FROM Big Brother to St Benedict, the headmaster of the King's School used the modern and the ancient in his speech to mark the end of another successful academic year.

King's Day at Worcester Cathedral marked individual and team achievements, as well as a glowing school inspection, while celebrating and emphasising the school's ethos and traditions.

Emphasising that he saw as the school as an outward-looking community, headmaster Tim Keyes recalled how King's was set up as part of Worcester's Benedictine monastery.

He said: "St Benedict was a great believer in the importance of a balance in life between the intellectual, the physical, and the spiritual. In other words study, work and prayer, and believed, what is more, that each element was of equal importance in a balanced life, lived in accordance with the Gospel.

"Our school's mission statement is very much in line with this ideal, and the views of the inspection team who visited us last October were a confirmation that this mission is being worked out well in practice.

"I say this with pride but not complacency because all this would change if we lost sight of our key priorities."

Mr Keyes said the school's forefathers would have been critical of some parts of modern life.

"St Benedict would have taken a dim view of Alan Sugar and his apprentices (Badger, Blonde and co) with their 'friendly smile and knife in the back' approach to their colleagues," he said.

"He would have been equally unimpressed with George Galloway on Celebrity Big Brother when he used that classic bully's question, 'Do you know who I am?'

"George was a bit put-out to discover that none of his fellow contestants had ever heard of him.

"No, a community of encouragers, such as we try to be, has no room for hypocrisy or misplaced arrogance. It is a place of welcome and a place of inclusion."

Mr Keyes paid tribute to the academic successes, with a 99.4 per cent pass rate at A-level and with A and B grades accounting for 75 per cent of the total. A quarter of the year group had A grades in all subjects and all Oxford and Cambridge hopefuls had their places confirmed. Five pupils came in the top 10 nationally for Edexcel Art A-level.

Mr Keyes said: "We have subsequently been awarded The Good Schools Guide award for best results at A level achieved by boys taking fine art at an independent school.

"Our maths challenge team drew the regional final with the Royal Grammar School and went on to pip them in the national final in London where we ended up as 13th of the 1,200 schools which took part initially, and of the 60 who made the final."

The headmaster ended his address by returning to the Benedictine monks and their rules for living: "People in a community have the right to be involved, to be heard, to be treated with respect and to be made to feel as important as anyone else, whatever their age or their role.

"In return, they must offer that respect and openness to every other member of that community.

"That is the sort of community that this school should strive to be."