Chairman's Report
By John Parcell
Chair of the Board of Governors

The text of a speech at the College’s Speech Day and Prize-giving, July 2007

I will take just a few minutes to remind you of what a very good school this is, and point out once again how far we have travelled in the last six or seven years.  Some of you will be relatively new parents, or students, or staff and will not have heard about this before.  Others will have heard, but I believe it’s right to keep reminding ourselves of our progress - from time to time.  That said, it’s vital we don’t become complacent, so I’ll finish by looking at the challenges the next few years will bring.

These are the most significant ways in which we have advanced since the difficult days of the late 90’s, when the school was - becalmed - with low pupil numbers and a large deficit of pay, work, and investment.

Our first step was to redefine the school’s aims.   We set two over-riding goals.  First, to continue to provide the best possible individual nurture for children of all abilities in small classes in an attractive environment.  Second, to expand pupil numbers in order to generate growing surpluses - for reinvestment.

Our next step was to establish a five-year strategic plan, with clear targets against which to measure our progress.  That plan is based on listening to our stakeholders, and identifies about 15 core targets.  Each target carries objective measures, and milestones to be achieved term by term and year by year along the way.  Moreover, those targets are there to be achieved as a whole, and in a balanced way.  It would be no use, say, paying off bank debt if that were to be at the expense of rewarding our staff decently.

Looking back to our first Plan five years ago, I am pleased to say that we have met or exceeded the targets we set back then.

•            We have grown pupil numbers in the main school by 35% in a flat market.

•            We have reinvested growing financial surpluses to make substantial progress on the key tasks we identified.

•            In particular,  with further good pay increases in May and September, we now offer our teaching staff competitive salaries.

•            We have installed a fully effective management team, including a Deputy Head who is leading a significant programme of teaching imnprovement, and a Bursar who has established financial control and full business and HR procedures.  We also now have good governance procedures across the board.  For example, we list all our risks carefully, weigh them, and take deliberate steps to eliminate or at least reduce them.

•            We have set up an effective team with adequate resources for the basic maintenace of our historic buildings and park.  You will have seen improvements for yourselves.

•            We have modernised our facilities and educational materials, including IT.  Adrian King is to be thanked too for leading the fundraising for the sports pavilion.

•            We have made a start on paying down the longstanding bank debt.

•            Stoke College is now one of the most successful small schools in its region, and is increasingly recognised as such by its peers, by its stakeholders and – more gradually – by the wider community.

The rest of what I want to tell you concentrates on challenges for the next year or two.  With perhaps one cultural digression along the way.  The Governors are proud of what has been achieved, yet we are also conscious that - in a school - hard-won gains can evaporate rapidly.  In the first place schools are organic entities, which depend on energy, spirit, and human resilience for their results.  They cannot – unlike many commercial businesses – be cloned or run to an intelligent formula.  Each is a unique animal.

Secondly, the economics of an independent school are tough.  What’s called “operational gearing” is very high, in other words costs are largely fixed and so small numbers of new joiners or leavers can have a disproportionate impact on a year’s investment plan.  Schools are also labour-intensive, with costs which tend to rise with or faster than general inflation.  Finally, at Stoke College we lack the cushion of investment funds accumulated over time.

So while we are determined to go on striving to build our institution, we can see clearly some of the new challenges and opportunities ahead.

In the first place, it not possible that we could keep on growing the school at the same pace as we have in the recent past.  Many of the older year-groups are full or close to it.  We will not abandon our policy of keeping classes very small, and keeping the ratio of teachers to pupils among the highest in East Anglia.  Small classes and individual nurture are at the very core of our ethos.  That means that our only significant opportunity to grow further now lies with the younger years of our Junior school, and in our Nursery School which operates just up the village street.  We will be looking very closely at both to see how we could reposition them more attractively for prospective parents, market them better, and reorganise so that they work more closely as part of a single coherent offer.

Second, we shall be ceasing this month - after many years - to let our premises to holiday groups of students, mainly from overseas.  That business brought a small profit which was helpful in the lean years.  But it caused a lot of wear and tear on our premises and on some of our staff, especially maintenance and catering, and it was a distraction for management.  The end of holiday letting means that we can begin to reclaim our beautiful 17th century stable block for our own use, meaning that we can improve our facilities for teaching a number of subjects.  Refurbishment will be a long job on a strict budget.  But over time, the extra space gives us the flexibility to move activities around and so improve other buildings too. 

Beyond that, we are talking to the local authority and English Heritage about the structural restoration of our historic buildings.  And, as we are just now finding out, our buildings are truly, truly historic – far more historic, in fact, than we had realised.

Now forgive me a digression here.  As part of the application process, we have this year commissioned both a historical architect – to produce a detailed conservation plan for the buildings – and an architectural historian, to research their past.  The historian has uncovered some amazing new information – in fact, it’s felt a bit like the TV series “TIME TEAM”.  He says:

•            “Stoke College is a building of national historic importance that incorporates a substantially intact late-medieval collegiate Dean’s Lodging once occupied by Matthew Parker, the first Post-Reformation Archbishop of Canterbury.”  “Its true significance was recognised only during the course of the present survey.”  It was Parker who planned the English Reformation together with his Cambridge colleagues, and it was here that they planned it, at the very comfortable college for priests which Parker ran.  That institution was also called Stoke College, by the way. 

•            Just to give you two more examples, the historian also says: “The buildings of Stoke College also include a very fine redundant dovecote of the late-15th century that preserves some of the finest decorative medieval brickwork in Britain. Standing to the west of the modern gate is the park wall which documentary evidence suggests may be among the earliest brick walls in the country, dating in part from the 1460s.”

Now, as well as history, all this activity has also generated an immensely detailed plan for the future restoration and care of the buildings.  One way or another, we now have to fulfil it - perhaps over 10 or 20 years.

So if the first challenge is to find some more room to grow, and the second group of challenges concerns our physical site, the third group naturally concerns education.  John Gibson and Matthew Parker – the modern Matthew Parker, by another strange historic coincidence - will be telling you about the major gains of recent years – gains which have led to good exam results as well as improvements in the broad and balanced education which we seek for all our pupils.  The longer-term challenge is to maintain the pace of improvement throughout the school from a base which is already strong – improvements in lessons and methods, plus new and better facilities.

Finally, I want to thank all our parents and governors.  Above all I want to thank our staff, both teaching staff and all the others with other vital skills – to thank you for your hard work, your perseverance, and your steady professionalism.  Without the active and constant support of all our stakeholders, the school’s achievements would be less and its challenges greater.

I hope that gives you a clear picture of where Stoke College stands today.  As always, I’m happy to listen to any stakeholder – in person, by email, or on the phone.  Meanwhile, thank you for listening to me.