Persistence and resilience are the key to St George’s Preparatory School’s success, according to principal Mary Lodge.

The primary school celebrated its 140th anniversary yesterday with a special assembly announced by David Frith, the Town Crier and former chairman of the board of trustees.

“The Prep” is now the highest ranked public school in the Cambridge Checkpoint examinations.

Ms Lodge told The Royal Gazette: “School is not just about Cambridge results, though we are very proud of them.

“The school is about making sure that the children find what is their joy and what makes them want to work for us. For some it is music, for some it is sports.”

Former student Finn Smith, who frequently performs with the national orchestra and the Bermuda School of Music, performed a violin solo by Bach and celebratory favourite Bermuda is Another World.

After the performance, Mrs Lodge said: “Those of you who are thinking about not practising, there’s a good reason to get up and practise so that you can play like that.”

The school opened on January 10, 1876, as a one-room schoolhouse in the former Sunday school of the Ebenezer Methodist Church.

Known simply as “the school” in those days, it was officially recognised by the Ministry of Education in 1880 and renamed the St George’s Grammar School. The present school was built in 1923, as a community effort; it stopped taking senior students in 1966 when it became known as the St George’s Preparatory School.

The school has strong family ties. The Spurling family have kept an “unbroken line” as trustees of the school since the beginning, with Ann Spurling now sitting on the board.

During the anniversary assembly, teacher Natalie Roberts shared the story of her family’s tangled history with the school. It was where her grandmother, Barbara Roberts, met her grandfather, Freddie Roberts, along with his brothers and sisters.

She would catch the Daisy ferry from St David’s because there were no bridges linking St George’s and St David’s to one another or the mainland.

Her father, Larry Roberts, and her uncle also attended the school, and she and brother Andrew followed in their footsteps.

As she finished the story, she asked her son, Oliver, to stand, then her nephew Ryan, niece Emma and second cousin Samantha.

Ms Lodge said the year marked another historic landmark: 50 years ago the Bermuda school system became desegregated.

“The integration of our school and the richness and the diversity that brought to our school is a huge part of who we are today and what we celebrate today,” she said. “Although we celebrate that, I would not feel correct to not acknowledge the inequities of the past.

“Let me make this in a way that you children can understand. You all love Papa Waldron right?” she asked students as she pointed to a familiar face in the audience. The students answered in unison: “Yes!”

“When Papa Waldron went to primary school he would not have been allowed to come to St George’s preparatory school. That is what I’m talking of. That was not right, for which we apologise and we are grateful to have you and all the other families of St George’s Prep.”

“We’re a very resilient school,” Mrs Lodge said, discussing the devastation wreaked upon the campus by Hurricane Fabian in 2003. The school was partially destroyed and was repaired using insurance money and donations.

“Children, all of P1, P2, both P3s and Miss Middleton’s room blew down, just like somebody stomped on a sandcastle,” she said. “At first we just cried and we didn’t know what to do.

“I’m always telling you have to be resilient and you have to be persistent and we were determined we would have to rebuild.

“I was sitting at home and there were very few phones that were working and the calls started coming in all asking, ‘What can we do to help?’.”