest in young people
make him a most suitable guest.
This afternoon is about celebrating the many successes in our
senior school last year. However, as we look back over the
last year and indeed more recent times, we recognise too that
families have lost loved ones.
Together, this afternoon we think of them, we think of the
Spence family in particular, we offer our support and we hope
that they find some comfort in the knowledge that so many
people care deeply about them.
Doubtless, you will have enjoyed watching some of the events
of the Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer.
The values of the games: friendship, respect and excellence
mirror our own school values of commitment, opportunity,
respect and excellence.
The parallel between the Wallace community and the broader
community of Olympians does not end there.
Also in common to both communities are two C19th
aristocratic gentlemen, contemporaries living in Paris, who
valued the extra-curricular and curricular programmes of
schooling:
Sir Richard Wallace, our founder
and Pierre de Coubertin who re-established the Olympic
Games in the late C19th.
The first Olympic value of friendship has a wide definition in
terms of how we interpret it at Wallace: building links with our
local and global community to create enduring bonds is how
we demonstrate friendship.
We opened our doors to over 250 Primary 5 and 6 pupils from
a number of local Primary Schools last year for a Science and
Drama Day.
Many of these pupils then attended our very successful Open
Morning in January.
The real success of Open Morning was the fact that it was
pupil led; just over half the population of Wallace turned up to
act as guides, departmental helpers and presenters.
As hundreds of prospective parents and pupils arrived for
Open Morning they were greeted by well presented, articulate,
confident young people.
These young people care passionately about our school, its
reputation and can think beyond what the school offers them
to give of their time and enthusiasm in return.
Selflessness, a concern for the greater good and service to the
community underpin the values we aim to instil in our young
people and demonstrate as a staff.
The beautiful grounds, the immaculate surroundings, the
articulate young people, well turned out and proud of their
school were all still evident on the Monday morning after
Open Morning and every day since.
Our Open Morning reflected what is real, actual and honest
about Wallace.
We extended the hand of friendship to a number of other
schools when we hosted jointly with Methody a Model United
Nations Conference.
Mrs Karen Ferguson four years ago happened to ask one of
her English classes if they would like to be involved. The
organisation has developed significantly in the last four years
culminating in hosting our own conference.
Such a global dimension to school life did not end there with a
group of 19 senior students expanding their horizons on the
trip to Paris. Doubtless friendships grew in the ‘city of lights’
as they did on the annual GCSE Physical Education trip to
Ardnabannon which included an intensive course on
orienteering culminating in a challenge in the beautiful
grounds of Stormont.
Enduring bonds were strengthened by the school’s
phenomenal success in The Jill Todd Photographic Exhibition.
The exhibition was part of the Hillsborough Oyster Festival
Programme this year and displayed an array of photographs
from 10 Wallace students.
In the senior age range notably Adrienne Walker,
Ewan Beckett and Elizabeth Phillips were awarded 1st, 2nd and
3rd places.
Barry Todd, Jill’s father spoke poignantly at the Awards
Ceremony of Jill’s love of Wallace and love of photography.
Developing a global sense of community was greatly enhanced
last year by 4 Sixth Form students who completed a module in
the study of the Japanese language.
Evie Thompson, Karen Thompson, Hayley Brush, Richard
Berry, Jordan Bradley, Sarah Ruddell and Janine Johnston
were all awarded Distinctions with a further 9 students
awarded merits and 8 awarded passes.
The school community changed last year as we said farewell
to a number of staff. Mrs Norma Cairns left after 37 years
here as a teacher, a former Head Girl herself of this school.
A former Head Boy, Mr Paul McCabe, also left after 29 years
here as a teacher, Mr Jonny McGeown left after 27 years
and Mrs Yvonne Clements left after 14 years.
From our support staff we said farewell to Mrs Audrey
Crangle, who left after 33 years, Mrs Betty Darragh , who
left after 26 years, Mrs Maureen Patterson after 24 years,
Mrs Claire O’Neill after 9 years and Mrs Jane Stewart after 9
years.
As this new stage of their lives begin may I, on behalf of
former students, staff and parents thank each of them for
their service to young people in Wallace and wish them well in
this new stage of their lives.
Mrs Lois Stewart moved to St Malachy’s College Belfast to
take up the position of Vice Principal, I also, on behalf of staff
and students, wish her every success and thank her for her
long and dedicated service.
Mr Jonny Reid replaces Mrs Lois Stewart on the Leadership
Team and I know that he is enjoying his new role but as
organiser of today’s event will breathe a sigh of relief once it is
over.
The second Olympic value of respect was evident last year
during the now annual charity extravaganza in Wallace that is
Children in Need Day.
Teachers and students took part in “Red or Black” in the
Assembly Hall with a Year 8 pupil, Orla Maitland, outwitting
the rest of school.
Our Sixth Former hosts Nicholas Wilson and Joanne Hinds
oversaw proceedings as teaching staff took part in arm
wrestling competitions, darts matches, a tug of war and other
competitions in front of a loud and enthusiastic school.
This ethos of respect for others and ourselves permeated the
work of our active Student Councils.
In total last year 80 students were elected to the various Form
Councils whose ideas and reflections feed into the 14 member
Executive Council which has representatives together from
each year group.
At the January Executive meeting the students discussed a
variety of issues from Target Setting to school lunches.
Exploring issues beyond those of immediate concern in the
school curriculum was an important aim of the ‘Peers in
Schools Programme’ last year.
Two Lower Sixth classes were involved and the purpose of
this programme is to educate young people in the role played
by Peers who sit in Westminster. This year’s guest to school
was Baroness O’Loan who engaged enthusiastically and
openly with the students.
Respecting our own personal safety and well- being was a key
message of a new Road Safety Advertising Campaign last year.
At the invitation of Mrs Julie-Anne Bailie, a Wallace parent,
former student and Creative Director of “Lyle Bailie
International”, a group of GCSE Journalism and Moving Image
Arts students attended the premier of a short, shocking
realistic campaign produced by the Department of
Environment on the theme of Road Safety.
The premier was attended by Minister Alex Atwood and the
students were in the spotlight themselves in true premier
style as they contributed to interviews recorded by UTV, BBC
Northern Ireland and Cool FM.
A light of a different kind, the Olympic Torch, came to Wallace
last year. Five representatives enjoyed the experience of a
lifetime when they carried the Olympic torch around various
towns or cities.
They were Miss Victoria Walsh, a member of the English
Department and 4 pupils : Laurence Slater, Kiara Kennedy,
Philip Slater and Evie Dornan.
Showing respect for others as an ambassador for school saw a
number of students excel in competitions.
Sarah Stevenson and Chloe Carson were selected to take part
in a 2 week course in Germany by UK German Connection.
Stephen Hinds attended the Sentinus Young Innovators Events
at the Odyssey Arena and was awarded the FM Environmental
Award for his UV water filtering system designed to purify
rainwater and make it safe for drinking in developing
countries.
Excellence permeated school life last year with some notable
successes for individual students.
As part of our focus on personalising the curriculum we
offered individual support to students considering applications
for competitive university courses.
The success achieved is a testament to the tenacity of those
applying, their ability as well as the highly effective support of
the pastoral and academic staff.
Beth Doherty and Natasha Gillies were offered places on both
Villiers Park and The Oxford University Summer School;
Aimee Donaldson, Jack Roache and Gemma Rooney attended
the Villiers Park residential;
Rachel Barnes, Rachel Belshaw and Robin Walsh were each
selected for The Sutton Trust Summer Schools.
The school also encouraged applications for the Open
University’s YASS programme in which 8 Sixth Formers studied
for and completed undergraduate level examinations while
still at school.
Additionally, the school was contacted by Cooperation Ireland
to put forward the names of two male students to invite to its
leadership team programme in London.
Tony Gordon, this year’s Head Boy and Jake Clements, Deputy
Head Boy, were selected.
Doubtless these students, now in Upper Sixth, will each have
that extra edge over their peers from other schools who have
not had these challenging opportunities.
We were delighted to hear that the success of students
achieving scholarships for study at university continued last
year with the news that Caitlyn Kennedy was awarded the
prestigious Nuffield Bursary for her studies at Queen’s
University Belfast.
The application process to Oxbridge Colleges is very
competitive. The support for individual students through our
target setting programme and this encouragement to apply
for academic residential courses paid dividends last year.
Last year 5 members of our Upper Sixth were successful in
gaining a place in an Oxbridge College.
Four students went to Cambridge: Oliver Rusk, Ben Thompson,
Kathryn Wardil and Helen Lavery;
Hannah Gardiner chose Oxford.
The students were successful in subject areas as varied as
Archaeology, Languages, Law and Music.
Kathryn Wardil who is studying Music at Oxford was also a
finalist in the prestigious Catherine Judge Award, a bursary
won the previous year by a Wallace student Richard Allen.
To have 2 Wallace students in this final two years running is an
achievement in itself.
The Music Department entered an international competition
“Feis Ceoil”. The school’s chamber choir, ‘Capella’,
participated in the 116th International Classical Music
Competition in Dublin’s RDS.
Kathryn Wardil accompanied the choir on a Steinway grand
and Capella won two first places and a second place.
The Cups won were The Irish Music Cup, ironic in some ways
in a competition against some fluent Irish speakers, and The
Fallon’s Cup for Sacred Music.
I had the great honour of being in the RDS to witness the
standing ovation Capella received after their performance of
‘Seaside Rendez-vous’ with cheers, laughs and smiles around
as they lit up the Concert Hall .
Capella members beamed from ear to ear, Mr Falconer looked
quite happy too and the day culminated in a ‘Flash Mob’
performance in a local restaurant.
Wallace’s reputation as a music centre of excellence across a
range of musical genres is growing with former pupil Peter
McCauley’s popular music career blossoming as ‘Rams’ Pocket
Radio’ the name under which he performs as lead singer,
drummer and pianist.
Peter was a former Capella chorister and he made thousands
of new fans last year when he supported ‘Snow Patrol’ at their
sell out Odyssey Arena Tour. Peter recently performed at the
Glastonbury Festival and in London’s Wembley Arena.
Also in the public eye were our public speakers who won a
number of competitions last year.
Three Upper Sixth students: Chloe Webb, Hannah Gardiner
and Jonathan Scott talked their way to 1st place in the
North/South Business and Professional Women’s Public
Speaking Competition in Dublin.
Having won the Belfast and then the Northern Ireland heats
we were all delighted for the three talented students who
were keen to thank and acknowledge the support and advice
of Mrs Emma Rogers in their preparation.
Interpretation of the spoken word in a variety of languages
saw a team of Sixth Formers make its way to the final of the
All Ireland Linguistic Olympiad in Dublin City University.
Sarah-Maria Adams, Natasha Gillies, Catherine Nettleship and
Stuart Wilson were wonderful ambassadors for the school and
applied logic and skills reasoning to solve complex puzzles in
unfamiliar languages learning simultaneously about the
fascinating world of computational linguistics.
As a school community we aim to be relevant, to try to reflect
in our curriculum, the needs of a changing society.
The introduction of a 1 to 1 iPad roll-out for Key Stage 3 last
year saw an innovative new Wallace ICT and Computing Blog
launched.
The school also expanded its A Level provision last year to
include for the first time ‘Health and Social Care’ and ‘Music
Technology’.
Much research, careful consideration and reflection, on where
the jobs of the future will be, informs our curriculum here.
Last year showed we are a grammar school with traditional
values, but with elements of a traditional and innovative
curriculum.
Our curricular and extra curricular programme last year
provided a breadth of opportunity for our young people.
Without an open minded, student centred ethos among the
staff of this school this would not be possible.
Our teaching and support staff have shown themselves to be
open-minded, keen to serve the current and future needs of
our young people and willing to embrace new technology. In
short, this is a learning school. Staff are learners, just as our
pupils are.
Innovation was evident with the Young Enterprise Company
“Quirtees” winning the Northern Ireland final of the Company
of the Year.
The award ceremony was held in the inspiring surroundings of
the Titanic Building. The twelve entrepreneurs who make up
the team were: Abi Ballard, Rachel Barnes, Jake Clements,
Alex McKinstry, Jordan Rogers, Loren Saunders, Tiffany Slowik,
Matthew Thompson, Robin Walsh, Victoria Withington,
Dennis Wong and Alexander Younge. The team was
supported by Miss Karen Neill.
The results in August are always keenly anticipated and are
the culmination of time and energy invested by students, staff
and parents.
The smiles of celebration continued for many hours, days and
weeks as we celebrated, as a community, record AS and GCSE
results.
In previous Prize Day Reports I have read out lengthy lists of
straight A students whilst always careful to recognise the
success of all those who gave of their best. This year, even to
read out all those who achieved straight A*/A grades in
external examinations would be almost impossible.
Perhaps the following might help you understand why: 29
students in Upper Sixth achieved 3 or more A*/A grades,
32 students in Lower Sixth achieved 3 or more A grades.
Among Lower Sixth students the school achieved its highest
ever % of students achieving 3 or more AS grades at A, B or C.
This was an impressive improvement of 13% on the previous
year.
At GCSE over 60 students achieved 8 or more straight A or A*
grades with 20 of this sixty achieving a minimum of 7 A*
grades.
The school celebrated its highest ever achievement at each
GCSE grade with 99% of the grades awarded in the year group
of 170 being at A*, A or B.
The good news continued as we learnt that a number of our
students had been placed in the Northern Ireland examination
board’s final rankings of all candidates who sat the papers.
They were as follows:
In French GCSE Christopher Lennon was joint 1st and Kim
McCord joint 3rd;
In German GCSE Chloe Carson was joint 2nd;
in Spanish A Level Ben Thompson was joint 3rd (Ben is reading
Modern Languages at Cambridge this year);
in English Literature GCSE Ashley Blaine was 2nd;
in Journalism GCSE Natasha Michaelides was 3rd;
and in Additional Mathematics Christopher Lennon was joint
3rd.
Whatever way you analyse these results they are excellent.
Some ‘so called’ league tables celebrate A*, some A and B
grades,
some the percentage of students achieving 3 or more A*-C
grades at A Level,
some the percentage of students achieving 8 or more A*-C
grades at GCSE.
We should be proud of what we achieved as a school; our
students are not percentages on pieces of paper, they are
young people, some who have difficult times to navigate,
others who glide through school effortlessly.
We, as a school, value each of them, we celebrate
improvement, meeting targets, not just attaining standards
set by a civil servant or a newspaper editor.
Of course, achieving very high standards in external
examinations is a core focus of this school but we are not here
to place a young person on an educational conveyer belt, to
fill the vessel, tick the curriculum boxes and then send them
out well qualified.
Instead we are here to instil in our young people the values of
integrity, honesty and loyalty. We want to mould them to be
caring parents, responsible citizens, successful in their careers,
happy in their life choices.
This sometimes requires difficult decisions, attracts criticism
and debate. But as a school we remain steadfast in our
insistence of the demonstration of our core values of
commitment, opportunity, respect and excellence.
Rights will be balanced by responsibility, short- term
gratification by long- term implications.
Wallace faces the exciting prospect of the construction of an
astro turf hockey pitch, a final decision is awaited on the
outcome of a public funding application which will allow for
the construction of floodlights.
Young players should be enjoying this new facility in
September 2013; with or without floodlights the Trustees
intend to go ahead with its construction.
A focus on participation and excellence in sport continues to
be the heartbeat of much of our school life.
Not every young person will be an elite participant in our
sporting programme, the school last year fielded teams in a
very wide variety of sports.
At times we could field A, B, C even D teams but are unable to
get fixtures with other schools.
The list of the successes of elite sportsmen and women in
Wallace in your programme is impressive: the school has
nurtured and continues to nurture and inspire some of the
province’s most talented, highly respected sportsmen and
women in rugby, hockey, and a range of other sports.
Wallace is very well represented in professional sports teams
locally not just in amateur games.
Last year we celebrated together successes in sport at our
annual awards ceremony in June. Jimmy Kirkwood was our
invited guest and it was a fitting way to end the school term.
Memorable sporting moments punctuated the year; two visits
to Ravenhill in one year for the 1st XV Schools’ Cup semi-final
and the Medallion Final made for a remarkable atmosphere in
school.
The boys’ and girls’ hockey teams, the netball teams, the
cricket teams, the tennis teams, the badminton teams all
performed at the highest levels. Notably the boys’ 1st XI
reached the semi finals of their two major competitions.
This balance of participation and success in hockey and rugby
for boys and
hockey and netball for girls
is the envy of many and something of which the school is
proud.
We are not a specialist in just any one sport, but a specialist in
many.
Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to take this
opportunity to thank members of the teaching and support
staff of Wallace for their concern for the individual student,
their sense of service to this school, their professional integrity
and selflessness.
To the Chairman, Mr Graham Sutton, I should like to express
my thanks for his unwavering support of the staff of Wallace,
his understanding of school life and interest in our young
people.
I conclude with a quotation, as I did on Junior Prize Evening,
from a book “Tuesdays with Morrie” written by Mitch Albom.
It summarises eloquently the ethos of Wallace:
“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They
seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they
think are important.
This is because they’re chasing the wrong things.
The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to
loving others,
devote yourself to your community around you,
and devote yourself to creating something that gives you
purpose and meaning.”