Taylorian

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TAYLORIAN 2024

recommended having a break. He noted that a good school would stretch the pupils in different ways, ‘For the variety is very great’ but added that ‘Learning must have leisure’. We agree, and so pupils and staff embarked on a number of different trips and tours. 10 departments took pupils away. In the UK we visited the Lake District, Pembrokeshire and Bath. Other trips went to Bologna, Athens, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam and the Battlefields. Then there were the German, Spanish and French Exchanges. Nor should we forget the Year 9 Rugby tour to Biarritz, the Year 10 Cricket Tour to Dubai, the Year 8 Hockey tour to Holland, the Senior Hockey tour to South Africa, the Ski Trip to Canada, the surfing trip to Fuerteventura, and the physicists’ trip to CERN in Switzerland. Plus, all the Outdoor Ed based trips – DofE, Canoeing, CCF, rock climbing, and so forth. If you preferred to stay in school, there were over 100 clubs and societies this year and more than 20 Music Ensembles. The eight Houses clashed in over 20 different competitions through the year. Mulcaster led the school when it was at the heart of the City of London on a dirty urban site. He had a vision of a better experience for the pupils. He wrote, ‘I wish that schools were planted near to the fields, with little or no restriction in the matter of space.’ Later, he added, ‘Walking in an open place, and chiefly green, is much better and more wholesome … If ye walk in a place where birds haunt, it is of great efficacy to clear the breath, and to disburden the body so, as if ye did walk in some higher ground.’ He would have appreciated our current grounds and commitment to outdoor education. A radical for the time, Mulcaster did not, as most philosophers and intellectuals did, separate the mind and body. For Mulcaster, the good school would take a new path: “It is not a mind, it is not a body that we have to educate, but a man, and we cannot divide him.” We still do the same today, through our sport. In rugby, 26 boys were in the London and South Central Developing Player Pathway.

Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Linguistics – there were far too many pupils performing at an elite national level for me to read out their names today. Krish Thakrar, in L6th, entered a national space sustainability competition run by the satellite company Viasat. Krish came up with a novel solution to the issue of light pollution from satellites. He was awarded second place out of 1200 entrants – securing a grant and work experience with Viasat. Industry experts are looking to take his idea into commercial development. Joshua Rhodes, Divs, was one of only 38 students out of approximately 1,200 participants to reach the Newsquest Young Reporter semi-finals. Divs students Samay Kachalia, Xander Mardle, Noah West and Rayyan Taha were runners-up in the Imperial College Science and Medicine Prize, a competition aimed at Sixth Form students. In History, Tilak Patel was a winner in the Julia Wood Essay Prize competition (St Hugh’s, Oxford). Jacob Rose, Oscar Williams, Gabriel Wellmann and Ben Ward represented MTS at the 9th French Drama competition. Oscar Williams won the Best Leading Part prize in front of Helena Bonham Carter, who was in the audience. Shaan Fisher, Emre Arslan and Luka Hinton were selected for the Merchant Taylors’ Company Senior Design Competition. Although a Divisions pupil, Samay Kachalia won the Highly Commended Award at the same Senior Design Competition Final with his project. In addition, we had a record 14 students going through to the final stages of the Arkwright Scholarship – most schools are delighted with one or two. We had 6 VEX Robotics teams through to the National Finals. MTS_R3START (Charlie Apps, Dylan Lakhani, Nikhil Mehta, Shayan Nezami, Jai Patel) were crowned UK National Champions, also winning the High School Excellence Award. They, along with MTS_Hydra (Shay Nagda, Oscar Walsh, Ali Juma, Pranay Patel, Thomas Bignone), qualified for the VEX World Championship 2024 in Texas. There, MTS_Hydra placed 15th in their Division, which put them amongst the best teams in the world. After all that success, Mulcaster would have

The U14s enjoyed an excellent tour to Biarritz; Noah Kerr and Niccolo Camilotti shone in those games with their effort and commitment. The senior boys provided St Barna