The Post 16 Landscape evening for Year 10 on Tuesday evening opened up to parents and future pupils the growing range of apprenticeships available from 16 to 18 and into adulthood. With some of the UK's leading world class companies now offering degree apprenticeships, applied for through UCAS, even Cambridge are reporting that students are turning down their offer of a place for a paid-for apprenticeship at other universities!

Congratulations to the Senior Boys Salters’ side on their successful participation in the Festival of Chemistry at the University of Reading; perhaps something for their CV in applying for one of the degree apprenticeships mentioned above!

I visited the University of Kent on Thursday for the GSA/HMC Universities committee meeting, and met with a range of the admissions tutors whilst there.  Kent’s Vice Chancellor, formerly at the University of Nottingham is Professor Karen Cox. A background in nursing and a BSc via King’s College London, Karen impressed all of the headteachers present with her grasp of the challenges both mainstream and Higher Education face in the future. This is definitely a University to watch, with a new medical school opening in 2020, and a huge reach across Europe with long partnerships that will exist well into the future, whatever happens to Brexit.

And today, Friday, we welcome both Year 11 and their parents to their final school day before study leave and GCSE examinations. Looking back five years, they have grown and developed incredibly well as a cohort; looking forward, many will be planning careers, perhaps planning weddings and even house purchases within the next 5 years to come. It’s quite scary really to recognise therefore just how important their secondary schools years are, in which so many positive qualities are established that will serve them in such good stead in the years to come.