400 years ago, in July 1622, John Donne, the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, established our School Statutes and in this document we find these words Over the course of the last 400 years, these three words have become the foundation of the Brentwood School that you see today. Taken together, these three words help us to direct our shared life here in school and guide us in the decision-making that all of us take on a daily basis. Whilst it would be true to say that none of us live up to these three core values on every occasion, they do help to light our path and hold us all to account. Virtue, perhaps the most difficult word to easily encapsulate, invites us to look within ourselves. To recognise that any positive change within a society must begin with the individual. Virtue could, perhaps, be most easily explained as ‘doing the right thing, even when others are not looking.’ Learning is, understandably, the most recognisable word and one that has an obvious home within an educational environment. For us, though, learning challenges us to go beyond the classroom and celebrate the many opportunities that we all have to learn, most often from others. Learning is the business of us all and is not confined to our student body. Manners, for “The said schoolmaster shall receive...and him shall teach and instruct in vertue, learning and manners after the orders and constitutions of the said school… 8
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTA4ODM=