14 minute read
Education Corner Podcast Interview
EDUCATION CORNER PODCAST
EDUCATION CORNER PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH PRINCIPAL
FROM BROOMWOOD, CLAPHAM
Mr. Kevin Doble
Mr. Kevin Doble speaks about the recent merge of the Broomwood schools enhancing cohesion and synergy for both the children and parents. He also discusses points of entry and the importance of children being allowed to play, make mistakes and develop resilience (alongside meeting academic standards) to be able to thrive at secondary school and flourish as young people.
Please tell us a little about yourself and your career to date?
Thank you for having me on! I trained as a lawyer; I did a postgraduate degree in Business Management in Johannesburg, South Africa, and was thrust into the giddy world of banking, which was not for me. So, after having endured that for a small period of time, I was lured over to England to join a prep school and coach some hockey and cricket, which I thought would be a marvellous idea for six months before I went back into a “proper job”.
That was about 30 years ago. I didn’t go back, and instead was dragged through a PGCE through the Roehampton Institute—which was absolutely brilliant—focusing on secondary English. Since then, I have worked predominantly in the south of England, almost exclusively in prep schools. I taught A Level English for a brief period of time. It has been one heck of a ride. All the schools I’ve worked at have been boarding schools, except for the two most recent ones, so I’m very much used to what I’d call the broader “prep school experience”, but certainly in the last two schools in which I’ve worked—Shrewsbury House, where I was head for 11 years, and subsequently, here, as Principal of the Broomwood group. The schools are as close as you’re likely to get to boarding schools, without beds. So, it has been quite an eclectic journey, but I have absolutely no regrets and am very much looking forward to each new day, which is probably likely to be as unpredictable as the previous one.
What do you feel you have been able to contribute, from the experiences that you’ve had, to the Broomwood schools in your role as Principal?
One of the targets I was given by Katherine Colquhoun and Sir Malcom Colquhoun was to find
Broomwood, Clapham
ways in which we can create greater cohesion between the pre-prep, Broomwood Hall Lower School, the girls’ prep school, Broomwood Hall School, and the boys’ prep school, Northcote Lodge. And, over the course of the last couple of years, we’ve gone through some very significant changes: the first of which, as I was informed on my first day of being Chief Executive, was that the schools were being sold. We were then acquired by Dukes Education, and they’ve been absolutely fantastic! We’ve had an opportunity to be able to learn from a number of hugely experienced educators, heads and administrators, among others, whose overall awareness of education
has been superb. What we’ve been given the opportunity to do is not only ensure that the schools remain relevant, but also enable them to become much more cohesive.
Can you explain the reasoning for changing the school group to ‘Broomwood’?
We’ve got some fantastic sites and wonderful settings; four schools with four different names— and I’m including here our Senior School, which will leave us to become part of London Park School, another Duke’s organisation, next year— five brands, six sites. All the children begin their time at Broomwood Hall Lower School with a particular uniform, and once they move on to the upper schools, their uniforms are different from one another.
So, what we wanted to make certain was that we were cohesive, and the parents, too, wanted to know that these schools under the one ownership are
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Working together
united in their output. If they have commonalities, it makes the lives of the parents easier, and equally, we want to provide more opportunities for the boys and girls to work together more frequently. We have these two prep schools which are singlesex, but why on Earth aren’t we having them do a huge amount more together? The children can then have their cake and eat it too, they can reap all the benefits of studying at a single-sex school, and also have the chance to go on trips and complete programmes of study together, to perform in the same plays and be part of the same houses and perhaps compete at Sports Day together. So, these things have all been under consideration for several years, the culmination of which was our announcement in October that we were becoming Broomwood. The heads had been discussing this for some time and we were very pleased to announce it.
Broomwood have just rebranded, as you’ve been saying, and they have a logo of a stag’s head—can you explain the meaning or significance of this to the group?
There were a lot of conversations around this; what we wanted to do was to ensure that we retained our heritage. If you look at that stag, it quite distinctively forms a “B”. So, the “B”, obviously, comes from Broomwood, while the stag comes from Northcote Lodge, and the two come together in one emblem that, in a way, symbolises and reinforces our coming together as a group of schools.
We understand there is a new boys’ prep building – can you tell us a little about this?
Our decision to bring the boys and girls into the prep schools in Year 3, in line with a decent number of prep schools, has also been announced. This new building will act as the junior section, so it will keep these boys together in classes, as they would expect in Key Stage 2, while also allowing them to be part of a dynamic school. Equally, we want to provide a back playground that is less “concrete-and-metal” and more “opportunityfor-bouncing-and-fun-without-breakage”, which, unfortunately, has not been up to par for the last couple of years, in some ways. But, yes, the new building is going to be a junior section. It’s also important to clarify that we are not increasing the size of Northcote; the size will remain exactly the same, we’re just segmenting it into six year groups as opposed to the current five.
Can you tell us a little about the points of entry and requirements for children and families considering applying to Broomwood?
Absolutely. We’ve seen a huge uptake in interest, particularly over the course of the last several months. The first—and by some distance, the best—way of starting the journey with us is to visit the school. Families should come along, particularly if the children are much younger, and visit our specialist Early Years centre, The Vicarage, at Broomwood Pre-Prep. As it stands, it’s a £100 registration and £50 for siblings thereafter. Reception entry, for children currently at the age of
Developing resilience
3 ½ to 4 years old, is 18 months before entry, so this usually means registering and visiting by the end of March. Pupils are then chosen via a random ballot, meaning that parents who wish for their children to join us will have their children’s names placed in a hat and drawn out, essentially. Siblings of current students take priority, as do children of Broomwood alumni. All others registered are drawn randomly by birthday quartiles, so as to try to keep the balance of age groups fairly consistent. In reality, those that really want to join us tend to end up getting a place.
It’s important to understand that Reception isn’t the only time children can join us. We announced in October that children can join Little Broomwood, our new preschool class, opening in September 2023. Registration for interest has now opened, and registering would be required in the half term the year before entry. For the prep schools, as long as you’ve registered and visited by the end of November in the year before entry, you would then be invited to taster and assessment days in January before the year of entry. For every other year group, it depends on spaces being available. We are flexible and we do want to work around the family’s needs. So, if somebody is arriving mid-year, for example, we will look to provide support and accommodate them and find the best route in.
The school motto is: ‘To do your best to be your best’. Can you explain what this means?
“To be your best to do your best”, “To do your best to be your best”, either way you say it, it is about knowing who you are. It’s about having an opportunity to get stuck into all sorts of different things, irrespective of whether you might pass, fail, be exceptional or not particularly good at something at all. Children are only children once; they have this one childhood and this one opportunity to do
things for the sake of it. It is the role of the school to give them the opportunity to have that access, whilst at the same time providing the scaffold to help employ those experiences into opportunities to grow, but also to demonstrate ability and understand how they’re going to get to whatever the next stage is.
Can you tell us a little about the bursary provision that Broomwood offers?
We are very keen to make certain that our families are able to have some consistency and continuity in the journey that they take with their children, and the last several years have demonstrated to us that security and consistency in our lives is something we cannot take for granted. Our bursarial support extends to families whose children are at our school but for whom life has become a bit tough, where some opportunities which previously may have been available are no longer there. What we want to do is protect the children’s journey by supporting the parents in whichever ways we can, to ensure that education is uninterrupted.
As a school you work closely with the local community and other SW Londonbased schools. Can you tell us more about the importance of working and engaging with the local community, and give some examples of this, and the benefits that children and the local community are gaining?
We are so lucky to be in an environment that is so vibrant and eclectic. We want the children to understand and recognise that they are citizens of their community and that they will benefit enormously from engagement within it. We’ve got to balance this, of course, against extraordinarily busy lives and lifestyles that are, at times, incessant in terms of scheduling, priorities, and commitments. But we have to make time to be part of our community, and we do this through engineering a wide range of activities and projects to give children access and exposure to our community.
For example, at the moment we work very loosely with St George’s Hospital, where we are looking to, as a school community, raise funds to brighten up the children’s wards, which are in an extraordinarily sad state of disrepair. By contributing to this overhaul of such an important space, the children develop an empathy for those who are forced into spending a great deal of time there. We work with Little Village, gathering and sorting out donations to make certain that those who are less fortunate than us have access to things that we sometimes take for granted. We work closely with Wandsworth Common in ensuring that the extraordinary greenspace right next to our schools remains clean and pristine; we pick up litter, we look after aspects of that common to keep it clean and spritely. We visit local care homes helping with Harvest Festival donations. We visit local churches in the same way, particularly at Christmas, to provide voice and good spirit. We have a whole raft of different ways in which we want to not only be aware of what happens within our community but become a part of it. We don’t want to become the school that’s behind closed
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Looking to the future
doors. And, ever increasingly now, we want to become engaged and very much a visible part of what is one of the most fantastically eclectic and vibrant areas of London, even of England.
Finally, what is your vision for the future of the Broomwood schools going forwards?
As I mentioned before, Broomwood is going to be a “proper” prep school model, and I’m going to use this word “proper” in a pretty definitive way. Children will arrive at the Little Broomwood, our nursery, at a young age, around 3½ to 4, and they will move on from our schools at either 11 or 13. For me, the most important thing is that they have a “proper” prep school experience. I spoke earlier about how important it is that we provide opportunities for children to engage with a myriad of different skills and educational access points; we want them to enjoy discovery. We want them to be able to understand and recognise the absolute value of academic preparation, the necessity for developing skills, the fundamental value of cognitive growth and maturity, but we don’t want that to be at the expense of them being children. We want them to also learn and recognise how important it is to learn how to be creative, to learn how to be empathetic, to be able to have a go at things that may not necessarily have material benefit right now, but in experiencing them and trying them out, perhaps provide triggers for all sorts of other interests and skills which otherwise would never have been discovered.
So, in short, we want them to be able to play, and to be able to fail. I know that sounds nuts coming from a school leader, but without learning how to fail in an environment that is caring and conducive to that educational journey, how are we going to expect them to be able to tolerate the extraordinary bouncing around and, at times, debilitating terrors of adult life? So, it’s equipping them with that mindset to have a go, which I mentioned earlier, but also making certain that within this fantastically well-structured academic preparation and celebration, this acceleration of intellectual and cognitive skill, that they are also given a chance to be children. To play, to scream and laugh and be able to recognise that, actually, life is great! Life isn’t about the next day, life isn’t always about developing the skills that will present you as some form of valued individual in years to come, life is about now. Sometimes it is about stopping and staring, sometimes it is about doing things that are completely useless and irrelevant, but all those things go into making us the characters who, in due course, are best positioned and best able to live life, not just endure it and prepare for the next stage.
To all the mums, dads, and others out there: come and have a look around Broomwood. You can hear older people like me prattling on about bits and pieces all the time, but the best people to hear from are the children. Just listen to them talking, they’re the ones that are the greatest ambassadors; they will tell you as it is.
We would like to thank the Principal of the Broomwood schools group, Mr. Kevin Doble, for giving up his time to speak to us.
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www.northwoodschools.com
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