Speech Day 2026

Tue, May 26th, 2026

Interim Head Ms Marisa Bosa spoke about how Worth focuses on “the whoness, not the whatness” as the school community came together for Speech Day, our annual day of celebration, achievement and reflection.

Speech Day is the biggest day of the academic year at Worth as we say goodbye to Year 13 leavers and celebrate the achievements of the past year.

The day began with formal speeches and prize-giving in a packed Abbey Church, including a talk from our guest speaker – former student Christopher Lamb, a journalist who is now CNN’s Vatican correspondent.

After Mass, the afternoon festivities saw families enjoying picnics on the lawns or food purchased from various stalls, as well as the annual Summer Concert. There were also displays of work by Art and Design and Technology students.

In her speech, Ms Bosa spoke about the opportunity she was given to lead the School in the second half of the academic year, prior to new Head Mr Ben Pennington joining in September, describing it as an “an extraordinary privilege”. She said: “Say yes to opportunities, say yes to the unexpected, say yes before you feel you are ready but that is not what I want to focus on today because saying yes is only part of the story.

“What matters far more is who you are when you say yes. At Worth we have a way of expressing that, we call it ‘the Worth way’. You hear this phrase often and it would be very easy for it to become just that – a phrase. But at its heart it captures something quite profound about what this place tries to do because at Worth we care deeply about what you achieve – of course we do – but we care even more about who you become. It is the whoness, not the whatness, that matters.

“Exams will come and go, results will be opened, celebrated, perhaps questioned and eventually filed away. But the person you are becoming, your character, your values, your instincts, those are the things that endure. They count not just in the big moments, in the quieter ones, in how you show up for one another as a community, in your habits, in your choices, quiet repeated decisions that shape who you become and those are the things that will matter most when you leave here because the world you are going into doesn’t just need people who are capable, it needs people who care, people who act with integrity when no-one is watching, that is the Worth way.”

Thank you to all families who joined us and made it such a memorable day.

Here is a selection of pictures from the day taken by professional photographer Liz Finlayson of Liz Finlayson Photography. More pictures from the day will be shared in due course including separate news items on the new prefects and the presentation of prizes.

For more on an education at Worth click here.

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Speech Day 2026