As the glittery dresses, high heels and smart tuxedos came waltzing over to the marquee, everyone could see that this year’s Summer Ball was going to be a fantastic evening! On Friday, 2nd July, Sixth Formers celebrated the start of the summer and the end of exams on St Boniface Lawn. The marquee was decorated to perfection, all to do with the theme Beach Ball. Carefully painted ice-creams and ‘bucket and spade’ table decorations helped raise the exciting atmosphere of the night. The Sixth Formers showed off their moves on the dance floor as the incredible band ‘Penfold’ played. Catering staff had prepared a truly amazing selection of foods, ranging from a hog roast to Hawaiian style prawns, and the puddings were certainly very popular with the students and many of the staff, who seemed to stack their plates to the max!

Sticking to this Beach Ball theme, the mannequin cut-outs proved to be a success, with comedic photos being taken with the heads of smiling students. A casino also took the Ball to a whole new level as the guys, and many of the girls, gambled the night away, with fake money (of course)!

The night finished far too quickly as always, with everyone left thoroughly looking forward to next year. Deputy Head of Sixth Form, Mrs Nurdin, deserves a special mention for all her hard work in organising this spectacular evening. It could not have gone ahead without her, and we thank her for making it such a special occasion.

Pupils and staff at Warminster School were in celebratory mood today following the publication of another set of outstanding public examination results.

The school’s International Baccalaureate Diploma students surpassed last year’s cohort and averaged a school record of 33 points per diploma graduate, a score which is comfortably above the global average.

Top scholars from a strong group of students were Alice Geist and Daniel Meschaninov, each of whom achieved 40 points out of 45. To put these results in perspective, this is the equivalent of 611 UCAS points – five straight A grades at A Level! Both Alice and Daniel were understandably ecstatic at the news. Alice can now apply with confidence to leading German universities to read Economics and Daniel has surpassed with ease his offer from the University of London.

Local students Emma Leworthy from Bratton and Emily Keen from Sutton Veny also excelled. Emma achieved 37 points and will now take her place to read Geography at Durham University. Emily, our former Head Girl, gained 36 points – securing her a place on her first-choice university course, reading History at Southampton. Their Diploma scores were the equivalent of 4 A grades at A level.

Emily said: “Studying the IB at Warminster School has been incredibly rewarding and I am delighted with my results.” Emma too is grateful for the strong support of her tutors, particularly in regard to the Extended Essay and her Higher Level subjects.

Warminster staff were thrilled with the Diploma results. IB Coordinator Catherine Wilson said: “We are delighted with the results this year. They reflect the strong IB programme at Warminster School. We have established a broad curriculum taught by experienced teachers and my thanks go to them for their hard work this year. I wish our IB graduates every success at university and in their chosen careers.”

Graeme McQueen, Head of Sixth Form, added: “These are a very pleasing set of results which will stand our pupils in good stead in what will no doubt prove to be a very tough and competitive year for undergraduate entry to British universities. The Diploma is warmly welcomed by leading universities, both in the UK and abroad; they see it as a rigorous examination combining both depth and breadth.”

Martin Priestley, Headmaster, concluded: “We were the first school in the South West to offer the Diploma alongside our traditional A Level programme. This record set of results confirms our excellent and proven track record of success. Year on year our ‘points per graduate’ score has risen and has remained consistently above the world average. Last year we were placed 27^th out of well over 200 UK schools offering the Diploma programme. This year’s record results are a testament to the commitment of a professional staff and to the diligence of an able cohort of students; I applaud their efforts and thank and congratulate my colleagues and especially Mrs Wilson, our dedicated IB Coordinator. The IB is growing in popularity at Warminster School: we give our students a choice between A Levels and the IB Diploma – and a record number of our own students have opted to take the IB from September, so the programme goes from strength to strength.”

Warminster Lower School’s production of Wind in the Willows at the Merlin last week gave the Headmaster, he said, ‘aching face muscles from smiling so much’. This is because both he and the rest of the audience had been transported by the joy and exuberance that Warminster School children brought to this classic tale.

The play, the famous adaptation by Alan Bennett, started with all the woodland characters, rabbits, otters, weasels, stoats and the like, performing a funky street dance and so bringing a youthful, contemporary buzz to the Edwardian glades of Berkshire. It also set the tone for the entire evening - this was going to be a production in which the whole cast gave it their all.

The main thrust of the story, as we all know, is about the exploits of the irrepressible Toad and how he is eventually saved from the results of his own foolishness by his loyal friends.

Matt Stone’s portrayal of Toad was masterly: swaggering, enthusiastic, capricious, mischievous and generous in equal measure. His assumed prostration in the invalid chair as he beguiles Ratty into believing he is in a terminal decline was a high point:

‘ I could have been an actor I suppose though it’s no job for someone of my intelligence.’

and it brought the house down.

Alex Shad as Ratty and Kathryn Rush as the Mole were both ‘thowoughly’ nice chaps and portrayed very well the contrasting characters of these two unlikely friends; Jordan Hitch gave a deep-throated gravitas to the role of Badger.

This is of course a landscape peopled with a rich variety of characters: Ben Higgens’ down-trodden horse Albert, Hannah Connabeer’s Bargewoman, Jess Stannard’s Gaoler’s daughter and the sinister black-clad brotherhood of Stoats and Weasels (Chris Cox, Huw Vaughan-Johns, Will Pratt, Harry Lee, Skip Greig and Hamish Godbold), were all particularly memorable.

Congratulations must go as well to those behind the scenes especially to Miss O’Brien for a charming and effective set, and props which were bound to prove a challenge: a boat for messing about on the river, a canary-coloured cart and, of course, that motor car…. In the event, all these items were satisfyingly three-dimensional and capable of movement and must have required hours of work by the production team.

Thank you to Mr Todres and Miss Hooper for directing The Wind in the Willows this year and for making such a delightful evening possible. The audience loved it and the performers quite obviously loved doing it.

The following is the text of the Headmaster’s address to the school in Assembly on Monday 28 June 2010.

Last week, I told you about the fake electric shock experiment cunningly devised by Stanley Milgram, to see the effect of authority on decision-making. One individual is duped into thinking he is giving electric shocks to another – and the experiment is designed to see how far people will go, simply out of a sense of obedience to authority.

So, how many people would administer lethal electric shocks just because someone in authority tells you to do so?

Before conducting the experiment, Milgram polled fourteen Yale University senior-year psychology students as to what they thought would be the results. All of the poll respondents believed that only a few (average 1.2%) would be prepared to inflict the maximum voltage. Milgram also informally polled his colleagues (fellow Psychology professors at the University) and found that they, too, believed very few subjects would progress beyond a very strong shock.

The results, however, are far less reassuring. As I mentioned last week, many people indicated their desire to stop at various points during the experiment. Some paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment. If at any time they indicated their desire to halt the experiment, they were given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:

Firstly, a simple “Please continue”

Then: “The experiment requires that you continue.”

Then: “It is absolutely essential that you continue.”

And finally: “You have no other choice, you must go on.”

A few subjects began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress once they heard the screams of pain coming from the learner. But the crucial fact is that most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. 65 percent of participants administered the experiment's final, massive 450-volt shock. 65%! Many, as I have said, were very uncomfortable doing so; at some point, every participant paused and questioned the experiment. Some said they would refund the money they were paid for participating in the experiment. But 65% did carry on, despite these objections. Only one of the forty participants steadfastly refused to administer shocks below the 300-volt level.

In his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", Milgram spelt out the significance of his findings: “I set up a simple experiment in which stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ strongest moral imperatives, and, with the subjects’ ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation. Even when the destructive effects of their actions become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

The original Simulated Shock Generator is located in the Archives of the History of American Psychology at the University of Akron, Ohio. It is a grisly exhibit, I’m sure, but far less grisly than the truth it helped to uncover.

There is a little-known coda to the Milgram Experiment, reported by Philip Zimbardo, author of “The Lucifer Effect”. Not one of the “good guys” (the one third of people who refused to administer the final shocks) then insisted that the experiment itself be terminated. So even the “good guys” fell short of what we might expect of ourselves.

You might think it is a strange thing for a Head to say, but blind obedience to authority is not something I believe in. Milgram’s experiment warns us that obedience has less to do with the charisma of a “leader” – and more to do with the power situation in which we find ourselves. This has ramifications not just for anti-Western suicide bombers, but also for those who committed torture at Abu Ghraib – Milgram suggests that authority is incredibly powerful, situational and hard to resist. Thus ordinary people, in the “right” circumstances, can do extraordinarily nasty things. Much as we condemn cruelty at an individual or mass level, we cannot explain away such atrocities simply as the result of a uniquely charismatic and misguided leader figure. The truth, as Milgram puts it, is that “ordinary people – people like you and me - simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process, if the situation allows it”. That’s an uncomfortable insight, but one worth remembering.

(If you are interested in the Milgram Experiment and other psychological experiments, I would highly recommend Lauren Slater’s brilliant book, “Opening Skinner’s Box”. Thanks to Mrs Beck, Head of Psychology at Warminster School, for suggesting it to me.)