The Summer term brought exciting changes to the School’s House system. For over a hundred years now the School has followed a familiar system of six houses: North, East, South, West, Weald and School (split into Mill Hill and Hough). Although these houses have been familiar identities for students in the past, a growing number of students has led to a new era of houses and competition between them. From May, we introduced four entirely new houses for day students. These houses took the names of wellknown nearby locations and parks, including Hampden, Thorndon, Hartswood and Merrymeade. They took on new colours too, including orange, grey, teal and purple. Although now it may take a few seconds for you to work out which colour is which house now, this has led the way to ten individual houses of around 150 students in each. The ethos behind a smaller house is to encourage more community amongst students, whereby different year groups will be able to recognise others and create more relationships. As a result, this will hopefully lead to greater involvement of students in house competitions. Since the initiation of the new House system, it was decided that the entire tie system would be overhauled with a new, more cohesive design that allows as many students’ house identities to be shown as possible. These include the regular house ties in their popping new colours, a Full colours tie (an eagle and house stripes), a Distinction colours tie (similar to the old one, but in house colours), and the Senior Prae tie (the School crest and house stripes). Now, it is much easier to discover which house all of the students around school are in, which makes life so much easier for the Sixth Formers … In addition to a greater sense of clarity for the houses, the amalgamation of Hough and Mill Hill Houses has created an overarching “School house” tie, so a greater sense of community has been built for the boarders here. Brentwood School's 6
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