From the Other Side of the Desk: Alumni Mentors Revisit Rendcomb for the 2026 Careers Evening

On a damp November afternoon, with the estate settling into the quieter rhythm of the winter term, three former pupils walked back through the main gate at Rendcomb. They had come to take part in the College's autumn alumni careers evening, a fixture in which former pupils return to speak with current students about work, study and the choices that follow school. Before the formal sessions began, however, they did what most returning alumni do: they looked around.

The gate itself has not moved. The drive still curves through the grounds in the same way, and the main building still presents the same steady front. Yet a returning eye notices different things. Where a current pupil sees the ordinary furniture of a school day, an alumnus sees a store of memory: a corridor where a particular teacher once stopped to ask a question, a corner of the library that became a favourite place to work, a dining hall that still carries the volume of several hundred conversations at once.

A Working School, Not a Museum

All three former pupils were quick to say that Rendcomb is not a heritage site. It is a working school, and the evidence was everywhere. Pupils moved between lessons with purpose. Members of staff stopped to talk in doorways. The library was in use, not simply preserved. Small changes were visible too: different displays on noticeboards, updated classroom technology, and the kind of quiet adjustments that accumulate over time without anyone deciding to announce them.

For Sophie Hartley, who left Rendcomb in 2014 and now works as a sustainability consultant, that combination of continuity and change was the most striking part of the visit. She remembered the grounds as a place of freedom and space. Returning, she noticed how deliberately that space is now used for learning beyond the classroom. The estate still offers room to think, she said, but it is also treated as a resource: a place for practical work, for reflection and for the kind of outdoor conversation that a classroom cannot always accommodate.

Daniel Okoye, who left in 2017 and works in software engineering, took a different route. He headed first towards the science and computing areas, looking for the rooms where his interest in technology had been encouraged. What he found was familiar in atmosphere but different in detail. The equipment had moved on. The questions pupils were asking had moved on too. He said the most useful thing he could offer current students was not a list of technical skills but a realistic account of what early careers in his sector feel like: the first months of learning a professional codebase, the importance of communication, and the unglamorous discipline of asking for help when a problem does not yield.

The Questions Current Pupils Ask

By the time the careers evening began, the alumni had moved from memory to mentoring. The format was straightforward: small groups, practical questions and enough time for conversation. Pupils asked about subject choices, university courses, apprenticeship routes and the transition from school to work. They also asked about uncertainty. Several wanted to know how adults had handled the moment when a plan did not work out.

Dr Hannah Rees, who left in 2011 and now works as a clinical psychologist, said that this line of questioning felt different from the careers advice she remembered receiving as a pupil. There was less emphasis on prestige and more on fit. Students wanted to know what a working week actually contains, how a team operates, and whether a particular path would suit the kind of life they hoped to build. Those are harder questions than naming a profession, but they are more useful.

She also noticed how well current pupils could articulate what they did not yet know. That, she suggested, is a sign of a healthy school culture. Confidence is not the same as certainty. It is the willingness to ask a question in front of others and to listen carefully to the answer.

What Mentoring Adds

Former pupils bring something that no careers leaflet can supply: a long view of their own decisions. They can describe the unglamorous middle of a career as well as the headline moment. They can explain that a first job is often a learning curve rather than a destination. They can say plainly that some choices are reversible and that others take time to understand.

The alumni were careful not to present their own routes as templates. One had changed sectors after several years. Another had taken a postgraduate route that was not part of the original plan. A third had built a career through a series of smaller roles rather than a single decisive move. Their presence offered current pupils a useful kind of reassurance: that a career is not a single examination question with one correct answer.

Continuity Beneath the Surface

What stayed with the returning group was not the fabric of the buildings but the habits of the place. Staff still know pupils by name. Houses still provide a daily structure of belonging. The library still fills. The grounds still require care and reward attention. These are not dramatic features, but they are the rhythms that alumni tend to remember first.

As the evening ended and the visitors made their way back towards the gate, the light had gone from the estate. The school was still busy: prep to finish, conversations to close, the ordinary business of a term in progress. The alumni had come back to offer advice. They left with a renewed sense of what Rendcomb does day by day, and with the quiet recognition that the place they remember is still very much alive.