Beautiful sunshine and unnaturally calm rush hour traffic, seemed a good omen for our Year 11 GCSE Ethics trip to Cambridge early last Friday (24th November 2017) morning.

Theologian Professor Vardy’s seminars provided our girls with a new understanding of the issues that tend to dominate our global community. Perhaps the most challenging area discussed was the issue of conflict, which has always been a source of disagreement throughout history. Interestingly the area of Just War theory, which has united most Christian and Muslim theologians over the centuries, was shown to be coming under particular strain with the development of A.I and the use of drones as fighter planes and submarines.

The girls were rather brain weary by the end, as these issues are complex and hard to navigate, but their eyes were wide open with engagement throughout as Professor Vardy showed us that progress or advancement brings with it long-term consequences that should cause us to reflect carefully.

Laura Judd and Erin Christmas enjoyed the debate and said: “We found the trip very insightful because it linked the core content to the issues in the outside world”.

These Ethics conferences expect all pupils to participate with comments during talks and in two key debates. It was no great surprise that our girls were particularly engaged and articulate when the opportunities arose.  It was heartening to hear Prof Vardy identify this conference, and our school in particular, as the best that he had been to this year, in terms of pupil engagement and behaviour. Well done, girls!