We hold our Junior School Open Mornings during the school week, so that prospective families see an authentic Junior School day. Our Year 6 girls are what make Open Morning the event it is, and yesterday was no exception.

Leadership in the Junior School begins from the earliest years. Just as we increase academic expectations gradually and in age-appropriate ways, we do the same with the social and emotional skills that sit beneath leadership: speaking up, listening, taking responsibility, and looking out for someone younger.

By the time our girls reach Year 6, many of them are ready to confidently walk a family they have never met around their school, and to speak about their learning and the class and playground environments. The girls spoke articulately and honestly about their experience of the Junior School in their own words, and they did so with real pride.

As always, classrooms ran their normal lessons, and families saw the teaching and learning that happens every day in the Junior School. The pride in their voices, the ease with which they spoke about their teachers and their classrooms, the warmth they extended to visiting families: these are the marks of girls who are deeply connected to their school.

That sense of belonging is something we work hard to build from Pre-K onwards, and it is what allows our girls to speak about their school with the kind of confidence we saw on Thursday.