New Senior Girls’ School

Rev. Robert Brucciani

A project has been launched to open a modest senior girls’ day school on the site of the newly acquired High Grange House next to St. Michael’s School. Already the parents of 15 senior girls in the area are keen that the project goes ahead and a general meeting with school parents in November was enthusiastic in its support.

As with all projects, the five big “M”s must be managed: Men (teachers and pupils), Money (capital, income and expenditure), Materials (classrooms, furniture and learning materials), Methods (a plan) and Machines (contractors).

The elements falling under Materials, Methods and Machines are the easy part. Fr. Summers, headmaster of St. Michael’s School, relishes the prospect of organising the installation of new facilities. Striding about the property with an expression of fixed purpose, he is rarely more at home than when he is giving directions to professional tradesmen or jumping into the seat of an earthmover or putting a chain gang of boys to work.

The Men and Money part are not so simple. If we are to have three new classes, we will need a full time teaching headmistress (English), one full time teacher (Maths) and one part time teacher (Sciences) in addition to our existing staff. Finding the right people and being able to pay them sufficiently is always difficult. We pray for benefactors, but even more, we pray for souls who are willing to embrace teaching as a vocation rather than as a career, or experienced teachers who wish to give us their golden years before retirement. Most of the staff of St. Michael’s School already fall into these two categories, we just need two-and-a-half more!

About money, the capital cost of the project is estimated at about £120,000 for six tasteful, fully equipped, fully insulated wooden buildings for classrooms, science lab, common room and toilets. A sponsorship programme has been launched which we commend to your generosity.

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