Friday Flyer - 30th January 2026
Dear Michael Hall Community,
As we bid farewell to a VERY wet January my hope is that with Candlemas being marked we will see brighter mornings and some clear blues skies as we move through February. Clear skies during the first half term break of the year (pupils finish on Thursday 12th February) help us all re-energise and hit the ground running as we move towards welcoming spring.
It has been a reflective week for me on a quite global and societal sense, with many questions about who we are, why the world is the way it is and how on earth do we support and educate our children to do a better job than we have.
January 27th was Holocaust Memorial Day. It is both a sad day of reflection on the genocide which took place, but also a day when many Jews will celebrate to honour their existence today; surviving is a gift worth celebrating.
I worked in a Jewish school for almost ten years, Hasmonean in North West London. The boys’ site is by far one of the ugliest and worst school buildings I have ever seen, but the history of it is beautiful, reflecting the very best of humanity. The school was founded in a house by Rabbi Schonfeld who played a vital role in rescuing persecuted children from Nazi Germany through the Kindertransport network. His determination that the children, most of whom were now orphans, did not lose the connection with their faith, culture, language and heritage was so strong that he worked with the community to establish the school. It was a privilege to work in a school with such a noble history and I maintain a strong connection to it through friends and former colleagues.
Holocaust Memorial Day was the stimulus for my thoughts on wider society and I was looking at the inequalities, prejudices, misconceptions and (sadly) hatred that are prevalent today. The holocaust was the single largest genocide in history, abhorred internationally, yet we still have high rates of antisemitism. In the UK, the first Race Relations Act came into law in 1965, yet we still have high rates of racism. Women’s rights laws have been in place for over a century here in the UK, yet we have high rates of sexism and misogyny.
Laws have an important part to play in creating equality. Society has to take active steps to create equity. Education has a huge task in creating opportunities for our children to safely discuss society, how we got to this point and how we address this going forwards. There is a wonderful talk given by a Nigeran author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, where she talks about the danger of a single story. Through her story we can see how narratives are created and embedded as a ‘norm’ when the world is seen through one lens, and then reinforced by another with the same lens – the danger of seeing people as ‘other’ or ‘less than’ stems from this.
Thankfully, and I am aware of the damning tone so far, we are in a wonderful school where we are in a position to discuss the history of how we got here, break down the stereotypes which have been created by media (and more recently by influencers), inform of the dangers of internet chat rooms where echo chambers create an illusion of a unified thought or idea and to alert as to the laws and consequences of breaching what is now a well embedded Discrimination Act 2010, which protects certain characteristics of individuals.
In our wonderful Waldorf curriculum, I have seen many cross cultural, gender empowering and societally minded opportunities afforded to our pupils which send a message of the value in diversity. We will be more explicit with this, at an age-appropriate level, to promote the idea that the differences between us need not be points of conflict, but instead create wonderful opportunities for growth, learning and development. One of the Fundamental British Values is ‘tolerance’. I want us to move beyond tolerance to a point where we embrace a diverse society with open arms, free from irrational prejudices and hate.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Stuart McWilliams
Principal
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