THE word ‘family’ was on the lips of every speaker last week as students, parents and teachers marked the biggest day in the Rendcomb College calendar.

Speeches were made for the school’s Founder’s Day which celebrates the college’s long history since it opened its doors in 1920.

Taking to the stage were two departing headmasters, the junior and senior head boy and girl and a politician who spent six years as a prisoner of guerrilla fighters in Colombia.

Guest speaker Ingrid Betancourt was captured by the leftwing guerrilla group FARC in 2002. She used her experiences to advise the students on how they should try and live.

She said that when she was chained by the neck in the jungle she had made a choice not to hate her guard.

“Always remember that freedom is a choice. Freedom is a matter of how you react,” she said.

“We are all who we want to be. If you ask what life is about it is about finding the light that is in each of us.”

Juniors’ headmaster Martin Watson used his speech to thank everyone he worked with during his 12 year tenure.

As he stepped down from the lectern a wave of applause washed over the room, with his former students clapping long after everyone else had finished.

Next up were junior head boy and girl Jack Bellamy and Soffie Rigby who read a poem they had written to the more than 600 people assembled in the marquee.

They ended the poem to laughs across the hall: “Now we are at the school we have turned out awesome, epic and cool.”

Roland Martin, who is leaving the post of senior headmaster after four year, dispensed advice to the room in a well-worded speech.

“If I could bestow on you one gift it would be self awareness,” he said.

He then gave the crowd seven bits of advice to take away with them, including “Be creative, do not see creativity as something boring”, “study philosophy at one time in your life” and “make sure you never give up playing”.

The head boy and girl then made separate speeches extolling the virtues of the school, particularly the family feel the school fostered.

Head boy Tom Pethick said: “I don’t know many schools where year 7s walk through corridors with older students, and especially not where everyone in the school plays a 50-a-side game of football.

“Rendcomb really is the warm bed before the cold shower of later life.”