On Thursday the 29th of June, St. George's held its annual Prize Giving and Graduation ceremony.  At 10 am in the sports hall, the graduates and Heads of House entered, to rapturous applause.  Mrs Steinson led the members of the Council and Guest Speaker, Mr Jamie Andrews to the podium and the ceremony began.

Mr Guy Chessex, the Chairman of the School Council, led proceedings with a "Welcome" address. This was followed by some music from the school Jazz Band, who will be playing at the Rouvenaz stage at the Montreux Jazz Festival on Saturday the 1st of July at 2.30.

Next came the Principal's Report of the academic year 2005 - 2006, given by Mrs Carolyn Steinson. After some more music from the choir it was over to our guest speaker, for the occasion, Mr Jamie Andrews.

Jamie Andrew was born near Glasgow in Scotland. When he left school he studied Electrical Engineering at Edinburgh University and went on to do his Masters at Bangor in North Wales.

He returned to Glasgow and took up a career as an Industrial Rope Access Technician, carrying out various maintenance and construction projects on high buildings and structures by means of abseil. Some of the projects he was involved in were building oil rigs, repairing viaducts, cleaning power stations and painting the Forth Rail Bridge.

Mr Andrew’s choice of career came from his great passion in life, mountaineering. In his teenage years he became an active rock climber and mountaineer, making many successful expeditions to mountain ranges and rock faces across Europe and throughout the World. He also participated in competitive hill running, skiing and many other outdoor sports.

Mr Andrew survived a tragic accident in 1999 but severe frostbite and hypothermia meant that all of his hands and feet had to be amputated leaving him a quadruple paraplegic. For many, this would have been worse than the end – but Mr Andrew’s amazing determination meant that, not only has he learnt to walk and manage to do everyday tasks unaided, but he has also returned to full time work and an active outdoor life which includes swimming, skiing, paragliding, snowboarding, caving, and even rock climbing and ice climbing.

Mr Andrew has raised a considerable amount of money for various charities through a range of mountaineering and running projects including the London Marathon and an ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro. He was awarded the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation People of the Year Award and the Junior Chamber of Commerce Young Scotland Personal Achievement Award in 2000. He was overall winner of the Great Scot Award in 2002 and won the Peter Bird trophy for determination and courage.  In 2004,  he was awarded an honorary Master of Letters by Glasgow Caledonian University. His autobiography, Life and Limb, was also published in 2004. Mr Andrew married his long term partner in 2000, has a daughter Iris who was born in 2004, and is now also the proud father of twins – a girl Alix and a boy Liam, born just five weeks ago.

Mr Andrews' extremely moving and incredible story of courage and determination kept the audience spell-bound and filled the students with awe.  We hope that our students, in particular those who graduated today, will feed off this incredible courage and will remember Mr Andrews' words ... you only get one shot at life, if you don't make the most of it, no one else will for you.

After the distribution of prizes, and another musical interlude from the choir, Chris Huttom the Head of School, gave a vote of thanks to end the graduation ceremony.  The graduating students and their proud parents headed off to the school gardens for photos, then joined the rest of the school for a buffet lunch.

We wish all of our graduating class, long life, health, success and happiness. 

Olga & Zoe

Alissa, Katya & Tzvet

Anya & Valeriya

Chris & Emma

Emma

Alissa & Tzvet

Katya & family

Anya & family

Olga & family

Lizzie & family

Alissa & family

Lizzie & Chris

Valeriya & family

Tzvet & family

Alissa, André & Tzvet

Diana House graduates with Jon Katz

Minerva House graduates with Darina Hickey

Atalanta House graduates with Steve Shaw

The Hutton family

Anya, Val & Sasha

Emma with her mum & dad

Sophie, Helen, Zoe & Olga

The Milsted family

Graduates 2006

Mike, Yuto & Andre

Lizzie, Chris & Mr & Mrs Hutton

Minerva girls: Lizzie, Val, Anya, Tvzet,
Emma & Helen

Zoe & family

Isabel and her dad

Mr Katz with Diana House Captain Isabel

Michael Spelling with his parents

Helen & her brother Marcus

Mr Shaw with Atalanta House Captains