We can all celebrate love today, in its various forms – whether romantic or not. Although they won’t always recognise it at the time, we want our children to love their learning as they experience the joy of discovery (alongside the hard graft that is often required to achieve this and the ‘tough’ love which their teachers might sometimes show!). We want them to love different aspects of their LGS education, either through our co-curricular programme or perhaps via a school trip – including this half-term an Art and Spanish visit to Barcelona, a History trip to Berlin, the Spanish exchange to Valencia and a skiing trip in Italy. We hope pupils will return with many happy, shared memories.

We also hope that our pupils love belonging to our LGS community. We are a richly multicultural and diverse school, where we aim to celebrate the unique contribution which each of our pupils brings, through their own talents and personal qualities. And we hope they will embrace their opportunities with a passion, and without the jealousy or obsession that can sometimes accompany love. There will also undoubtedly be times when we are not in love with every moment of life and when we need the love and compassion of others.

We teach them too to love their neighbour, whether or not that neighbour is within their friendship circle; i.e. to get on with and support others, and never knowingly to hurt others. Some of our pupils are very good at sharing their love in practical ways in the wider community. I will not name them, as they are humble enough not to want that, but two of our pupils have hand-made love hearts for a charity close to their own hearts and have raised over £1600 in doing so; and another two are national ambassadors for Comic Relief.

I hope you are able to spend some time with family during the half-term break, and that your homes will be filled with love.

Best wishes,

John Watson
Headmaster and Principal