To our 1998 Sixth Form Leavers

I like the idea of a year book and am delighted to be asked to write a foreword for it.
Arriving here only ten months before your departure, I have not had as much opportunity to get to know you as I would have liked. I do however hope that I left you in no doubt about how highly I regarded your good-natured and co-operative approach to school life, particularly in comparison with students in other places where I have worked.
I do not subscribe to that old humbug about school days being the best days of your life. Apart from everything else, if it were true, you would not have much to look forward to now. Every stage of a well-lived life should be potentially rewarding. I hope that you found the Duchess's High School to be a safe, welcoming and stimulating place and that, for the most part at least, we met your needs. If you feel sad at the prospect of leaving, please reflect on the fact that the period of young adulthood, either in continuing education or in work, is usually characterised by responsibility; people usually relish the memory of those years.
I sincerely hope that your examination results will be what you hoped for and will take you on to the next stage of your career plan. You are, however, infinitely more valuable then your results and if they are a disappointment, try to maintain a sense of proportion; it is astonishing how often in life you look back at a reverse or a disappointment and see it to have been the beginning of a new and successful direction.
Whatever you do and wherever you do it, the most important thing in life is the people who surrounded you. I hope that you made many good friends at school and that you will keep in touch with each other in the years to come. The privilege of high school teaching is to watch engaging children grow into fine young adults; we will always be interested to know how in the future you fulfil the potential which we see in you now.
You take with you the very best wishes of everyone in this institution; we hope that your future holds everything you would wish for yourself.

Geoffrey A Thompson
Head.