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APPLY NOWWord from the Head – 6 November 2026
Dear Parents,
Welcome back for the second half of term, and what a week it has been! We are straight back into the busy-ness of learning, trips, fixtures and rehearsals – it’s like we never went away. I must highlight the three trips which went out in half term: Gold DofE to Exmoor, GCSE and A level hispanists to Madrid and the GCSE and A level Geography trip to Iceland. My thanks to Ms Yun, Mrs Steinberg, Mrs Blake and their fabulous cohorts of staff who organised and accompanied these very valuable experiences.
My week started with assembly in the Junior School on Monday morning. I talked to them about the transition into November, noticing that with the clocks going back, the nights closing in and the weather turning chilly, this time of year often marks the beginning of a long, cold winter.
To illustrate this we looked back at Victorian London, an era of great invention but also of literal darkness. Coal-fuelled industries created a heavy, gritty smog that hung in the air, getting into people’s lungs and forcing them to stay indoors. It was a time when November could be a deeply miserable month and to highlight this I shared a poem, November by Thomas Hood, which underscored this feeling.
Today our children are growing up in a different physical environment, but they are increasingly navigating a different kind of darkness. At the HMC Conference at the end of September I was fascinated by a presentation from research organisation Starling Strategy. They have identified what one might consider a psychological smog settling over today’s youth: a rift between young people and the future, which the speakers termed a ‘culture of futurelessness’.
Driven by eco anxiety, AI uncertainty and a growing ideological divide, their research suggests that there is a measurable erosion of optimism among young people. Feeling unable to achieve the levels of prosperity they see in older generations and with a declining faith in democracy, this attitude manifests in a number of interesting ways: a distaste for sustained effort (why bother, when hard work is not going to pay off?); passivity in the face of AI inevitability; and a rise in a quick-fix mentality leading to behaviours such as speculative crypto investments or hyper-fixation on personal physical routines and looks-maxxing. They even discovered through an analysis of song lyrics that people sing less about the future now than they did in the past, and gave us examples of art and literature which showed that people in the past imagined the future more positively, especially at times of turmoil and crisis.
This all suggests that we are raising a generation that is losing its positive narrative about tomorrow. The Starling research notes that parents may lack a script to help project optimism to their children. However the good news is that Starling had some answers for us – and many of them are things that are already built into a Channing education.
In my Junior School assembly, I reminded the children that November also includes a lot of light, from fireworks on Bonfire Night and the lights of Diwali, to the Northern Lights. It was wonderful to be able to share a photo of the aurora borealis taken by Scarlett in Year 11 on the Iceland trip in half term. We discussed how lights can guide us safely through the dark and how we, too, can act as beacons for others. Simply by offering a smile to others, we can instantly brighten the day for our parents, teachers and friends.
But beyond a positive daily attitude, the Starling co-founders introduced the HMC audience to the concept of ‘Refuturing’ (not a word, in my view, but an interesting idea nonetheless). They encouraged us to equip our children with ‘Radical Self-Reliance’, boosting optimism about their personal future by proving to them that their individual, sustained effort will yield real, long-term rewards. Many of your children will have had their first Channing Learner Scores already this term, which aim to demonstrate just that.
They also offered three practical ways to build this resilience both in school and at home.
- Perhaps an obvious one: active participation in hobbies and extra-curricular activities is one of the strongest drivers of high agency. This is particularly valuable in combatting an isolationist or ‘pro-solitude’ culture, where the intellectual social life of school – with debates, collaboration and a sense of belonging as standard – is vital.
- Controversially, Starling suggested that this could be taken even further by teaching them how to commoditise and market their spare time effectively. Whether through learning a craft, building a community service or developing a tangible skill, teaching them how to effectively market and use their spare time builds an internal locus of control that quick-fix trends cannot match.
- Finally, they urged us to create an anti-perfectionist environment in school and at home. By offering safety to fail, be weird and exercise imagination and creativity, we can celebrate intellectual risk-taking, encourage healthy debate and make sure our children know that failure is a safe and necessary step on the path to success.
I closed our assembly on Monday with a simple reflection: encouraging the girls to bring light and brightness into someone else’s life that, and every, day and to realise that our attitudes can shift the world around us. As Starling might put it, by intentionally refuturing our children’s mindsets, we can do more than just help them survive the winter gloom: we can give them the tools to illuminate their own futures.
An additional note to end this week, following on from my Word from the Head before half term about digital technology at Channing. Over the past few weeks, our Digital Leaders have visited classrooms while Mr Raine, Director of Studies, observed lessons and gathered evidence of how digital technology, particularly YouTube, supports learning. We have seen some excellent examples of its educational value: from an animated Bayeux Tapestry bringing the events of 1066 to life, to debates about geographical determinism and valuable revision resources supporting Biology and Chemistry assessments. It is clear that YouTube, when used selectively and purposefully, can make a positive contribution to learning. Equally, we recognise the concerns parents have raised about the potentially distracting and addictive nature of the platform, the opportunities for inappropriate use even within its restricted form, and the wider importance of managing screen time carefully.
We have listened to these concerns and, as a small but meaningful step, have decided to remove the YouTube app from all school-managed devices from today. Please note that this does not mean removing access to YouTube altogether. Carefully selected content will remain accessible through the browser, managed under our existing filtering and monitoring arrangements. Removing the convenience of one-touch access is a practical step towards reducing unnecessary use and encouraging more deliberate engagement. It also reinforces our wider expectation that screens should be used only when they contribute meaningfully to learning. As Mr Raine emphasised at our Welcome Evenings, technology has an important place in education, but its use must always be thoughtful and purposeful. We await further guidance from the Government on the use of screens, and on the proposed social media ban, in due course.
As I said to the Junior School on Monday, Diwali starts on Sunday and I wish all our Channing families celebrating a very Happy Diwali, and a year filled with light and joy.
With warmest wishes for the weekend,
Lindsey Hughes
Headmistress
