I am conscious as I sit down to write this last newsletter of the year that change is in the air: your daughters are preparing to move from one year to the next; we are bracing ourselves to bid farewell to departing colleagues; our leavers are gearing themselves up for new adventures; and, of course, while I may have written these words under one Government, you may be reading it under an entirely different one.

Change, as they say, is the only constant.

Unsettling as change may be, there is always comfort to be found in the cycles and traditions of school life. If you are looking for reassurance that some things are impervious to change, school is a great place to be at this time of year.

Over the last two weeks, we have enjoyed our usual feast of celebrations. We gathered the whole school together for the annual school birthday assembly on Monday (well done to Year 3 who delighted the audience with their confidence and knowledge of the school’s history). Last week saw the Sports Dinner, the Year 13 Leavers’ Ball and the Summer Garden Party (an event that may seem a recent addition but is in fact a revival of an age-old tradition). On Saturday morning, the Hive was buzzing with old friends, as former students from as far back as 1967 returned to their alma mater. Listening to them share stories was joyful.

What such occasions remind us is that, while buildings, people, and events are vulnerable to the winds of change, there is a collective spirit that exists within our school that has been passed down through the generations. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Girls’ Day School Trust and, in two years, we will celebrate reaching this same milestone. Since 1876, our school has been educating individuals to go out and make a positive difference in the world. One glance at the alumnae pages on our website will be enough to remind you of our proud history, and to reassure you that our future is in safe hands.

As we bade farewell to our brilliant Year 13 cohort last Friday, we celebrated an important legacy: it was from within this year group that the idea for a Women in Politics conference emerged, and I am confident that this highly successful initiative will become an annual event and will soon be added to our list of traditions. Without feeling the need to schedule in any time to make edits before this piece is published, I know there will be some unease about what Thursday’s General Election result will mean for the independent school sector. All I can say is that our school is in a strong position and, if the last two weeks are anything to go by, it is only getting stronger.

This week, I have been reading Victoria Mackenzie’s novel, ‘For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain’, the story of a fictional meeting between two medieval mystics, Juliana of Norwich and Margery Kempe. Victoria Mackenzie is another alumna of Brighton Girls, and it is fitting that she chose these two figures – authors of the two first known books in English by women – as the subjects of her first novel.

So, the cycle of women empowering women continues and, as Juliana of Norwich famously wrote, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”.