Two Gordonians, both working for Evelyn Partners, both studying to be Associate Chartered Accountants but arriving there on different pathways. Abigail Jones and Inaara Oliver came back to school today as part of National Apprenticeship Week to talk to students about their journeys to the UK's seventh largest accountancy firm. Inaara obtained a first class degree in Accounting and Finance at Royal Holloway. Abi, who left Gordon’s with three A*s in Maths, Business Studies and Psychology, embarked on a Level 7 apprenticeship with Evelyn Partners. The two, who sit next to each other in the firm’s Guildford office, discovered by chance that they were both Gordonians! Today as well as providing students with an insight into their jobs and pathways into them, they reconnected with their former teachers Mark Eaden, Head of Maths and James Hamilton, Head of Business Studies and Economics.

For a full list of events for National Apprenticeship Week, please click here.

The First World War Battlefields for students in Year 9 today, who are visiting the Thiepval Memorial to missing British and South African servicemen who died in the Battles of the Somme, and Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery as well as museums at Passchendaele and Ypres Salient.

Engaging and enthralling, teenage fiction writer Seth Burkett proved the ultimate inspiration for students when he visited as part of National Storytelling Week. Mr Burkett was a professional footballer in Brazil before becoming a ghost writer for sports stars and then a writer of teenage fiction. Now the author of 14 books, he spoke to Years 7-9 about living and working abroad as a footballer, his novels and love of reading and writing. He also provided plenty of advice to students for their own writing and storytelling.

On what would have been General Gordon’s 139^th birthday, students, staff and parents attended the Gordon Memorial Service at Guildford Cathedral on Sunday, bringing Memorial Weekend to a close. The Gordon Sermon was delivered by The Bishop of Guildford, The Right Reverend Andrew Watson. Pipe Major Harry Gordon played The Lament and the School Chaplain, the Reverend Graham Wright led the congregation in the School Prayer:

O God our Heavenly Father, we thank you for General Gordon, for his courage and devotion to the sick, the needy and to children. We thank you for this School, dedicated to his memory. Bless the Gordon Foundation, the Governors, the Staff, the past and present students and grant that all of us, like your servant General Gordon, may always be loyal soldiers of the King of kings, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Pipes and Drums with the statue of General Gordon in the background as they get ready to lead some 200 students on to the Parade Square in a last practise before the Whitehall Parade tomorrow morning to the statue of General Gordon in Victoria Embankment Gardens. The annual Parade marks the start of Memorial Weekend in which the school honours General Gordon, in whose memory the school was founded. On Sunday the Gordon Memorial Service takes place in Guildford Cathedral.