It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas - Meredith Willson, arr. A Level Music Students 2022-23

This Christmas classic was originally composed by Meredith Willson (known for the hit Broadway musical The Music Man) and brought to popularity by Perry Como and The Fontane Sisters with Mitchell Ayres & His Orchestra in 1951. Reaching No.8 on the US Billboard Holiday 100, it has since been recorded by the likes of Bing Crosby, Johnny Mathis, Pentatonix, Meghan Trainor, and of course the quintessential Michael Bublé, whose version continues to top the charts regularly over the Christmas period, 11 years after its release.

As we are all aware, this winter is going to be a difficult one for many families across the country, especially with the rising cost of living.

To do our bit to help locally in the Reading area, we organised a 'Food Drive Week' collecting food items such as breakfast cereals, UHT milk, eggs, loo rolls, washing up liquid, washing powder, tea, coffee, biscuits, cooking oil, pasta/rice, tinned food such as sweetcorn / fruit / soup / tuna, spreads like honey and jam, toiletries such as shower gel, shampoo, toothbrushes and toothbrushes for the Whitley Community Food Cupboard.  

I am very grateful for having had the opportunity to organise such an incredible event by inviting Dr. Harwin as our guest speaker on Friday the 9th of December.  Dr. Harwin is an Instrument Development Scientist at RAL Space.  Years 11,12, and 13 had the privilege of listening to Dr. Harwin, give a Space Talk.  We learnt about her journey into the space sector, and towards the end of the talk, she shared some career advice, and reassured students that there are numerous routes into the space sector such as data science and space law - not only aerospace engineering and astrophysics.

On Friday 2nd December, we were delighted to welcome former students and staff to our 145th birthday reunion celebration.  It's 145 years since the school started at Watlington House, 95 years since we came to this site.  The School Birthday was introduced in September 2012 to celebrate our school and girls’ education.  It is an opportunity for us to reconnect with former students and gives them an opportunity to visit their old school, seeing familiar and perhaps unfamiliar rooms and buildings.

On Tuesday 29th November, parents and students attended a presentation of GCSE certificates event along with teachers, staff and our guest speaker and presenter of certificates, Sanjana Iyer, one of last year's members of Kendrick Student Leaders.

Ms. Kattirtzi began by congratulating the students for all the amazing work they did throughout the GCSE course.  Faced with the challenges and uncertainty of COVID, Kendrick School, staff and students with sheer determination and hard work produced outstanding results, which resulted in our progress 8 measure at +0.94, placing the progress of our students in the top 2% of the country.