THE BRITISH SCHOOL´S BIRTHDAY - 114 YEARS

Once again we rejoiced in celebrating the School's birthday as is our tradition.

The day began with a Whole School Assembly where Mr Rosevear and three students: Bautista Martínez, Sofía Civetta and Federico Armas pronounced speeches refering to the origins of the School and the House system which is part of the essence of our School.

Mr Rosevear began by welcoming the students and mentioning that the House system came from the British public (private) boarding schools. Students, called boarders, lived at school in real houses, each nominally under the charge of a Housemaster. Generally, there were more boys schools than girls, although that evened up over time, and most are now mixed.

He later explained that different schools had different House systems. Some had a vertical one, with a certain number of students from each year in each House, others set aside Houses for particular year groups. Then, as the number of students in boarding fell, the role of Houses changed from being one of a house in which to live, to one in which Houses became a focal point for student wellbeing or competition.

Houses were named after either former Heads, saints, famous Britons, maybe famous former students or characters from fiction or ancient history.

Later, Bautista took the stage and shared some interesting (and revealing) facts: he actually mentioned that the date we consider to be the School’s birthday– October 8th–is actually not the real founding date, rather that was May 5th!

He also found out a bit more about the history of his house, Princes and Cuff. The men’s house takes its name from one of the school’s first headmasters, Mr. Arthur J. Cuff. He came to the school from Buenos Aires in 1913, and was very important in promoting sports at school. He was also a key figure in the founding of the Old Boys’ Club. 

Sofía Civetta then mentioned some facts about her house, Queens and Jones. The first to be named were the boys’ houses, after three headmasters: Jones, Cuff and Blount. These were the first three headmasters to welcome boarders from Britain in their own homes, which is why we remember them. An interesting fact is that, initially, Jones was assigned two colours: red and blue. It later changed to only blue, and this is the colour that the Queens house adopted when it was created.

The girls’ houses were created in 1930, several years after the boys. The first Captain of Queens was called Jean Mackay Dick. She was actually the one who suggested the names for the three girls' houses: Kings, Queens and Princes, the same ones we use to this day. But at the beginning, no one belonged to any house. So, to divide the girls between the houses, each Captain took turns choosing girls from every generation to be part of their house.

Federico Armas closed the students' speeches by telling some of his own experiences in his house, Blount, mentioning that he has carried this colour through his whole journey through the School. One surprising fact about the history of Blount/Kings is that the red colour that is usually visualized as representative of Kings and Blount wasn’t the original. In its origin in 1926, Blount was given the blue and white colors. 

Later, with a Gymnasium full of red, green and blue colours, the School Song was sung and the Interhouse sports began with Alfonso Mañé and Manuela Bodega carrying the torch to light as in the style of the Olympics. 

While the Senior School hosted its Interhouse, Junior students brought cakes and Happy Birthday was sung in many classes.

It was a great day!