10 minute read
Education Corner Podcast Interview
EDUCATION CORNER PODCAST
Lancing College Focus
EDUCATION CORNER PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH
HEADMASTER, LANCING COLLEGE
Mr. Dominic Oliver
We know that you are an English specialist (particularly Shakespeare) and took your MPhil at St Peter’s College, Oxford, where you also became a member of the University of Oxford English Faculty and Lecturer at St Peter’s College, and you have nearly completed 10 years at Lancing College as Head. How have you seen the school develop and change in that time?
There has been dynamism and growth in a variety of ways. One is in the continued growth of the numbers of girls in the school. We’re now at just under 45% girls in the school. It has felt properly and fully co-ed for a while. In fact, the school has recently celebrated 20 years of being co-ed. We’ve actually had girls in the Sixth Form since the 1970s. We’ve got the largest ever number of girl boarders this year. We have also got a very high demand of girls who want to come and join us. We have adapted and shifted a lot in relation to the external context. We’ve spoken a lot to parents and to pupils about the changing world, their changing needs, desires and so on. There has been a lot of modernising and flexing about how the school works. We look terribly traditional. People often say we look a bit like a castle or Hogwarts on the hill. We are actually more dynamic and outward looking than that.
There has been a double build of cocurricular range. There has been a honing in on, a sharpening, a brightening of our academic credentials, which have always been very strong. At the moment, for example, looking at the “I know all of the students here.
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Developing global citizens
co-curricular timetable you can take 125 different things in a week.
In my time, another Prep school has joined the family. We have also got a nursery that is open 51 weeks of the year. Theoretically, you can be a Lancing College pupil from 2 months to 18 years of age. We certainly get people coming all the way through from our Prep school.
We are currently at about 600 in the College. We are going to get a tiny bit bigger, maybe about 620 in the next year or two. There is a slow evolutionary growth. We are not as big as some schools; you can’t slip through the net here. I know all of the students here. I love the fact that I know them and know them well. But I think that we are big enough, we have this beautiful site that is almost an acre per pupil, allowing space for everybody.
There have been various expansions and developments of our teaching facilities. We have an equestrian centre, a swimming pool. The chapel has just been finished 3 months ago; it started in 1868 and we are quite proud that that has happened.
We are very proudly diverse and cosmopolitan in terms of our range of where students come from. Just under a third of our students come from overseas. They don’t come from any one place in particular, they come from, I think, this year it’s 43 different nations. This is something that the whole community likes. There is that sense of a very British institution; one that is informed by a global perspective, and I encounter that where I teach the younger ones debating and I love that. In that, we’re all listening to one another and hearing perspectives from all around the world.
We are also a more socially inclusive school because a big part of what has happened on my watch, and is continuing to develop, is our Foundationer Programme. This is for people who are here on transformational bursaries, 110% bursaries to enable people who wouldn’t even begin to dream of being able to come and enjoy the power of being somewhere like this. It has had a fantastic impact on them individually and on the school more broadly, and I think that this programme is going to continue to grow. We have got 25 people going through that programme right now. We are pushing onto the second phase of that to bring in still more pupils.
To hear more about the Foundation Programme please listen to the podcast
I think you have mentioned some of this, but can you tell me about the overall ethos of Lancing College?
I think that it is somewhere where people come to enjoy a real community. It is a boarding school where day and flexi students gain from all that a boarding school has to offer: the full boarding day. Quite often day students end up staying well into the evening and we have to say:
“Okay guys, everyone else is going to bed so you need to go home now.”
Some people jump on the bus at the beginning and the end of the day and some people move between those realms. The school is very international, as I’ve mentioned, we’re preparing people to be successful global citizens to engage with the world. That ties in with something that is global, transnational. When people leave here, they leave with a competitive spirit and a desire to do interesting things: that might be to go into business, going into the arts or academic life. There are wonderful traditions here, we get loads of medics at the moment.
The common thread that underpins that is that Lancing students aren’t just asking:
What’s the interesting thing to do? Or the most profitable thing to do?
They’re asking:
What’s the right thing to do?
There is a very strong ethical sense here that is voiced by the students. That is there in most schools I think, but it is something that we really deliberately nurture here, and I enjoy the debating lessons that I teach. This is a big part of that I/we really want to hear from the students. I think that it is a really powerful thing that people have - that strong sense of justice.
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Benefits of boarding
This is being pulled together in a Lancing Diploma in December. We will pull together the co-curricular, the service element of school life and the bright and sharp-honed intellectual and academic thrust for people to take responsibility for all of those elements joining together. I think that having been a purely academic person in the first part of my career in Oxford, and teaching wonderful undergraduates, the thing that attracted me, that I think is wonderful about this place, is that I think that a true education doesn’t have to be and shouldn’t be narrowly one thing. It shouldn’t be all about the brain. It shouldn’t be all about getting outside and doing sport or debating societies. Whatever it should be, theatre or music, as wonderful as all those things are. It needs to be everything. When it comes to that kind of learning ethos, one of the things that we’re trying to do is to encourage people to bring it all together.
Our job isn’t just about getting them great grades, even though, of course, they do, it’s about getting them to go out and face the world and enjoy the world and encounter it as a good influence in that world.
To hear more about the independent learning and addressing parent needs please listen to the podcast
Thinking of parents considering schools, as Lancing College is a school that we recommend to parents very highly, what is the main point of entry to Lancing College? What steps should they be taking if they’re interested in applying?
Year 9 is our primary point of entry. There are
other people who join us in other years. There is a big chunk of people who come and join us in the Sixth Form, and sometimes we have places in other years too. We are currently booking ahead now for our Advanced Programme; that is our early testing programme for 2025. Our Advanced Programme aims to do what we do for our teaching and learning in an assessment. It is not just to take an ISEB Test or a CAT Test, and on the basis of that score we’ll say yay or nay.
Children are not a number, they’re not machines. We don’t want to teach or assess people in that way either. They come in for a day or two, they do some activities and some written exercises. They also do a couple of interviews. We look at all of it. We assess all of it. We want to see children in the round, I want to know what they’re interested in. We want to know what they’re not interested in. What do they like doing and what would they like to explore? We get a really good flavour of people that way.
To hear more about the international applications please listen to the podcast
Student voice
How do you build independent learning/ thinking into the day-to-day curriculum at Lancing College?
We’re in the National Park, we’ve got lots of accommodation. We’re in one of the most diverse and attractive locations in the UK, we’re only about 5 miles from Brighton. We’ve got some outstanding facilities, kids who want to learn and I think it’s a very exciting place to want to come to and to bring their families to.
We don’t talk about the extra-curricular here. We talk about co-curricular. These curriculums interact. Learning doesn’t stop past the exam curriculum. There are lots of new societies. There is massive creativity: there is even a Dungeons and Dragons Society. It is co-creating something that has all sorts of people involved with it. We have people re-forming and reenergising their LGBTQIA+ Society, which is a very good thing. They plan expeditions, and we have lots of prizes which we offer for independent learning. We also have regular outside speakers.
At Lancing College how do pupils have a voice – how are their views heard and how do you, as staff, deal with what you learn or the things that they express?
We have a Green Group, we have student groups across the years, we have an Inclusion and Diversity Council Group with student champions on it. We have the pier supporters who are trained to an incredibly high level. We have 50 people in the Sixth Form who have been trained for about 30 hours in the skills of listening to one another; what they need to bring to their teachers and their pastoral carers and so on.
The student voice is heard. Sometimes it is about politics and ethics and so on. Sometimes it’s about facilities, sometimes it is about food. It’s about the things that teenagers want to talk about and we respond.
How does Lancing College prepare children not just whilst they’re there, but for when they leave and enter a world that is more competitive and challenging than it has ever been?
We have a Leaving Lancing Programme on cooking and connecting on LinkedIn. We have our own version of it on Lancing Connected. There is self-defence, finance and budgeting and car maintenance. They often ask for different things in different years. We teach them how to make proper meals and coach them into how to find the best possible places for them, whether it’s Oxbridge or Design College.
School should be, and Lancing is, fun, stimulating and inspiring. Our purpose is to prepare young people for the rest of their lives. If we’re not doing that bit then we’re not doing everything right, it’s got to be both of those bits together.
We would like to thank Mr. Dominic Oliver, Headmaster at Lancing College, for giving up his time to speak to us.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
