Meeting Minutes 18 September 2023

Present

M Whittington (VP), S Pickett (HM Ex officio), A Jones, B Whinney, T Deller, R Bjister

Apologies were received from

M Spoors, A Shearer, N Whales, A Cousins, R Sheardown, N Barton

Minutes from the last meeting and matters arising

The minutes of the last meeting were agreed

Report of the President

Due to the absence of the President, there was no report

Report of the Honorary Secretary

Due to the absence of the Hon. Secretary, there was no report

Report of the Honorary Treasurer

The Society’s funds totalled £12,454. The only payment made since the last meeting was £142 for

refreshments for the Old Boys and MCC cricket matches.

Report of the Headmaster

The HM reported that the 2023/24 year had just started with the previous year’s exam results being

exceptional and the second-best results ever and well above the national average. 5 students had gone on to places at Oxbridge.

Building work is continuing with the 1910 building almost complete. This leaves just the admin block to finish.

The new entrance is to be officially opened this Wednesday.

Items and reports for discussion and action

PTFA Ball

This was held at the Masonic Hall and was a great success. SP thought it help foster ties with the PTFA if we could have a table next year – dates to follow.

Cricket

The MCC match was held on the 30 June 2023 with the School narrowly losing.

The Old Boys games unfortunately became victims of the weather and were cancelled.

LinkedIn

The committee thanked Tom and Ben for all their hard work in getting this live.

The Page now has 286 followers (including 48 in the last month) and the Alumni group has 100 members.

The page will be kept up to date with new articles etc both from the School and The Old Boys and indeed this is already happening.

There is also a growth opportunity for Year 13 pupils to join so that they can continue contacts as they leave the school.

Tom is to arrange an online training session (Mark White – thelinkedinprofessional.com) for anyone who wishes to partake re LinkedIn. This is to cost £125 and is free to attendees and will be held remotely at a time to be arranged.

Rugby and Annual Dinner

BW stated that due to RFU rules, it was not possible to have a School v Old Boys match anymore and so we are looking at a Old Boys <25 v Old Boys >25 match followed by a School First XV match against another school.

Both these would take place on the same day and probably at Newark Rugby Club due to the number of people attending and the difficulty of negotiating with Kesteven. BW and RB to discuss this further.

The ideal time would be somewhere around Easter as clubs do not tend to have fixtures then and this would be put on LinkedIn as soon as a convenient date has been arranged.

The matter then turned to the Annual Dinner which it had already been agreed would be held around March/April time to coincide with the Rugby.

However, we need to decide which date would be better to hold the Dinner and it was agreed to get further opinions from the full Committee as well as asking the members on LinkedIn bearing in mind number of attendees, travel times etc.

The three options are:

• The Dinner would be on the evening of the rugby matches
• The Dinner would be on the Friday before the rugby on the Saturday
• The Dinner would be on the following Saturday after the rugby matches.

Could all committee members give their preferred option by the next committee meeting and LinkedIn members by the 31st October.