A wise man once said “Confidence is a preference in the habitual voyeur of what is known as park-life.” The wise man in question was an actor called Phil Daniels and the words are written by Damon Albarn of the band Blur and I’m not sure that anyone knows what they mean. I share them with you this afternoon because they are my inevitable first thought when anyone says Confidence and now we’re in Confidence term I would, at least like you to be able to respond with a little bit of 1990s Britpop humour.
I’d also like to remind you of two forms of confidence that were introduced to the school through assemblies this term last year. The first we might call Boot Confidence – the confidence to face an unfair and unreliable world. I call it boot confidence because it came to me through a pair of walking boots that liberated my mind from the victim mentality of a weird, skinny, geeky kid that never had the right pair of shoes and let me walk the streets of my home town, buttressed against both cold and cutting remarks and gaining confidence in my physical ability to walk at four miles an hour for an indefinite distance.
The hero of Boots confidence is Stormzy who wrestles with the challenges of being a young man with big feet in the line: “You’re getting way too big for your boots, you’re never too big for the boot, I’ve got the big size twelves on my feet, your face ain’t big for my boot.” The key image, though, is not from Big for your Boots, but from the video to Blinded by Your Grace where he holds a small girl called Kyra front and centre before leading fans of all ages and ethnicity in singing a song that echoes from the walls of the Peabody estate in Kings Cross. His confidence is one that reaches out to build others up rather than trampling them down.
And this is a confidence I want you to have – I want you to be able to walk around without caring what others think; I want you to be able to walk around knowing your legs will get you home again; I want you to be able to walk out in the world so confident in yourself that you can offer your strength to others to lift them up, give them confidence, make that unfair and unreliable world a little more reliable, a little fairer. I want you to be confident to read through the careers bulletin, to sign up for masterclasses and lectures, to look at the world and reach out into it to take opportunities.
The second form of Confidence introduced last year – which is also a preference in the habitual voyeur – might be called Chai confidence and was brought to us by Mr Patel – an assistant principal that the current year 12 would only have met at enrolment. He told us about coming home and being confident that there would be chai bubbling on the hob; and the familiar smell of those spices, the warmth of the drink in the mug, the reassurance of those first sips giving him the confidence that he was in the right place, that he was with family, that he was home.
The great thing about Chai confidence is that it allows you to be bolder as you go into the world knowing there is a place with masala spices bubbling and a warm welcome for you. You can take risks, seize opportunities, apply for courses and jobs knowing that even if they don’t come off it doesn’t matter because the chai will still be there – the grandmother who mixes the spices will love you anyway. We don’t have a pot of chai bubbling in school, but we do have friendly faces, we do have teachers who are here for you when times are tough, when you take a shot and it doesn’t come off – and so I hope you will take that shot.
It's my mother, rather than my grandmother, who said to me that children need two things – roots and wings – security and a spirit of adventure – and I think that we’re echoing her wisdom when we talk about Boot confidence and Chai confidence. But it is neither of these things that I really want to talk to you about today, nor is it the confidence of the habitual voyeur and so we get to delve once more into the archive of musical theatre and to quote a song, words by Oscar Hammerstein II, music by Richard Rogers, made famous by Julie Andrews in the 1965 film “The Sound of Music.” It’s possible that this gem has passed you by (an omission I expect you to amend as soon as you’ve got home, slipped off your boots, made a cup of something warming and familiar for yourself and your mum and rewatched the Stormzy video on Youtube). I shall therefore remind you that our heroine is a novice nun who is commissioned to act as governess to the household of a famous Austrian Naval Captain.
Before we go any further I would like to take a moment to respond to the pedants among you who point out that Austria has no sea coast, no navy and therefore no naval captains. This is an excellent point, and well made, please pat yourselves on the back – but the point you are missing is that this is set in 1938, before the second world war (a conflagration that plays an important role in the narrative) – 1938 when Austria still had no sea coast, no navy, but, crucially, was close enough to the beginning of the 20th century that she did have naval captains because before the first world war the Austro-Hungarian empire occupied what is now Slovenia and Croatia and Captain von Trapp (a real person on whom the story is based) commanded a submarine in the Adriatic Sea.
Back to the song, however. Maria – the apprentice nun – starts by asking “I’ve always longed for adventure, to do the things I’ve never dared. Now here I’m facing adventure, then why am I so scared?” This is a familiar fear to anyone who has stepped out into the unknown – no matter how good your boots, no matter how secure the supply of chai back at home, it is always scary taking an adventure. The American psychologist and self-help expert Susan Jeffers responded to this phenomenon by writing the best-seller “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” I’ve not read it, but I have watched the Sound of Music (and, to be fair to the noble art of reading, have read the autobiography of Maria von Trapp (spoiler alert) which inspired the musical which inspired the film). In it, Julie Andrews skips through the streets of Salzburg to a mansion on the outskirts as she makes her way through the verses of the song and, as she approaches the wrought-iron gates, she sings “I have confidence in sunshine, I have confidence in rain, I have confidence that spring will come again, besides which you see I have confidence in me.” She feels the fear – and does it anyway.
Spring has come again and you all face challenges – not a captain with seven children, but final exams and then the step onto the next thing for Year 13s and end of Year tests for Year 12s that will determine your predicted grades and colour your applications for whatever September 2024 brings. You should be confident as you look forwards to these challenges and your confidence should not come from your boots, excellent though they are, nor the smell of home, reassuring though it is. Your confidence comes from yourself – you are brilliant, no, you are, each one of you – and you have time to get ready – four weeks, six hundred and seventy two hours, before you’ll be sitting in front of an exam paper. I urge you to use that time, every minute of it, to get ready. Spend some of it sleeping, spend some of it in school, spend a little of it blowing off steam with friends, but spend a lot of it in silence, wrestling with your books embedding understanding – developing what in Harris Clapham jargon we call purpose, memorising those facts and routines that we call mechanics. They need different approaches, mechanics and purpose, but they both need time, and effort, and concentration – give them what they need and they will reward you.
I am not a habitual voyeur of what is known as Parklife, but I am a habitual voyeur of what is known as sixth form exams and I have absolute confidence that those of you who get your heads down and work hard from now to the final paper will be pleased with your outcomes and those of you who don’t will feel a little cheated – if only you’d done a bit more. Year 13s will be arguing with universities, trying to persuade them to overlook the missing grade that they sold to scrolling through Tik Tok for hours – Year 12s will tell us, to no avail, that they didn’t really work for the end of year tests but they will for the real thing and can we therefore predict them higher scores. The answer, year 12s, will be no – your fate is in your hands right now – have confidence in your ability to shape it, but take this opportunity because once time has slipped through your fingers its gone.
Welcome to confidence term – don’t let what other people think stop you taking adventures, know that the ones who really matter will think you’re awesome even when things go wrong, feel the fear and do it anyway (with an emphasis on the doing), and have confidence in yourselves.