Autumn’s here (not Fall)

19th September 2025

The coming few weeks are desperately important in looking to the future for us all. We have the Oakwood and Winterhill Y5/6 Open Evenings set for Monday and Tuesday respectively. And planning at TRC is turning to the early November Open Evening – even though the recruitment and enrolment for this year has barely ended. However hard things might be, we cannot ignore, we cannot underestimate or would want to down-play the importance of getting recruitment, getting the school or college of choice right. We all have a role to play. We don’t have a desire to artificially manage our intakes but we do want to be the providers of choice for our communities. We historically and continue to have had full schools. We know our community. We know our children. We provide the best educational provision. Please get your applications in and on time. If not, we will not be able to guarantee that place that parents, carers, children and young people so desire.

And for the college: the college might look and feel different and the college does not have a published admission number but we do know that we are almost full. That’s great and important for the stability of the college. That’s great for our community but emphasises the importance of all young people mobilised – they need to get their applications in!

I made mention, the other week, of how I truly valued the return to school/college and start of the new academic year – something about how I’m wired up. Wrapped up in that is the enjoyment that we all can experience as Autumn draws in. I know it’s getting colder, and wetter, and windier, but it’s also the beginning of those lovely autumnal days and autumnal colours. And it looks like we are due to have a bumper Autumn this year; more colour, a more vibrant autumnal display.

The autumnal equinox falls early next week (12 hours daylight and 12 hours night time – then it’s much darker nights and gloomy mornings) and we will officially be in Autumn and, note, not in Fall!

According to Forestry England we are likely to see brighter reds, oranges and golds appearing on our trees in the coming weeks. The very warm and sunny weather over the summer means that trees have produced more sugar in their leaves, which will transform them into brighter colours. It seems, also, that the further north you go in England the longer the season of colour will last. We could have this wonderful natural display through until the end of November.

I am guessing that many of you now know that I do have a propensity to see the positive – we are who we are! That may not be the case for us all but there can be few of us who do not want to embrace, enjoy and be ‘warmed’ by this natural display. I’m not rushing into the winter months but am looking forward to the new or revisited pleasures that the coming weeks and months will bring.

Some of our greatest writers have mused on the wonders of the season.

‘Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.’ George Eliot

‘There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!’ Percy Bysshe Shelley

‘Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.’ Robert Browning

Whatever your pleasure, whomever you are, I do hope that you can see the ‘lightness’ as the darker days arrive.