Conference and Common Room by sccenglish

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Volume 45 Number 2 Summer 2008 PRODUCED BY THE HEADMASTERS’ & HEADMISTRESSES’ CONFERENCE

Contents Editorial

Through the Looking Glass, Bernard Trafford

Peeping Tom’s School Days, Roger Mobs

The Shephard’s Farewell, Jonathan Shephard

Brian Young: Three professional lives

Developing the science curriculum

Creating independent learning, Darren Ayling

Pastor or master? Jeremy Walker

A beacon of light, Tony Bennett

“I intend to develop in many directions”, Barbara Armitage

The importance of being bloggish, Julian Girdham

Beneficial and British, Christopher Massi

Public buildings, public benefit

The Diary of a Stroke, James Priory

Flee Blighty and get a life! Jonathan Price

Crossing the line, Stuart Haggett

Sub-continental HMC, Hector MacDonald

The Precentor’s Tale, Ralph Allwood

Gravel and Stones

A Herefreudian look at the Aristophallic, Siobhan de Souza

Fringe benefits, Peter Fanning

Heads: Expert advice for changing times, Professor Peter Earley

Foundation on a Hill, Jon Dagley

End piece: A spell at Hogwarts, Alistair Macnaughton

Lancing College Chapel. See page 25

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STEERING GROUP STEPHEN COYNE Chairman

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Editorial

Summer 2008

Headmaster, The King’s School in Macclesfield

TOM WHEARE Editor ELIZABETH CAIRNCROSS Head, Wells Cathedral School

JAMES PRIORY Head, The Portsmouth Grammar School

EX-OFFICIO MEMBERS BERNARD TRAFFORD Chairman, HMC Head, Wolverhampton Grammar School

GEOFF LUCAS Secretary, HMC

ROGER PEEL Membership Secretary, HMC

JONATHAN EVANS Managing Director, John Catt Educational Ltd Business Managers

DEREK BINGHAM Publishing Director, John Catt Educational Ltd

Publication: Published three times a year, February, June, September. Editorial Board: A steering group of members appointed by the Headmasters’ & Headmistresses’ Conference. Opinions expressed in Conference & Common Room are not necessarily those of the Headmasters’ & Headmistresses’ Conference; likewise advertisements and editorial are printed in good faith, and their inclusion does not imply endorsement by the Headmasters’ & Headmistresses’ Conference. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recorded or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Editor and/or the Publishers. Subscriptions: £25 for a two year subscription, post paid; discounts for bulk orders available. Advertising and Subscription enquiries to the Business Managers: John Catt Educational Ltd, Great Glemham, Saxmundham, Suffolk IP17 2DH. Tel: (01728) 663666. Fax: (01728) 663415. E-mail: enquiries@johncatt.co.uk. Printed in England by MPG impressions Ltd, Barwell Business Park, Leatherhead Road, Chessington, Surrey KT9 2NY, UK. ISSN 0265 4458

I find that in retirement I spend more time on the Hungerford Bridge than I had expected. Mind you, one meets some interesting and kindred spirits there. Why, only the other day I met the Headmaster of my old school. I greeted him as he approached me, causing him to shy away. He explained that it was something about how I was dressed. Of course, I thought, and the copy of the Big Issue clutched in my hand. “You see,” he said, “I thought you were Shostakovich.” This confusion once cleared away – it was my tweed cap that had plucked a South Bank meeting with the great man from the recesses of memory – we fell to talking about the other cold war warrior we had in common, Bob Stanier, probably the only Headmaster wearing a CND badge at the Annual Conference in 1958. A good many of his contemporaries had, of course, served in the war, such as Brian Young, who astounded members of the Charterhouse Common Room, Brooke Hall, by starting a meeting with the announcement that he had decided to sack a housemaster for incompetence. The tension eased when he named himself as the man in question, laying down the Headmaster’s traditional pastoral supervision of Saunderites. In due course he laid down the position his children called Hamster as well, to embark on a remarkable career of public service, leading first the Nuffield Foundation and then the Independent Broadcasting Authority. Whilst there may still be badge-wearing or at least card-carrying members of CND within HMC and there is at least one who has served his country at war, we are unlikely to see another Head emulate Brian Young. Our pupils, though, have the world before them and in this issue we explore contributions made by HMC schools on stage and screen. We concentrate too on our professional development, particularly on the pastoral side, and we look overseas, as more and more schools are doing, flying the kitemark of British education from China to Peru. Jonathan Shephard lays down his crook and makes for pastures new, whilst John Price makes a thinly-veiled pitch for experienced staff that few nearing the age of 60 will be able to resist. Finally there is a lengthy fanfare blown on our own trumpets about the huge contribution independent schools make to the preservation of Britain’s architectural heritage, a contribution of undeniable and substantial public benefit. It is hoped that this will prompt schools to draw attention to buildings not mentioned and, especially, to more modern and to contemporary buildings. Warm editorial thanks are due for the positive response to the general alert for cartoonists. Four have been put forward and their work is to be seen within. More than half the articles in this issue come from common room contributors, including pieces addressing the constantly expanding and increasingly important area of fund-raising. One of the challenges that will face Jonathan Shephard’s successor is the presentation and maintenance of a watertight case for a sector that is something of a centaur, half business and half charity, though that should not be a difficult species for New Labour to recognise. Indeed, as one hears on almost every platform, the centaur’s DNA is the Philosopher’s Stone which will turn our whole educational system to gold. In the words of a Department spokesperson: “As leading knowledge navigators you are mission critical to achieving robust and effective discharge pathways from the secondary phase of the intensive learning scenario.”

Editorial address: Tom Wheare, 63 Chapel Lane, Zeals, Warminster, Wilts BA12 6NP Email: tom@dunbry.plus.com

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Through the Looking Glass Bernard Trafford is dismayed at contradictions between independent and maintained schools The world of education is now so full of contradictions that it resembles Lewis Carroll's Looking Glass House. When Alice peeped into it from her drawing room, everything looked normal. But when she slipped through the mirror to the other side she found that everything that had been out of sight was as different as it could possibly be, a world of surprises and complete opposites. It's getting much the same in education. The Sutton Trust raised blood pressures in January when it reported that maintained school teachers routinely discourage pupils from applying to Oxford and Cambridge, reckoning that they won't fit in. The prevailing myth that the oldest universities charge higher fees also demonstrates that such teachers are illinformed, but it is the lack of aspiration that is troubling. I'm often suspicious of some of the Sutton Trust’s research, because it tends to look social agenda driven rather than ‘pure’, but this rings true. “Something should be done about it!” we all want to cry. But maybe we ought to ask why teachers (not all of them, I hasten to stress) are fearful of putting their heads above the parapet, and are apparently so ready to discourage their pupils from doing so. Could it be something to do with a climate in which we now find parliament debating legislation, again in January, that will place an unprecedented legal requirement on schools to give independent, even-handed advice about careers in higher education? The example seized on by the media was that teachers will be forbidden to promote A levels over the government's new darling, the Diplomas. It's another own goal, and another slap in the face to the profession. Government can’t even bring itself to trust teachers to give children objective advice. In this blatant attempt to pressure teachers into plugging its latest flagship, the government is ensuring that in future advice given to students will become bland and meaningless. We have seen it happen in other spheres. Lawyers are nowadays so scared of being sued – they should know! – that they tend no longer to give advice on a course of action, merely outlining a range of options (though I haven’t noticed their fees going down). Financial advisers are so constrained by regulations to be even-handed in their advice that we might as well choose investments, pensions or loans by chucking darts at the Sunday papers’ money sections. So if the Sutton Trust thought that its shock headlines would produce results, it is likely to be disappointed. With legislation putting the frighteners on schools and their careers

advisers, there’s not going to be a lot of aiming high going on. Pressure never produces aspiration. In the short term it may increase productivity, but in the long run it always leaves people playing safe, keeping their heads down. It always has, and everyone knows it – except apparently politicians, whose bright ideas for public services, educational, health or social, invariably involve the equivalent of a cattle-prod being applied to the backsides of the poor old professionals who have to make them work. Still, those of us who work in independent schools are told we have the solution, or some of the answers at any rate. As all of HMC knows, Lord Adonis wants our DNA for the Academies programme. Above all he wants us to bring to the party our culture of high expectation, of robust, sturdy independence and almost bloody-minded determination to do things our way and to do them well. Perhaps that is a pretty good description of our DNA, but I become less and less convinced that it will satisfactorily transplant because of the contradictions that it will encounter. For all the messianic fervour of my friend Anthony Seldon, I'm not convinced that the ‘educational apartheid’ he is so keen to end between the two sectors is a gap that can easily be bridged – and not because the private sector is stand-offish, either. When I’m talking with a potential partner about some joint work, my first reaction as an independent school head is, I hope, one of genuine humility. I ask, “What makes you think that our formula, however successful in our privileged setting, will work in a school in challenging circumstances? In an area of deprivation? Of low expectations? Of alienation from education?” I want to appear neither naive nor arrogant: I really do still need to be convinced that the answers which work for me will work there. Because then we hit the contradictions, most of which stem directly from government’s obsession with direction, with data, with targets. Independent schools generally don’t do all the tests government demands of its own schools. Of course we use data to track and even predict pupil performance, but we’re not target-driven. Maintained schools, on the other hand, are controlled (and too often stifled) by government: it’s an unusually confident school head who will find the courage to exploit the limited flexibility that he or she is allowed. Stories and columns in the TES have described how a school can be praised for good teaching by OFSTED one day but dammed by government figures the next – for example, because the Department’s cold, calculating databank reckons that the school isn’t adding

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enough value. Bristol University research published at the start of the year slammed the newest Contextual Value Added (CVA) tables as ‘unreliable and misleading’ – but government remains wedded to them. By contrast, many leading independent schools turned their backs entirely on league tables this year. Preferring the educational opportunities offered by the so-called (but not government-approved) International GCSE, these schools entered their pupils for IGCSEs in maths and science knowing that, while they suited their pupils better, those qualifications excluded them from the league tables. Thus it became almost a badge of honour not to figure in the January tables. That outcome perhaps appealed to the mischievous side of our schools’ sturdy independence, but it wouldn’t be allowed for a moment in the government schools with which they partner, notwithstanding the early talk (now downplayed) of Academies’ ‘independence’. For all its desire to be radical and innovative, government always undoes the good it plans by tying schools down with bureaucracy and with its insistence on what is measurable, not what is valuable. So most state schools are forced to concentrate their limited resources on pushing children over target thresholds; for instance, focusing particularly on children on the C/D borderline to try to ensure they get the Cs that count in league tables. As a result, schools’ efforts and children’s subject choices are distorted. This kind of thing is, in the main, alien to independent schools, which is why so many were happy to drop out of the league tables this year: they don’t believe in them anyway. A letter to the Guardian on 14th January cursed league tables precisely because, the writer claimed, all they do is to make the independent schools look good. He was clearly no fan, but failed to spot the irony, in this back-to-front world, of the fact that the new one-upmanship for independent schools is not to feature in the tables. I’m not sure I relate any more to a world in which I heard, twice in one week, that “It is official government policy to encourage teachers to teach to the test”. Moreover I doubt that many of our heads of geography recognise the OFSTED criticism that the teaching of their subject is become dull and un-motivating because schools aren’t doing field trips any more. The reason cited was the pervasive fear of Health and Safety that is keeping teachers tied to their school desks, and the Prime Minster responded by setting up yet another quango to monitor the situation (so that’s all right, then). I don’t believe it. I suspect that schools are so focused on teaching to tests and easing pupils over grade thresholds that they’re nervous of the teaching time they lose by allowing field trips in school time. That pressure not to miss lessons is one to which the independent sector is by no means immune, and one on which all heads need to keep a watchful eye: grind versus

‘Lord Adonis wants our DNA.’ enrichment, or proper concentration on syllabus (sorry, specification) coverage versus fringe activity? It’s a hard balance to strike in 2008, I think. If so much of this makes me so uncomfortable, how then can I really convince myself (let alone potential partners) that I have much that I can usefully contribute to the majority sector? So many of the strengths of the independent sector lie in the aspects that by their very nature separate us from the maintained, a fact (as I see it) that is a criticism not of my hard-working, visionary and courageous colleagues there but of the way they are harried and controlled, directed and simultaneously knocked off course by government. Local authority strictures undermine diktat from the DCFS or vice-versa, and OFSTED and the inhuman, data-driven accountability regime snap at their heels all the while. Am I painting a melodramatic, self-indulgent picture? I don’t believe so: not when my friends and indeed close relatives working in the state sector really open up and say how they feel. I want to work with my neighbours, with the other 93%. I want my school to contribute what it can reasonably and usefully. I don’t want to be stuck in an ivory tower and am offended whenever anyone suggests that I am. But the contradictions “do me head in”, as they say. And then I find myself thinking, if this is the topsy-turvy educational world we have to inhabit, I’ll go along with Sam Goldwyn and say, in masterly self-contradiction, “Include me out!” Maybe I would be happier if I could move into the Looking Glass House; where the clock, instead of inexorably ticking away my life, has a jolly, smiley face; where one is troubled not by horseflies but by rocking-horse flies; and where the flowers talk. Mind you, I’d have to deal with the Red Queen, a fearsomely bossy woman. And with the White Queen, who boasted to Alice, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” Hang on! This talk of believing the impossible sounds uncomfortably like the educational world I’ve been describing. Perhaps I’ll wake up and find it was all a dream. Dream on. Bernard Trafford is still Head of Wolverhampton Grammar School and Chairman of HMC, but the views expressed here are emphatically his own.

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Peeping Tom’s School Days Caught on camera: How Roger Mobs saved his school for another year The Chairman’s Adam’s apple raced up and down like a demented mole. He was furious. A jury of blood-starved Torquemadas stared at me: angry governors yet to lunch. “So let’s be clear, Headmaster.” The Chairman had adopted the pace and intonation of the speaking clock: big trouble for Mobs. “You allowed a production company to hire our School over the holidays, and permitted the Fifth Form to act as extras in the said production. You then discovered subsequently that the film in question was not the canonical and improving children’s tale you had envisaged, but something altogether less wholesome?” “That is, regrettably, correct, Chairman.” These weren’t butterflies in my stomach: they were fruit bats. The Chairman shook his head and made ready to infuse the speaking clock with Churchillian solemnity. “Fellow governors, it is my sad duty to inform you that our Headmaster, Mr Mobs, has allowed our beloved School to host a moving picture entitled: Peeping Tom’s School Days.” He might as well have announced the School was under attack from Godzilla, such was the clamour. “And there is more, ladies and gentlemen, there is more,” bawled the Chairman, gesturing that the hounds fall silent. “Having failed to pick up clues from what appears to me to be a most salacious moniker, Mr Mobs went on to miss the fact that the lead female character – a pig-tailed ingénue named Pippi No-stocking – was played by the mother of one of our Prep boys.” “Not that Mrs Brandon?” came a voice full of enthusiastic approbation. “No, Your Grace, not Mrs Brandon.” “Oh. Oh I see. I just thought… I mean she’s a fine looking... look, all I’m saying is that if anybody was going to play a lady without … er, rightho then...” The Bishop trailed off, his face taking on the appearance of cirrus clouds at sunset. “I assume, Headmaster,” another governor continued, “you really did believe this vicious motion picture was a schoolboy yarn. Leather on willow and all that?” I affirmed that to be the case. “You got ’alf of it right then,” chuckled the governor with the big ring and the Ferrari. “I can certainly see,” drooled the decrepit professor from our local redbrick, “how confusion may have arisen over certain titles. “Of Human Bondage” for example may be Maugham, or it may be...” “Thank you,” the Chairman intervened. “Headmaster, forgive me, but through a mixture of naivety and breathtaking stupidity, you have humiliated and disgraced this venerable School. At this stage, a man of honour would know what to do.” I made ready to fall on my letter opener. “Chairman, if I may,” chimed the voice of our regional

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“We’ve come to audition for the geography class.” Drawing: Harry Lavalle. Business Woman of the Year. I put the metaphorical encyclopaedia down the back of my mental trousers. This governor could down jet fighters by twitching her ear lobes. “This man of honour,” she continued, staring at me with an unfathomable steely compliance, “ought to be lauded to the heights. I have seen the film in question. Yes, that’s right, there’s no need to look aghast: unlike everybody else around this table, I made a point of doing some research. “I am glad to report that far from being a smutty romp, the feature is in fact an energetic post-feminist exploration of concerns such as gender hierarchisation and disconcealment together with ethnographic studies of workplace communication. “The scene in which our Fifth Form boys are reduced en masse to a group of adoring jellies at the sight of Pippi Nostocking disciplining the Geography master is a triumph that will keep semioticians assessing the denotative aspect of nihilist critical discourse analysis for years. Furthermore...” And on she went. “Why did you do that?” I asked her afterwards in the shadow of her magnificence. “Why did you save me?” “You’re an idiot, Mobs,” said the Business Woman of the Year. “A buffoon. Like every Head I’ve met, you’re a faux businessman and that’s why you rightly get paid twenty times less than they do. The film, by the way, is a disgraceful, exploitative anachronism and you should be ashamed of yourself.” And then she softened. “But I know what they paid you. And I’ve seen the balance sheet. This School needs every penny it can get. By inadvertently allowing what every other school turned down, you’ve kept this place going another year. Those governors can humph into their Telegraphs all they like, but you’ll be flooded with pupils next year. Bling, WAG and Pimp culture: you nailed the lot with one film. Congratulations.” She looked across the playing fields towards the Chapel and said: “You know at the end of the movie the final credit says With grateful thanks to Headmaster Roger V Mobs?” “Does it? Does it really? Famous, eh? Well I never.” “Yes. This School. Famous. Thanks to you, Roger. But do us all a favour: when they come round touting The Lion, the Witch and the Bathrobe, just pass.” Roger V Mobs is a Headmaster.

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The Shephard’s Farewell The chief executive of ISC tells the flock where it’s at The independent sector educates fewer than 6% of children in the UK. Despite its reputation – and its importance in providing well-qualified candidates for university departments – the independent sector is, in raw numbers, a small player. The importance of maximising influence through a cohesive and unified representative body is therefore extreme. 6% is not a high percentage: 6% divided into fragments is negligible.

Commercial context The demographic downturn will have negative effects in some areas, though on balance the overall effect is likely to be small. More significant will be the imminent credit crunch and the potential fall in house prices. The ability of parents (or grandparents) to fund fees out of equity will diminish. Energy costs are likely to increase, as are the costs of regulation. Fees will tend to increase at above the level of earnings; and the differential could grow if a near-recession places a restraint on earnings. The generational divide among parents will become more apparent. Put simply, and recognising wide variations, parents of older pupils will tend to be financially secure in (a) their housing and (b) their pension. Parents of younger pupils will tend to be insecure in both respects. As time passes, the proportion of parents who are financially less secure will rise. It is unclear whether the sector is prepared, in its governance and management, for an economic downturn. Few Heads will have been in post during the downturn of the early 1990s. Only a minority of governors will have seen their school through that time.

Political and regulatory context All parties concentrate on the 94% of pupils in the state sector; no party is interested in significant state funding of children into the independent sector; and the independence of the sector is under threat from an expansion of state regulation. State sector norms will tend to spread across to the independent sector. Pay and conditions for state sector teachers will produce a ripple effect in the independent sector; regulations on child safety will tend to apply directly and immediately within both sectors; regulations on administrative requirements within the state sector will tend to become best practice.

Politics and economics ISC has rightly emphasised the £2bn annual saving to the state from the existence of the independent sector. The context, though, is total public spending forecast at £625bn for 2008-2009, with £77bn spent on education. The total forecast for 2010-2011 is £674bn. £2bn is therefore one third of one per cent of current total public expenditure and 2.6% of current expenditure on education. The message is that £2bn is small beer.

Charitable status and public benefit By a narrow margin, and despite a concerted campaign from NCVO and major charities, ISC won the argument against a clause on the face of the Charities Act 2006 linking the charging of fees inversely to public benefit. The Act retains the authority of case law, and the debate is therefore about interpretation of the cases, rather than the extent to which case law has been

altered by the Act. It is not clear that the Charity Commission has yet faced the economic reality that some charitable provision is of its nature expensive, and the charging of fees (or the cost of insuring for the payment of fees) will inevitably mean that the section of the public able to benefit will be small unless bursary provision can be made. The paradox is that bursary provision is relatively easy for schools with a long history and substantial endowments. It is far less easy for the schools – and there are many – which are almost wholly dependent on fee income and have no significant endowments. There is common ground that widening access is desirable and should be achieved where reasonable and practicable. The uncertainty is the extent to which this is enjoined as good practice or is required as a matter of law. There is no rule in law which requires charities to take on the risks of fund-raising. There is similarly no rule in law which requires charities to widen access through surcharging paying beneficiaries. It is important to maintain the present firm but constructive dialogue with the Commission. If ISC and the Commission can form a common view on what is reasonable in practice for schools to deliver, that could remove considerable uncertainty from schools and lift much of the regulatory burden. Meanwhile, the sector needs to be disciplined in its approach and to avoid confrontation based on uninformed views. A decision to disagree publicly with the Commission, if that becomes necessary, should be taken deliberately in the interests of the sector, not – as has been the case – because it makes some people feel good or that something is being done. We need to be aware of (and beware of) the “Yes Minister” syllogism: “We must do something; this is something; therefore we must do this”.

ISC – past, present and future The consistent message for the past four years is that the sector’s arguments must be based on fact and principle, not on sentiment and special pleading. Over the past four years we have recruited the skilled staff needed by a sector facing legal, economic, political and reputational threats. ISC now has excellent legal, research and communications staff and a high-achieving commercial team whose work keeps down the cost of subscriptions. Our redesigned website is drawing in dramatically more users and the programme of conferences and seminars delivers high quality content at low cost. ISC can help schools analyse and forecast the demographics for their catchment area and can help schools benchmark their financial results against anonymised data from other schools. We will shortly be able to assess the economic impact of a school on its local community – a valuable piece of contextual information in the public benefit debate. Whoever succeeds me as ISC’s Chief Executive has a good inheritance and my very best wishes. Jonathan Shephard is to be CEO of PPA, the Periodical Publishers’ Association.

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Three professional lives The thoughts of Brian Young of Charterhouse, the Nuffield Foundation and the Independent Broadcasting Authority (and not forgetting Christian Aid) You became Headmaster of Charterhouse when you were only 30. What made you apply?

What led you to the IBA post?

I didn’t. The governors were not satisfied with the initial candidates and they asked Tony Chenevix-Trench and me to meet them.

They had a list of five candidates and a friend asked me to suggest other names, which I did, but he then put my name forward.

Were you worried at the thought of measuring up to Birley or of managing the staff?

Which aspect of your previous experience proved most helpful there?

Robert Birley had left Charterhouse five years previously. My immediate predecessor was George Turner. They were both, however, present as helpful members of the governing body. The senior masters, as Alington had reassured me, were in no way troublesome, though some proprietorial housemasters were quite doubtful when I arranged two sherry parties during each boy’s time at which parents could meet me and other beaks.

When I moved into the world of broadcasting in 1970 it was not as odd a move as some teachers might think. TV moguls are very like housemasters – different in their gifts and prejudices but not beyond all possibility of co-operating and accepting some influence. And broadcasting is very like a public school also, in that it is surrounded by uncritical lovers and unloving critics.

What was the role of the Headmaster at Charterhouse?

What were the main challenges?

Well, I suppose that I spent most of my time in teaching, preaching and administration. I always enjoy the story of the 19th century Rugby headmaster who left a stormy meeting only to overhear the senior housemaster say: “If a headmaster cannot preach and cannot teach and is a poor administrator, one has, I think, the right to ask that he be either a scholar or a gentleman.” The most important task is too obvious to mention – talking and listening to masters and boys. I did have five years as a housemaster as well as a headmaster.

Why did you move on to the Nuffield Foundation? Geoffrey Crowther suggested the move when I said that I thought 12 years were long enough for headmastering.

Was any of the territory familiar? Well, I was working for a board of trustees as before, but the Nuffield trustees were even more involved and certainly exercised more influence than school governors.

How much direct involvement did you have in the various educational projects? When I moved from schoolmastering to working for the Nuffield Foundation I became involved in a mass of interesting new curriculum projects. I also had a range of new topics to consider and described the change of job in a radio talk as posing questions rather than supplying answers. Was it a better world when organisations such as the Nuffield Foundation responded to need by supporting creativity without the inevitable clumsiness by which so much governmental action is characterised? Foundations always sought to prime the pump. I think Nuffield still does good. The Commission on Bio-ethics, which was started in the 1980s when I was a Trustee, is one

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example of that.

The challenge of broadcasting is to fulfil three tasks: education, information, entertainment – though not everyone would put them in that order. One can hope to reconcile all three approaches, perhaps even in one programme, and to blend, by a fruitful confusion, all the three skills so that people are educated, informed and entertained, as no doubt they are in a perfect lesson. Yet the starting point of each practitioner is really very different indeed. The aim of the teacher is to improve understanding and character. Where the teacher wishes to improve, the journalist wishes to reveal. Concerned with ‘news’, which is, by definition, the abnormal, the surprising and the rousing, the journalist does not share the teacher’s version of what life is all about. Years of argument with the World in Action team left me with a high respect for their ideals, but no doubt that if they were to make a programme on, say, the Papacy, they would focus on that Pope of whom Gibbon wrote: “The more scandalous charges were not pressed; and the Vicar of Christ stood accused only of piracy, murder, rape and incest.” The entertainer is concerned neither to improve nor to reveal but to make people happy, a valuable role in a medium which makes its main contribution to life in the leisure hours after work is done. The entertainer is a great expert on how to engage attention and attract awareness, sometimes by rather unattractive means. As one old impresario said, “The key thing is sincerity: if you can fake that you’ve got it made.”

And opportunities? We managed to jump in with Channel Four before Mrs Thatcher had caught her new monetarist, competitive breath and so could set it up in a structure that allowed it not to have to compete too fiercely for audiences. If television is, as it has been described, “the privilege of the underprivileged”, then it has the duty as well as the opportunity to extend people,

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enlarging their social environment, widening their knowledge and experience beyond their own narrow fields.

You were in the Navy during the war. Do you, like Michael McCrum, feel that your time on the Lower Deck taught you as much as any experience? It was valuable but I wouldn’t single it out. The Navy did, however, teach me some lessons in humility. In a navigation class we were learning how to translate star-sights into a position on the chart, and I protested that the elaborate rigmarole we had to perform ought to be properly understood. They answered, cuttingly, that if I was to fathom spherical trigonometry I would have to allow more than a few hours to the exercise.

Why do posts of the kind you discharged with such distinction nowadays tend to go to ‘businessmen’? Can the truly academic world – from which I exclude Professors of Business Studies etc – ever supply such leaders again? I think I was very lucky. The age of the amateur didn’t last.

And what thoughts remain with you from your three professional lives? The challenge to get better answers is not, as some imply, just a tiresome burden that has been thrown upon us in the second half of the twentieth century because the Brian Young, when Headmaster of Charterhouse. From the portrait by William Evans. times are very evil. It is rather a challenge that the world had to face as soon as it tried seriously to follow world by freedom and love, is bound to lead to many, many the full implications of the Gospel. failures, when people act selfishly; and the failures are more After all, it is perhaps only in this century that we have really glaring than when the world is run through coercion and fear. tried to let people be free, so that if they did right it was because But we have embarked, falteringly, on the way of freedom, they were drawn to it and not coerced. of choosing the good through love, in the belief that that is the Working people and teenagers and those who are not the right way for mankind in the end. We may fail horribly in the mighty of the world, can, for the first time ever, make their attempt, and collapse (as some say the Roman Empire did) in own choice, to learn or not to learn, to do the right thing or not self-seeking, with life all pleasure and no discipline. to do the right thing: they are not forced to obey, forced to fill We may rise to using freedom responsibly, to doing things their time as their betters decide. Hence the call to Christians effectively for each other not because of fear but because of that they must be infectious people if love, not power, is ever love and the sheer beauty of holiness. One thing, and one to rule the world. alone, will decide if we go up or down: and that is the way in All hideously difficult. And middle-aged people are which society is quietly affected by those who try to get the sometimes tempted to despair, to say that there isn’t enough better things ‘caught’ – so that they become part of the discipline nowadays, to moan when they read of horrible personality of the growing individual, and not something things in the paper, forgetting that this age is in many ways the imposed by coercion from the outside. When I was Chairman least cruel, most kind-hearted the world has ever known. of Christian Aid, I visited poor places in India with a young Though shocking experiences hit the headlines and the project officer whose style of leadership, in many ways television screens, the natural expectation is of a kindliness different from mine, was a tribute to an education – at and a gentleness that has not been the norm in previous ages. Winchester – which had prepared him for exercising Any attempt seriously to practise the Gospel, and to run the responsibility in an age of consent rather than command.

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Developing the science curriculum The educational initiatives of the Nuffield Foundation in the 1960s Pride of place at the HMC Conference held at Christ Church, Oxford in 1965, under the chairmanship of Walter Hamilton, was given to an address by Brian Young, until recently Head Master of Charterhouse, but now Director of the Nuffield Foundation. He was asked to introduce a discussion on curriculum developments, with which the word Nuffield had become almost synonymous. Education was only added as an objective to the Nuffield Foundation deed in 1951 and functioned initially on a first come first served basis. In the course of the 1950s, schools generally, including for the first time the major boys’ public schools, started to focus on the need for more and better science teaching. The Industrial Fund for the Advancement of Scientific Education raised over £3 million, dispersed in grants to

independent and direct grant schools to allow them to keep up with the standards set in maintained schools as a result of substantial and far-sighted government funding. In 1961, the Nuffield Foundation undertook a more systematic approach in response to papers presented to the Trustees proposing that the Nuffield Foundation fund a curriculum initiative for maths and science. The Trustees voted to put £250,000 into the scheme. By the end of the decade they had spent over £1 million on the science projects alone. The link between independent schools and the development of the scientific curriculum was long-standing. The Association of Public School Science Masters was founded in 1902, one of the first pressure groups in this educational field. In 1919 it became the Science Masters Association, open to all graduate secondary science teachers and, in 1963, it merged

HERE&THERE

Sir Christopher Bonington at King’s

Sir Chris with King’s explorers Jessica Tweedie and Calum Pattrick.

Now in his seventies, mountain man Sir Christopher Bonington gave his two hour lecture ‘I Chose to Climb’ at the King’s School in Macclesfield recently. The sell-out audience witnessed an amusing yet alarming insight into the boys’ own bravery of the world famous rock climbers of the 1950s and 1960s. His first experience of rock climbing came as a 16-year-old when he hitch-hiked with a school friend from London to Snowdonia and took on the Pyg Track from Pen y Pass, a relatively simple route now walked by thousands but on that day subject to an avalanche that swept the novice pair down the mountain. After A levels, Sir Chris joined Sandhurst and, over the next few years, combined his career as an army instructor with his love of climbing, organising and leading numerous Army expeditions. Sir Chris delighted his audience with what he called his favourite lecture, “It is after all about my early days when I really didn’t know where I was going”.

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with the Association of Women Science Teachers (founded in 1922) to become the Association for Science Education (ASE). Work by the Science Masters Association revealed how little was spent nationally on educational research. Curricular development involved a disproportionate number of independent school teachers, whose links with university departments were crucial in transforming the secondary scientific field. Brian Young made it clear to the Heads assembled in the Oxford Union that the Nuffield Foundation was offering schools ideas not money. In fact, like a recent Conference speaker, he was in search of DNA. To achieve curriculum development which was not merely a matter of updating the syllabus or even of instilling active learning, it was necessary to change the way pupils and teachers thought and the way they performed in the laboratory. In a memorable phrase, Brian Young urged “that those who learn should not be like dinghies towed rapidly along by a more powerful vessel, but like ships which, with their own charts and compasses, make their own voyages of discovery.” Whilst Nuffield transformed the way science was taught, the Foundation was simultaneously funding modern languages and mathematics projects. It was hoped that an oral approach to the teaching of French from eight and Russian, Spanish and German from 11 would avoid “that enormous grinding of machinery before a few words of [the target language] are delivered at the pit head”. SMP, of course, transformed maths teaching in schools under its masthead Chinese proverb: ‘I hear, and I forget; I see, and I remember; I do, and I understand’. After mentioning the Foundation’s English and Classics projects, Brian Young looked to the future, proposing a course for early leavers combining English, History, Geography, Scripture and Social Studies which would help pupils to understand the society in which they lived, and concluded by proposing the establishment of a Staff College for teachers. Nuffield’s approach to the projects was both on a majestic scale and strikingly flexible, as long as the core aim of conferring a real understanding on the students was achieved. Young’s predecessor, Leslie Farrer-Brown, who had been Director of the Foundation for 20 years, was entirely happy to find a leader and leave it to him to find a team. Sometimes there were tensions that one would have thought might prove fatal. Eric Rogers, the leader of the physics project, plucked from Princeton University, was not an obvious partner for his deputy, John Lewis of Malvern, one of the outstanding science teachers of his generation. On the other hand, the chemistry team, run by Frank Halliwell of Keele University and the biology team under W F Dowdeswell of Winchester College, worked in exemplary co-operation. Perhaps typical, however, of the freedom of expression and flexibility of thought that characterised the projects was the idea that at A level there should only be two courses, biology and ‘physical science’, combining physics and chemistry, partly because Rogers publicly doubted the value of chemistry as taught in schools. Although physical science became an A level following courses designed by J E Spice of Winchester College, physics was restored and in the end the more orthodox three subject

Dinghies towed along by a more powerful vessel… system prevailed. Meanwhile individual heads of departments signed their schools up for trials or to provide team members without, in some cases, much reference to their Heads, operating instead very much on the networks established by the Science Association in its various forms over the years. University links, longer holidays, a greater degree of freedom to plan and dispose of their time and generous support from schools saw much of the development of the projects undertaken in independent schools. The new AS level course, Perspectives in Science, described in the last issue, shows that the role of the independent school in pioneering curriculum development is far from over. New courses of this kind, such as the Perspectives on Oriental Studies and Perspectives on Citizenship, show how much life and vigour there is in this field. Intriguingly, Brian Young’s address shows that these developments have much in common with the initiatives of the 1960s and that some of the ideas still lurking tantalisingly on the horizon of HMC thinking, such as the Staff College, have been discerned and aspired to before. What is certainly as true now as it was then is that there is an extraordinary wealth of talent in the common rooms of independent schools, and that is why Lord Adonis wants to have our babies.

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Creating independent learning Darren Ayling describes how Ipswich School set out to test a claim

Sophisticated collaborative skills. Curious about a suggestion in some national newspapers and, dare I say it, some ISI reports, that schools which are successful at preparing students for the particular demands of examinations are not necessarily good at focusing on young people’s learning, and in particular, their ‘independent’ learning needs, a group of interested staff at Ipswich School set out to test this claim. Here is an account of our experiences and of what we learnt along the way. Progress by the Independent Learning Group was proving slow. Generous though staff had been in dutifully attending the meetings I had called, as the poor soul who had been charged with making progress in this vague and unpromising area, early discussion had become predictably bogged down. Were we to consider learning inside or outside the classroom? Surely there was ample opportunity with coursework for independent learning outside the classroom, assuming that parents weren’t completely responsible for the finished product! Wasn’t the issue as much to do with teaching as with learning? A few exchanged blushes around the room indicated that perhaps some pupils might be confined to a passive role by our overly didactic alter ego who wouldn’t shut up. Could any teacher-directed task genuinely be ‘independent’ and if we were to take the teacher out of the equation, we soon agreed, the nature of the learning would require such a radical redefinition that more tea and extra cakes would be needed before we could proceed.

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Progress seemed possible again once we had agreed to put internecine dispute and philosophical debate to one side and to elide the concepts of ‘independent’ with ‘active’ learning in a definition which, like all compromise solutions, felt somehow unsatisfactory. Inadequate definitions and flagging momentum were soon forgotten, though, because the First Law of Unproductive School Committees worked its usual magic when the most thoughtful contributor spoke for the first time at the eleventh hour: “Why don’t we see how different the independent learning experience can be by taking learning out of the constraints of the timetable, the classroom and the academic department?” A star, a compass point, a way out of another meeting was grabbed with both hands. We would have a day (well a half day, so as not to get carried away) in which a year group (why not Year 9, who were a year beyond the delights of their trip to Cumbria and two years past the castles trip in Year 7) would… And that was, in a nut shell, what made the next six months of planning so productive and so creative. By entering the day in the school calendar and calling it rather grandly an ‘Independent Learning Day’ in a letter to parents, we forced ourselves to ask questions about what we were hoping to achieve and how different we wanted the experience to be for all of us involved. We had to decide early on whether we wanted teachers working within their own subject specialism (we didn’t) and

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what we wanted the outcome of the day to be. An early sideswipe from a sceptical head of department informed us that a ‘one-off’ day was going to have little lasting impact but we were, nonetheless, excited about having discovered a direction and a purpose to justify the time spent discussing the issue, not to mention the therapeutic benefits for a deputy head when s/he has found something to organise. As the day took shape we decided, paradoxically, that the more independent the learning experience, the more carefully we would have to define our aims and objectives. We knew we wanted our pupils to be challenged to think creatively and to be active in their engagement. We wanted the dynamic between adults and children to be collaborative rather than didactic. If possible we wanted them to enjoy the experience of being presented with a problem which they had to solve against the clock. We didn’t want them constrained by thinking that they were working on a piece of physics or geography coursework, but we did want them to draw on skills which they had acquired by studying these subjects. Having had a generous budget allocated by a sympathetic Head, those teachers charged with designing one of the six ‘stations’ for the day soon began to realise that the primary constraint to what could be achieved was the limit of their own imagination ... and time! This perennial difficulty was not so much overcome as ignored by a dedicated and committed group of staff who had decided to make the day work. We were assisted by a particularly gifted and engaged group of Year 9 pupils who helped us to refine our plans and to challenge some of our assumptions. As a result we ended up with six ‘stations’ organised around a problem-solving activity which would lead to a presentation to a panel who would decide, Alan Sugar style, who would be ‘hired’. The day was given the overarching theme of ‘Colour’ with six stations under the headings of ‘Propaganda’, ‘Religion’, ‘Cartography’, ‘Forensic Science’, ‘Literature’ and ‘Advertising’. Each station was planned and organised by a keen amateur (a teacher working outside her/his subject discipline) assisted by a subject specialist who would help over technical matters. By way of illustration, the group who worked on the Forensic Science station began with a consideration of a recent murder case where evidence was based upon colour samples. They worked as a group to prepare the best prosecution case they could on the forensic evidence which the police had at the time. The plenary session would involve playing the part of expert witnesses explaining to a jury the links between different pieces of evidence in the clearest possible way. Needless to say, for those staff involved, the day was exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure. The pupils took on board new technologies and showed collaborative skills far more sophisticated than we had anticipated. One group, in spite of being told that they should appoint a team leader, decided that since their task had three distinctive parts, they would appoint a rotating chair, depending on the particular strengths of their three most obvious ‘leaders’. Clearly the speed with which the pupils identified this as an opportunity to do something different and to work with each other independently of ongoing adult intervention, suggests that we have students – and teachers – who are well aware of

the value of active and independent learning. On reviewing our own teaching in the light of this experience, we were most struck by the readiness of our pupils to work beyond expectation, efficiently and collaboratively to the focussed end of achieving a goal. Time and again in the planning, execution and review of the day, we were told by our pupils we could go further, ask more and do less. We were left, as a planning group, with the lasting impression of the huge potential contribution our pupils could make to their own learning if we could only demonstrate sufficient imagination, courage and trust to unlock their appetite for a real challenge. Next year a different cohort will be faced with similar opportunities but offered by different staff. I don’t think we would claim to have made the kind of lasting change which would satisfy our sceptical head of department but sometimes, as a wise friend reminded me, process can be more important than product. Over 125 people were involved in the day, including nearly a fifth of all our teaching staff. They will have seen something a little different, something which will encourage us to be more creative when deciding on the shape learning should take in our classrooms in the coming academic year. Darren Ayling is Deputy Head at Ipswich School.

HERE&THERE Ardingly’s Ed at the cutting edge of an acting career For Ardingly College student Ed Sanders, treading the red carpet with the likes of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter is all in a day’s work. For the teenage music scholar at Ardingly was plucked from obscurity to take the only child’s role in Sweeney Todd, where he also worked alongside Alan Rickman, Sacha Baron-Cohen and Timothy Spall. Ed, who is a member of Ardingly College Choir and plays in the school orchestra, won the role after appearing with the National Youth Music Theatre at the Tonbridge Arts Festival, Kent, in summer 2006. He beat hundreds of other students from across the UK to land the role of Toby, the youngster who works for a rival barber (played by Sacha Baron Cohen) but ends up helping Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) in her pie shop.

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Pastor or master? Jeremy Walker sheds light on the effective balance between academic and pastoral care ‘Pastoral care’ is a slippery phrase. It is advertised as one of the major selling points of independent schools and most people have an instinctive understanding of its meaning. However this apparent consistency can mask competing definitions of pastoral care and a consequent discrepancy in the place accorded to it in schools. Here I offer a brief overview of current research, drawn from my MA dissertation at the Institute of Education, hoping to generate reflection on the role pastoral care plays in a successful school. There is a significant lack of clarity in the research literature as to what might be included within the pastoral provision of a school. Gothard and Goodhew (1987) found that teachers did not agree as to what pastoral care meant, with many seeing it as related to discipline and administration. This in turn led teachers to consider their career path in terms of specialising in either the pastoral or curricular route. Research by Megahy (1998) among 36 headteachers and 103 pastoral managers across six LEAs found that fewer than 15% included issues relevant to raising academic performance eg reviewing and targeting, study skills. Likewise, when asked which skills were developed through the pastoral curriculum, fewer than 10% identified those relating specifically to raising academic performance. Where there is perceived to be a separation between the pastoral and the academic, there tends to be a negative attitude towards pastoral care, which is seen as the poor relation of the academic, focusing upon the administration, discipline and emotional support of students.

This paradigm leads to those on the ‘right’ seeing pastoral care as ‘woolly-minded liberal do-gooding’ (Power 1996) with the ‘left’ viewing it as a form of social control (Wolpe 1988). Recent research (Lodge 2006) has thrown up an even starker description of pastoral care as ‘wiping noses and kicking butts’. Independent schools (especially boarding) tend to invest heavily in the pastoral care they offer, which makes a negative attitude towards pastoral care surprising. The suggestion is that where this happens it reflects the changing environment in which schools operate. Roberts (2006) characterises the changes over the last 20 years as follows: ‘School accountability, through Ofsted inspections, league tables and various government-led initiatives … has led to a reconsideration of the nature of pastoral systems and support in our schools.’ In some schools the desire to focus on improving student achievement in the classroom and in public examinations has led to a gradual separation of the pastoral and the academic into two spheres. Where this happens, the research indicates that academic management roles are perceived as being more valuable than pastoral ones, which leads to a decline in the job satisfaction of pastoral leaders and the number of those interested in taking up such positions. Pastoral leaders reported a sense of administrative overload and an expectation that their role was primarily to maintain discipline. Given the centrality of pastoral structures, such as Houses in the independent sector, this is clearly an undesirable outcome and is at odds with responses to my

HERE&THERE Charlie is a smart operator Former Stonyhurst pupil Charlie Stephenson, from Clitheroe, proved himself to be a clever operator when challenged to create a profitable business within three months – in a foreign country! He invented the world’s first pedal-powered liquidizer, which is now one of the sights of Montevideo in Uruguay where he is selling refreshing fruit drinks in the city’s fashionable districts. Charlie is currently studying at the University in Montevideo where he came up with the novel and amusing plan. The technology took its lead from a very traditional business that used to be a common feature of Montevideo – the mobile knife grinder. Charlie and friend, Dan, took on the task of creating a new version of such a bicycle, where pedal-power could drive a liquidizer and, by

Summer 2008

Charlie demonstrates his invention to younger brother and current Stonyhurst pupil, James, during a recent family visit to Montevideo

adding a top-box for the ingredients, the mobile, pedal-powered drinks maker came into being! They then took control of the administrative and logistics aspects of the venture and the business is now up and running.

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research which revealed some more positive patterns: ‘Helping students develop and achieve their potential, especially if they do not realise what they are capable of, has always been the strongest motivator in my work at all levels.’ (Independent school deputy head of sixth form) ‘I think a school has a vital role in developing the character of its students and I think a role in the pastoral side of education is the best way to be involved in this.’ (Independent school housemaster) ‘I like the fact that I am able to make a difference to an individual’s life.’ (Independent school housemistress) The alternative to this approach is an integration of pastoral and academic care within the organisational structure and educational vision of a school. Calvert and Henderson (1998) argue forcefully for a definition of pastoral care that moves away from ‘soppy notions of loving children but allowing academic failures’. They contend that a true understanding of pastoral care must include support to help students learn more effectively. Typically this is achieved where housemasters, housemistresses and tutors are given the overview of both the pastoral and the academic development of the children in their care. Practical examples include pastoral and academic target-setting, guidance on GCSE, A level or IB choices, leading case conferences and being the main point of contact for parents on all aspects of their child’s education. Another good indicator is where PSHE programmes include guidance on learning styles and revision techniques as well as the more familiar round of ‘sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll’. Unsurprisingly, where this model is in place there is increased job satisfaction among pastoral leaders, but it often requires a reappraisal of organisational structures and assistance in the more mundane administrative and secretarial aspects of the role. This approach can also mean a redefining of the role of pastoral leaders and tutors. A starting point could be Waterhouse’s (1991) definition of tutoring as ‘intensive support given to learners, usually in small groups, which is designed to enhance the quality of their learning. Its long-term goal is the autonomy of the learner’. Roberts (2006) makes a similar point. ‘Whatever way pastoral care is delivered in schools, its overall aim is to help students develop strategies for learning and interacting, and to gain the most from themselves and their life at school. The tutor (pastoral leader) who has the ability to have a view of the student across all subjects and across his/her whole school experience, is key to this and is well placed to work with the students to set and reach goals.’ An interesting development in the maintained sector has been the shift from the pastoral leader being an emotional supporter and provider of discipline and administration to being a ‘Learning Mentor’. This trend has often coincided with the adoption of ‘Houses’, the organisational structure typically found in independent schools. As more schools become involved in partnership with Academies, as Berkhamsted

“Really?” Collegiate School is doing, this sharing of good practice may become more widespread. The synthesis of the pastoral and academic would seem to support the academic attainment of students as well as their personal development, the very thing behind their separation in some contexts. This approach is also consistent with the expectation of parents that the school should be catering for the individual needs of their child. Over recent years there has been a move towards schools appointing one deputy head academic and one pastoral. In terms of inspection, ISI reports on pastoral and academic elements separately. This is potentially at odds with the research which argues for an effective synthesis and could promote the notion of two separate spheres. What is certainly needed is clarity as to what is meant by pastoral care and the organisational structure required to make it successful. Jeremy Walker (jwalker@bcschool.org) is Assistant Deputy Principal, Berkhamsted Collegiate School. The full dissertation can be read in the Research section at www.ipd.org.uk References Calvert M & Henderson J (1998) Managing Pastoral Care, London: Cassell Gothard & Goodhew (1987) in Calvert M & Henderson J op.cit. p 29 Lodge (2006) Beyond the Head of Year, Pastoral Care in Education pp 4-9 Megahy T Managing the Curriculum: pastoral care as a vehicle for raising student achievement in Calvert M & Henderson J op.cit. pp 26-52 Power S (1996) The Pastoral and the Academic: conflict and contradiction in the curriculum, London: Cassell Roberts (2006) Whither Pastoral Care? Pastoral Care in Education pp 3-5 Wolpe A (1988) in Power S op. cit. p.2

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A beacon of light Tony Bennett reports on a new association to improve PSHE education in independent schools Personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE education) is a planned programme of learning opportunities and experiences that helps children and young people to grow and develop as individuals, as members of families and as members of social and economic communities. It equips them with knowledge and practical skills to live healthy, safe, fulfilled and responsible lives. It encourages

Drawing: Marcus Lyon. young people to be enterprising and supports them in making positive education and career choices and in managing their finances effectively. PSHE also enables children and young people to explore the complex and sometimes conflicting range of values and attitudes they encounter and to clarify and establish their own The promotion of personal and social development is a fundamental aspect of education which underpins all other learning. Going through puberty, adolescence and into adulthood is probably the greatest period of change in an individual’s life and often a period of great anxiety and stress.

Summer 2008

Students will question their body image, sexuality and relationships: they will take risks in using drugs and alcohol and in their behaviour and relationships to explore their identity. When a student is under-performing academically, the root cause is often a personal, social or health one. PSHE education helps young people to build their personal identities, confidence and self-esteem, make career choices and understand what influences their decisions, including financial ones. It enables them to recognise, accept and shape their identities, to understand and accommodate difference and change, to manage emotions and to communicate constructively. It develops an understanding of themselves, empathy and the ability to work with others, and helps them form and maintain good relationships, the better to enjoy and manage their lives. PSHE is an integral part of most school curriculums but within the independent sector it is often a relatively new department, still trying to establish its identity and raise its status. Like any new subject, it has no background that is immediately recognisable, yet much of the content has been covered by schools for many years, though not explicitly and using different methods. PSHE is most effective when it uses a wide variety of active learning approaches and provides frequent opportunities for pupils to reflect on their own and other people’s experiences so they can use and apply their learning in their own lives. These opportunities need to be carefully and professionally planned, coordinated, monitored and evaluated. Individual learning experiences are often led by form tutors or by a small team of committed teachers. Untrained teachers can feel inadequately equipped to cope with active learning approaches and uncomfortable talking about some of the sensitive and emotive issues that need to be addressed. Training opportunities are there for these teachers but are not always taken up. Similarly, running PSHE within schools is often tacked on to someone’s job description, whereas the subject requires specialist skills. Until very recently, school leaders of PSHE have felt isolated and lacking support. Some help has been there, such as the annual conference run by Theresa Homewood of Sevenoaks School via IPD, and annual meetings for Heads of PSHE held in HMC area groups, but these are small sparks of light in the darkness. These have now ignited a beacon! In October 2006 a development group was established to look into setting up the PSHE Association which was formally launched at the House of Lords in February 2007. From the outset, taking the concept of ‘Every Child Matters’ seriously, this has been an inclusive Association and I have been given the role of developing and supporting membership in independent schools. The key purpose of the Association is to raise the status, quality and impact of PSHE education by helping teachers and

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other PSHE professionals to plan, manage, deliver, evaluate and monitor PSHE provision in the 21st century. It works closely with members, developing effective practice, representing views to government, other bodies and the media, and influencing policy and perceptions of PSHE. The PSHE Association aims to be the ‘one stop shop’ for all matters relating to PSHE, including: • regular PSHE updates, information, briefing sheets and other publications; • access to current and developing PSHE knowledge and expertise; • access to criteria for, and examples of, effective practice; • a website designed to support PSHE knowledge and skills; • opportunities to network with other PSHE professionals – belong to a PSHE ‘community of practice’; • opportunities to play an active part in developing and promoting PSHE teaching and learning through action research and by gaining access to and using results and analysis of research; • a voice in national policy development; • guidance on PSHE resources, training courses etc;

• links with and learning from the PSHE CPD and Healthy Schools programmes. I’ve been in touch with a wide range of independent schools to discover any particular needs that the Association can meet. Top of the list for heads of department is moral support and peer contact: many feel lonely doing the job. A resource bank of lessons and a check on the suitability of materials before adoption and purchase are other key issues met directly by the Association. Heads often have limited knowledge about PSHE, making their management and understanding of the particular requirements of the subject less effective. For example, since PSHE is often taught by form tutors and so probably involves the majority of the teaching staff, the head of PSHE faces a significant challenge in monitoring, supporting and simply communicating with his ‘department’. The Association can help with this. If you want to know more, please look at our web-site, www.pshe-association.org.uk as some of it is open access or if you have further questions please e-mail me at ajb@wgs-sch.net Tony Bennett is head of PSHE at Wolverhampton Grammar School.

Every child matters. Summer 2008

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“I intend to develop in many directions” (Hon Gwendolen Fairfax) IPDE Trustee Barbara Armitage of Wycombe Abbey puts the Chairman, Ian McLean of Lancing, on the spot Isn’t development just a fancy name for fundraising? Not at all – though funds are raised as a result if everything else is done properly! Fundraising is the last of three key elements, the first two being alumni relations and marketing & communications. A successful development office will only be possible if these three elements are in place and fully integrated.

So it’s a fancy name for a successful appeal? No, because development is an ongoing process unlike a traditional appeal which has a start and finish date. Development is about building and sustaining relationships with members of the wider school community (which includes current parents, staff, alumni, former staff, former parents and other friends) and seeking their help and support at times that suit them.

Why do schools need a development office? As charities, schools must provide public benefit and will need funds to make more bursaries available. In addition, a good development programme will enable the school to identify and understand more of its own community and how individuals can help.

Can small schools afford it? Every school is different, so it is difficult to be prescriptive about how and when to start a development office. Not every school can afford to fund a development office in the early years before funds begin to materialise, but schools cannot afford not

Summer 2008

Wycombe Abbey.

to have some basic development principles in place and, with support from the IDPE, there are ways this can be done.

What is IDPE? The Institute for Development Professionals in Education was formed in 1999 at a time when schools were beginning to understand the difference between marketing and fundraising. Its aim is to provide support and training for those new to the profession and also to challenge those who have had some experience. The trustees are development directors from a variety of schools throughout the UK and there is a regular training programme including regional groups.

What is the difference between marketing and development? Marketing is essentially about recruitment, but the relationships with former pupils that are fostered by a good development office should not be underestimated from a marketing perspective. An effective alumni relations programme will have a dramatic effect on promoting the school by word of mouth. Of course there are separate functions within each discipline but, overall, both are about external relations and should be co-ordinated.

Aren’t we going to upset parents if we ask for money? Surely they are paying enough in fees? It is vital to acknowledge that independent school fees are expensive and that most parents are already making a major commitment. However fee income only covers the cost of

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educating the pupils and maintaining essential works, not the extra capital projects, major refurbishments or indeed funding for bursary support. There are some parents who have the ability and inclination to help who should be asked for their support at a level and at a time they feel comfortable with.

How important are the Head and governors in the function of development? Probably the main reason school development offices or programmes fail is a lack of commitment in terms of time, resources and leadership. The Head is critical in promoting the school’s aims and needs to potential donors, but the example for fundraising must be set by governors and other volunteer leaders of the development committee. A development office may not show a productive return for at least three years and so it will require a commitment to long-term investment from governors and Head.

educated before the 1960s and went on to have professional careers, did not marry. They are more likely to feel passionately about their education and have more disposable income than younger alumnae with families. Several girls’ schools will tell you that their largest donations have come from former students. Today’s female professionals are as independent and well remunerated as men, and it is vital to retain a relationship with them from the moment they leave school. That contact is not only for fundraising: these women are great role models for pupils and can provide very effective careers help and advice.

HERE&THERE

Won’t teaching staff resent the diversion of resources to development when they always need more administrative support? Of course there will always be a case for more staff throughout a school, but the development office is an incomeproducing area and an investment is required in resources to see a return. A good development programme will produce funds that will support the academic areas of the school and once these needs are identified, the development office and academic departments can often work together to achieve results.

Why do development offices cost so much? Surely raising money is simply a matter of asking for it? There is a lot more to development than just asking for money. Having a good database and research, having a strategic development plan that forms the basis of ongoing fundraising, having an alumni relations programme to engage and involve former pupils and parents, identifying and involving leadership, getting out and meeting with potential donors etc all takes time and money. Actually popping the question must be done at the right time for the right amount for the right reason! Sustained development is about building relationships and the key relationships will be with the former pupils and parents. Responses resulting in substantial support will not necessarily come quickly, although some major donors may already be known. It is important that the whole school community understands the school’s development needs and aims and then those who are interested will become more involved if asked and the support will gradually be forthcoming.

Is development worth bothering with for girls’ schools? Women don’t give to their old schools as men do. This has been the case for many years but, as many girls’ schools will admit, they have not been nearly as assiduous in staying in touch with their former students as boys’ schools have, so are somewhat behind when it comes to alumnae relations. Girls’ schools can actually be at an advantage when it comes to their older professional alumnae: many women, who were

BBC’s John Humphrys helps celebrate at Wycliffe College Wycliffe has become the only independent school in the UK to win the prestigious NACE Challenge Award across every one of the six stages of education – from pre-school to A level. NACE is the National Association for Able Children in Education and the Award was formally presented at a spectacular ceremony which showcased the talents of Wycliffe students. The event was made all the more memorable by the presence of John Humphrys from the BBC, who hosted a special Junior Mastermind competition for the pupils. He then went under the spotlight himself as the Head of the College, Margie Burnet Ward, turned the tables on him and asked him some searching questions that he might have been happy to have asked as one of the UK’s most respected journalists. The evening ended with a book-signing by John Humphrys, with all monies taken going to his Kitchen Table Charities Trust. The Trust raises money to make grants to tiny charities in the world’s poorest countries which are struggling to provide basic food and education in some of the most needy and most deserving areas in the world.

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The importance of being bloggish Julian Girdham assesses the significance of modern ICT in encouraging learning

I started teaching English in 1984 and still have my first ICT equipment. Untouched for many years, it sits in a heavy, dusty plastic box that looks as if it might house Polonium-210. I used this Corona typewriter for the first few years of my teaching career, proud of its cutting-edge ability to present notes and exams. Those mid-80s are distant technological history: in December 2007, on holiday in Rome, I stood on the Corso checking the St Columba’s English Department blog on a palm-sized iPod Touch. We started this site in the autumn term 2006. Just a little experiment, idling, tootling around on the computer, might update it every couple of weeks… We didn’t foresee that this venture would grow so dramatically far beyond the original vision – not just a blog, but a storehouse, an online magazine and newspaper, a showcase for pupils’ work, a portrait of a subject department. It’s updated almost every day in term-time and the updates come naturally. There is so much happening, so much good writing to show off, so much to share, and the blog/diary format suits the natural rhythms of the school year perfectly. At the start of this year we reached 300 ‘posts’ and calculated that in the preceding four terms we had put up 92 poems by pupils, 43 essays and stories and 117 book recommendations. On top of all this there are reviews of plays (school and professional), articles by actors in school productions, interesting items on the web, interviews, news of school events, over 120 links to really good sites related to English and much more. A crucial value of our site is what might be called ‘gathering, sharing, modelling’. We gather pupils’ writing, our own ideas and interesting things on the web; we share these with each other as well as the wider world; finally, our pupils see models of excellence. If I could go back to 1984, I’d advise my younger self to keep copies of the many top-class pieces of writing from my pupils over the years, so much excellent work now lost in the mists of pre-photocopying history. I’ve started to preserve such material more regularly in recent years, and now we have technology which is almost designed to do this. A pupil writes a story, emails it to the blog, we put it online and other pupils read it and see the level they can aspire to. It’s a speedy process too: no longer is there a wait until the school magazine is published several months later. We encourage plenty of ‘reportage’: a play is produced in our theatre, a pupil reviews it and two days later it’s online. Our audience is varied: pupils and staff of course, but also

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plenty of parents who have signed up to an automatic email service which delivers each post to their in-box, and the thousands who come to us via search engines. Does all this make us better classroom teachers? I hope not, since that would suggest a feeble dependence on technology, but it definitely has great benefits and can enhance and broaden the work we do. Just one example: we posted a YouTube video animation of a Billy Collins poem, Walking Across the Atlantic, one of our Poems of the Week. One teacher showed more of these animations to his class and discussed their presentation of the poems, and another prompted his pupils to write poetry on the idea ‘Going Places’. Then several of these poems were in their turn posted on the blog. Last year 25% of all our pupils contributed (anything from a five-line book recommendation to an 8000-word essay), as well as all the teachers in the department. It’s an eclectic and democratic space: a 12 year-old’s poem about her cat is followed by the head of department’s endorsement of Elizabeth Taylor (no, not that one). The site is a very public demonstration of our principles, our standards and our enthusiasms and it has led to contacts with other schools and English teachers all over the world. Other departments here have followed – science, maths, classics and Latin. (The latter’s cyber-motto is from Juvenal – Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cycno – time to get Googling if your Latin has slipped). Our pupils are the Bebo and Facebook generation, growing up with the assumption that they will lead and organise much of their life online. Who knows where this will end? Only a handful of years ago such technology was unimaginable and our own blog will not look the same in another five years. The pace of development of the Web 2.0 technology we use is dizzying: have a search on our site for our ‘Animoto’ videos, or the amazing ‘Issuu’ method of showing off our library magazine, The Submarine. What is certain is that we are using a powerful and exciting tool. Just a tool, mind you: what matters most to any true English teacher has to be literature and language in their myriad forms. What www.scc.english.ie has done for the English department at St Columba’s is to celebrate these forms even more vigorously and publicly. Julian Girdham is Sub-Warden and an English teacher at St Columba’s College, Dublin and can be contacted at scc.english@yahoo.ie

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Beneficial and British: charitable businesses But we need to re-learn from the current American example, says Christopher Massi Almost 450 years ago, at the height of the English Renaissance, a group of men belonging to The Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors undertook an act of great charity. Inside the festering moat and City gates of London, they founded a school for street urchins. As an act of philanthropy, it was unlike most others that came before. It was not a university to educate the elite nor was it a medieval almshouse. Unlike the most ancient schools, the donation was neither by royal nor episcopal direction, but by the burgeoning and prosperous middle class. This gift and others like it established an English tradition of giving to improve the lives of those who had less, to give them a hand up instead of a hand-out. To be sure, this gift might be seen as somewhat self-interested. Street urchins are good for crime and bad for business, but the Merchant Taylors and the other 11 Great Livery Companies could have left things as they were for poverty, disease and death to solve the problem as they always did. Instead, the Company built a school for 200 boys who could not otherwise receive an education. The Merchant Taylors bought the books, lit the fires and paid the masters. In today’s world, that would take millions of pounds and quite a few committees and it would probably garner considerable publicity. In fact, it recently did. Oprah Winfrey founded a school for girls in Africa last year using her prestige and £20 million of her own cash to make it happen. Why, 450 years on, does this current honour belong to Oprah, an American acting in Africa and not to a Brit acting in Britain? Britain, after all, gave America its educational traditions as well as one of her greatest philanthropists, Andrew Carnegie, a Scot. His considerable business sense probably offers some hint. Charity is good for its own sake, but charity is also good business for schools. Serving as a Head Master, Chief Financial Officer and Director of Development in the United States, I always included annual giving in the operating budget right alongside fee income. In the UK, voluntary support is still too rare to feature in most school budgets as a fixed source of income. Together with endowment income

Open day at Merchant Taylors’ School, Northwood. and other non-fee revenues, American schools enjoy a broader, and therefore safer, revenue stream. Any fluctuation in enrolment, annual giving, endowment return or bookstore income has less impact when income sources are diversified. Many US-based schools count on annual giving to cover 7-15% of their operating budgets. Acting charitably – offering students assisted places – benefits the students and society, but it also forces schools to operate differently. What does charity look like State-side? At the average US day school, 17% of students receive bursaries, known there as ‘financial aid’. At the average US boarding school, 33% of students receive some level of tuition assistance – one in three pupils receives a bursary. Of course, giving patterns are substantially different. The average endowment per student in an American day school is over $22,000 and it reaches nearly $200,000 per student in boarding schools. No American school explains away a lack of endowment because they aren’t as old as Eton or that they lack the necessary King’s ransom because they have no King; instead they ask their parents, friends, governors and alumni to ensure that others will have the same opportunity that each of them did. ➥

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In US boarding schools, before fees or annual giving, this school has a fully staffed development office for raising average endowment allows the school to spend about $10,000 funds, publishing newsletters and magazines, running the per student in endowment income for bursaries, field hockey, annual fund, securing legacies and raising capital gifts. or writers-in-residence or whatever the fund specifies. Plus, Finally, parent participation in charitable giving at many the average school receives $1800 per child in annual US schools will approach 100% – virtually every parent will donations. Adding it all up, the average private American contribute financially at some level to the annual appeal. The boarding school receives well over $12,000 per pupil in nonbursary families give a few dollars just as the bankers give a fee income. few thousand each year. Culturally, the UK is a long way Roughly translated, a British boarding school of 500 from approaching that level of participation because few students would need an endowment of £120,000,000 to schools have moved beyond vague one-off appeal letters. accomplish the same end. None of this is a criticism of parents or old boys/girls Fortunately, many, if not most, of the leading English societies. But the point is that Great Britain bequeathed an public schools already aim to offer substantial bursary educational and charitable tradition to its North American programmes for incoming students. Others, such as St Paul’s colonies and then seems to have dozed off. In order to School, Dulwich College and Eton College, are moving reclaim the philanthropic tradition there must be two toward a needs-blind admissions policy, provided they can transformations, one on the supply side (donors) and one on raise funds similar to those in the United States. the demand side (schools). Schools that are already both wealthy and diverse will The first change must be institutional. Schools cannot become wealthier and even more diverse as they pursue their assume that donors will somehow walk up to the window and publicly announced start dropping off capital campaigns. In bursary funds. Many the United States, a schools are not used typical independent to asking for money school might receive and have a cultural about 15% of its aversion to asking – operating income from they actively dislike voluntary and nonit. Schools need to tuition/fee support – invest in experienced charitable gifts and fundraising staff, other income. In the which is expensive but UK, that same school pays off; and to involve average is so low that their governors both in it is not a meaningful terms of planning and figure. of giving. For schools with an Only then can aversion to fundraising schools embark upon or with doubts about capital and annual their capacity to appeals with the Head fundraise, raising fees at the fore. Given will increase the enough time, measured budget for bursaries, in years not months, the schools will be able but it’s not a complete The stained glass window at Merchant Taylors’. to increase both the solution. Very few number and the amount of needs-based bursaries – and independent schools are the wealthy, walnut-panelled buildings, endowed chairs, new rugby pitches, artists-inboarding schools of film mythology. The overwhelming residence, student travel fellowships and more. majority are perfectly fine day schools with middle-class In Andrew Carnegie, Scotland gave America its first megaparents scraping together the funds to send their sons and philanthropist whose example fostered a culture of giving daughters to a good school. that today encompasses the most ordinary parents all the way These schools may have bottom lines so thin that they fail up to Warren Buffett or Bill Gates. The United Kingdom to fund their depreciation costs every year – the buildings needs to reclaim that legacy of giving at an individual level need a new coat of paint and the boiler is aged. Nevertheless, so that everyone has a stake in the outcome, not just the old fundraising should be a central focus for the Head Master and public schools. Educational philanthropy is both beneficial governors because it is likely that five percent of the parents and British. and alumni will have sufficient means to make a worthwhile response to a fundraising programme. Christopher Massi is the former Head Master There are about 1200 schools in ISC. Typical development of Seattle Country Day School. He currently serves office staffing might be one or two. Leading schools, such as as the Director of Development at Merchant Taylors' Harrow, have a staff of six or so devoted to fundraising. In the School, Northwood where he can be reached at United States, about 1145 independent schools belong to the cmassi@mtsn.org.uk. National Association of Independent Schools. Virtually every

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Public buildings, public benefit

Ancient Winchester

Charity begins at home for some independent schools The British, or is it really only the English, are famed for selfdeprecation, a virtue carried to the point of vice by a deeply ingrained unwillingness to believe that anything we do is really well done. But even the most dedicated national deprecator would be pressed not to acknowledge that in one thing, if only one thing, this country is pre-eminent and that is in the management of stately homes and their surroundings. For much of this we have the National Trust to thank, although the Trust’s stewardship of houses as opposed to land is a fairly recent phenomenon, the growth of which can be traced in the entertaining and revealing writings of James Lees-Milne. If you only have time to read one of his books, read People and Places (1992), his wonderful account of the Trust’s acquisition of 14 architectural gems, including the incomparable Stourhead. In addition to having the National Trust, we are blessed with a land mass small enough for the interested traveller, armed with the invaluable guides of Nicholas Pevsner and Simon Jenkins, to be able to cover every oak floorboard and every blade of lovingly tended grass in the houses and gardens, churches, palaces and parks which constitute a unique national heritage, uniquely well preserved. Many fine houses remain in private ownership, though still accessible to public view. Some are cared for by other agencies whose merit declines the nearer they approach central government. Our ecclesiastical buildings, a staggering architectural and aesthetic treasure trove, kept, all things considered, in amazingly good repair, remain a sufficient

reason in themselves to justify the notion of an Established Church. The Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, eloquent reminders of the monastic architectural tradition, halfway houses between church and schoolroom, nurseries of the governing class, present two cities fit to stand comparison with Venice. Whilst the Church of England suffers declining attendance, village life is merely a backdrop for Midsomer Murders and our grasp of our national identity is so shaky that right wing politicians have devised a test to demonstrate what it means to be British, the National Trust flourishes and the stately homes of England survive remarkably intact. None of these, though, is finer or more important architecturally than the ancient buildings at Eton or Winchester, buildings that are lovingly and expensively maintained and are accessible to the visiting public. The current debate about the public benefit accruing from the independent schools and demanded by their charitable status has not laid sufficient emphasis on their maintenance of listed buildings. The Independent Schools Year Book, although the same size as Simon Jenkins’s magna opera mentioned above, is not a guide book and, as it happens, some of the finest buildings of which it might boast are unmentioned, thanks to a very British modesty on the part of the marketing departments of the schools concerned. This is a pity, since this volume features the addresses of over a hundred buildings of which Baedeker would write, “vaut une visite” or which are, as Tristram

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Pugin at Bilton Grange.

Cobham Hall West Court.

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Shandy would say, videnda. They cover the whole spectrum of British Grand Design, both inside and out. Aristocratic palaces such as Stowe; municipal magnificence at Bryanston; pre-reformation monastic buildings at King’s Canterbury, King’s Ely and Westminster; country houses for the Georgian gentry at Stover or Heath Mount; the exquisite little Jacobean jewel of Hanford tucked under Hambledon Hill. The Royal Grammar School still occupies its original Tudor buildings in the centre of Guilford whilst Kimbolton is a particularly fine example of my thesis. The Duke of Manchester sold up and left behind him not just his Castle but also its contents. Here is a picture gallery of national significance, described with glowing enthusiasm by Simon Jenkins. You like picture galleries, then go to Dulwich College, where you get not only the first national picture collection but also a building by Sir John Soane. Nor is the commitment purely historical. Lancing’s stunning chapel has been a Sussex landmark for a century which, seen from a distance, seemed in no need of improvement. The present generation thought otherwise and completed the West Front around the largest Rose Window in the country, as Canon Woodard and his architect had intended. It is difficult to see a government categorising this as public benefit, but at least the Governors of Lancing are in good company with such inspired but unworldly lunatics as Henry VIth. “Tax not the Woodard Foundation with vain expense” is a plea that, even uttered by Wordsworth, would probably fall on deaf ears. How can a rose window benefit the public? How indeed? Yet members of the public seem to think it can and have an apparently inexhaustible urge to see such things. Perhaps they find them inspiring. Like the National Trust, the independent schools have a responsibility for impressive and historically important grounds as well as buildings. The gardens at Princess Helena College and at Prior’s Field were designed by Gertrude Jekyll. Bedgebury’s late seventeenth century mansion shares its estate with a Pinetum, the National Conifer Collection, whilst Trent College and Westonbirt can boast adjoining arboreta. At Claremont Fan Court, not only is there a royal association with the infancy of Queen Victoria, there is the work of both Vanbrugh and Capability Brown. At Farnborough Hill one may soak up the atmosphere of the unfortunate Empress Eugenie, widow of Napoleon III, and at Battle Abbey the violent piety of another French immigrant, William the Conqueror.

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The staircase, Kimbolton. Maintaining grounds to the high standards and high levels of labour intensity delivered by the Victorians is not easy and even the National Trust has only recently started to bring its gardens generally up towards the standards of its land and houses. But the Trust has always managed properties more distinguished for their landscape than their architecture extremely well, so it is entirely appropriate that they should have taken over three of the most magnificent of school gardens, those at Claremont, Stowe and Prior Park. One of the key factors in determining whether the National Trust will accept a property or not is the matter of endowment. It isn’t enough for a building to be beautiful: like an aristocratic family fallen on hard times, the Trust is as much interested in the financial as the aesthetic side of an alliance and quite rightly too. Most schools occupying and maintaining great buildings do so because at some time in the fairly recent past they bought them. Eton and Winchester are rarities in this respect, being every bit as much inheritors as the heirs to a family house or estate. Another unusual feature of these Colleges is the fact that their original endowment remains in place, at least to some extent, separate from the income generated by fees, providing resources for the upkeep of their ancient buildings. Quite a few schools were freed from these responsibilities by moving from their original and historic homes. Charterhouse and St Paul’s are examples of schools that still have City of London links but not buildings. The Livery Companies acted with foresight and imagination when they took so many of their schools out of the City and into what was then country. Not only could they build in excellent locations to the best contemporary specifications, they could also continue to fund education most generously from resources enhanced by the ground rents from the prime City sites that they had freed from educational purposes. Schools which bought fine old houses in, for instance, the 1930s, did so before the advent of a level of heritage

awareness which would nowadays stop such investment in its tracks by refusing planning permission for the alterations essential to turn a stately home into a school. Such schools were not, therefore, willy-nilly inheritors, their maintenance costs part of the entail, but they were and are conscientious owners with responsibilities jointly enforced by their own pride of place and the vigilance of those paid to preserve listed buildings. Stowe must be a nightmare to keep up, since eighteenth century builders were notorious for their shaky in-fillings. Bryanston, by contrast, has not shifted one of its six million bricks in over a hundred years. But roofs will always need renewing and listed buildings come with their own guardian angels, careless of cost, committed to quality. Authenticity is expensive, especially when overseen by the storm-troopers of the historic buildings brigade. Some of the schools in the ISYB have buildings fine enough to feature in Simon Jenkins’s Thousand Best Houses, including the GSA schools Westonbirt and Cobham Hall. Eton and Winchester, both displaying a gentlemanly reticence in the ISYB, are given good coverage here, as they fully deserve. And who pays for them? Not the government, not the National Trust, though their partnership with Prior Park and Stowe is exemplary. No, it’s the schools themselves, which means, in most cases, the succeeding generations of parents. Although Eton and Winchester have separate college foundations, the vast majority must use fee or conference income and make due provision in their annual budgets for the costs of maintaining ancient, listed buildings. Who benefits? The pupils, of course; the school communities, certainly; but also the general public, or at least those members of it that participate in the fine old British pastime of visiting great buildings and great gardens. In doing this they follow in the footsteps of Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Mr and Mrs Gardiner who famously visited Pemberley, or John Aubrey whose curiosity took him

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Fifteenth-century Chapel, nineteenth-century organ, twentiethcentury fan vaulting at Eton. anywhere he thought he might find a rarity worth treasuring. There are many such treasures in the famous college libraries of Eton and Winchester, the former boasting a Guttenberg Bible, which, Robert Birley’s catalogue notes, could only be found elsewhere in Britain at Blandings Castle. The man responsible for that attribution, P G Wodehouse, is remembered in the library of his alma mater, Dulwich, along with fellow Old Alleynians Dennis Wheatley, Raymond Chandler and C S Forrester. The fine collection at Shrewsbury, where Neville Shute was a pupil as N S Norway, boasts a first edition of Dr Johnson’s Dictionary, whilst the school, as distinct from College, library at Eton, the creation of Michael

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Meredith, is an inspiring example of what a school can do if it sets its mind to collecting the books of its former pupils. A trip through the IAPS section of the ISYB is still something of a journey into the past, if only for the architectural gems on offer. They come in all shapes and sizes, but one, Amesbury, can boast of being the only school designed by Lutyens, Norman Shaw is responsible for the houses at Walhampton, Holme Grange and Sussex House, Cadogan Square as well as Bryanston (HMC) and Moreton Hall (GSA), whilst Bilton Grange has Pugin for its architect. Moreton Hall Preparatory School in Suffolk is housed in ‘a fine Adam mansion built in 1773’, whilst Ashfold, Yardley Court and St Hugh’s, Faringdon, like Hanford, are Jacobean houses of distinction. Queen Anne style is to be found at Cokethorpe (SHMIS); magnificent Georgian houses at Elstree, Foremarke Hall and Heath Mount are offset by mansions such as Port Regis (Motcombe Park) and Beechwood Park. There are a good many prep schools in buildings of real antiquity – Bishops’ Palaces for Salisbury Cathedral School and The Prebendal School in Chichester, the Close for The Pilgrims’ School in Winchester and the Cathedral Schools in Wells, Bristol, Exeter and Hereford – and Leaden Hall, which occupies the house of Salisbury Cathedral’s original architect. You will find the amazing Milton Abbey, the school set of choice for any right thinking film-maker, in the SHMIS pages and, if you prefer an authentic Mr Chips, you will not be disappointed at the equally fine abbatial setting of Sherborne School (HMC). These examples are drawn at speed from a reading of the Year Book and are by no means the basis of anything other than the most cursory sketch of a remarkable collection of buildings we should celebrate. If you know of schools that should have been included, or you think you detect over or under-statements, or if, best of all, you know of modern buildings able to hold their own with these splendid examples of one of the finest features of our cultural heritage, please bring them to notice. Independent schools are sometimes criticised for playing too gentle a game in defence of their sector. There may be political explanations for this, which may even be valid in terms of the political game. But it is certain that we are not making enough of the contribution we make to the national treasury, both financially and aesthetically, by maintaining so many fine buildings that would otherwise go to ruin. Whilst the National Trust, as well as insisting on a substantial endowment accompanying every gift of buildings or land, can from time to time, as in the case of Tyntesfield, raise money by public appeal, schools must shift for themselves, which means, in prudently managed ones, a regular slice of the parental income going towards this element of maintenance costs. Some of these buildings are of the finest quality and first importance, but the only regular government support schools get is via charitable status from the Treasury, not through the heritage arm, such as it is. For this reason, if for no other, charitable status may not be without justification. It may be seen as a parallel to the grants given to those farmers who change their agricultural patterns to encourage wild life. Surely, maintaining buildings whose survival and display is clearly a matter of public benefit is worth a tax credit.

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The Diary of a Stroke In October 2005, when he was Vice Chairman of HMC and attending the annual Conference, Martin Stephen suffered a stroke. At the time, he had no idea what was happening to him. It was only later that he realised that, with only a 10% chance of recovery, the treatment he received in the immediate aftermath could make the difference between full recovery and lasting damage. In a new book, due to be published this spring, Martin Stephen tells the story of his treatment and recovery, offering a fascinating inside view on the experience of being a stroke victim. James Priory talked to Martin Stephen about The Diary of a Stroke.

observe: “We’ve made old age such a thing to be ashamed of. And we have encouraged our young to look forward, and not realise that a sane world looks forwards and backwards.” Has your attitude to age and the process of ageing changed at all as a result of your experience?

James At the beginning of the book you explain that you have written this diary to ‘save a bit of hell and give some hope’ for other stroke victims and their families. Do you feel that your book could make a significant difference?

Martin Yes. You could have poured millions into that hospital and it would have made no difference. It was management, or the lack of good management, that made that hospital a place that confirmed illness, rather than cured it. People make or break schools, just as they do hospitals. It’s why Heads are so important to schools. It’s not about structures, target setting or business plans. It’s about exciting people and getting them to work together for a shared aim. Nobody had told the potentially good people on my ward what it was they should be excited about achieving. People controlled them but they had no leadership.

Martin I’ve an allergy to the phrase ‘make a difference’. It was one of the claims made by Robert Maxwell, not my role model. The best thing that could happen would be if the book made someone feel hope who had hitherto been denied it. You can make a full recovery from a stroke, though there’s hardly anything out there that tells you that. If I’d read at the time of my stroke the books I read subsequently, there’s a serious chance I’d have given up and not bothered to try to get better. James Although you focus on the medical failure to investigate your early symptoms, what also emerges is a frustration with your carers’ lack of interest in you as an individual: “Never mind asking how I am. No one has asked me who I am, what I do when I am not lying like a sack of potatoes in bed.” How important to you was the maxim rehearsed by your father – himself an eminent doctor – that you should always listen to the patient? Martin It wasn’t so much listening, though that would have helped. It was about dehumanisation, the failure to treat the patient as a thinking and feeling person; the failure to involve the patient in the cure; the tendency to see the patient as a slab of meat. If we, as teachers, treated our pupils like this, we’d have no pupils. James Is it fair to say that the loss of dignity you recall at the time of your stroke was made worse by its occurrence in the middle of the HMC Conference? Martin It wasn’t the loss of my dignity so much as the desire to preserve it. Re-establishing myself has been easy because so few people knew at the time how bad it was. The fact that I had superb support from my chairman and governing body and have a brilliant common room was a major bonus. The key factor, though, is that in our job we’re on show all the time. Heads can’t really fudge it. Dignity cuts both ways. If I’d sensed I couldn’t cut the mustard post-stroke, I’d have resigned long before anyone started hinting. James At one point you characterise yourself as Jaques lamenting the passing of the seven ages of man and later you

Martin No change, really: age is in the mind more than the body. To the surprise of all who look at me, mentally I’m about 25. James School life is kept very much in the background of the book, but many of your criticisms of hospital care could be applied directly to educational institutions. Were you aware of any parallels?

James Loss of control is a strong theme in the book and it makes particular episodes, such as those describing your first hospital shave, training yourself to speak, like Demosthenes, with a cork between your teeth, and re-learning how to write, both absorbingly amusing and painful: ‘The pen skids all over the page. I seem to have almost no control at all. I try to write “a a a a…” The resulting squiggle is horrific, anarchic. The letters blur and I’m having trouble seeing. It’s because there are tears welling up in my eyes.’ Is there any risk in revealing so candidly such episodes? Martin My father was from Aberdeen and my mother from Yorkshire: neither region produces people who instinctively like to ‘go personal’. There’s a huge risk in any Head admitting to a time when they reverted to early childhood and were totally vulnerable: for a period of time I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t walk and I couldn’t write; we teachers reckon to have got these skills sorted by about six years old. I’ve admitted to huge weakness in this book and I agonised for over six months before agreeing to its publication, as well as showing the manuscript to my chairman of governors and asking his permission to publish it. Any staff, parent or pupil who bothers to read this book will find that, for a period of time, I was on my uppers. If anyone wants to use that against me, so be it. James Your approach to adversity in the book emerges in the form of rigorous self-testing. It is as if you are on a selfimposed training programme, adopting ‘the habit of doing a report card for each day, in my mind, of course’. Have you always been so tough on yourself and is self-assessment a necessary road to success? ➥ Summer 2008

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Martin The process I adopted to cure my stroke was unique and unprecedented in my experience and I’ve never been more pleased to see the back of anything in my life. It was a unique response to a particular crisis in my life, but I’m afraid my reaction to any Head who wrote daily reports on her or himself would be to invite them to chill out. I invented a training programme to deal with a stroke, no more and no less. Have I always been so tough on myself? No, far from it. As for self-review, we all do it, of course, but I’ve learnt a huge amount more from what people tell me about my performance than I’ve ever learnt from what I’ve told myself.

fiction, Thomas Gresham, whose philosophy is ‘stoicism with style’. Do you envisage writing The Diary of a Headship now that you have shown that you ‘do personal’ as well as fictional and critical?

James You reflect more on yourself as writer than headmaster in the diary, and find wisdom in the hero of your historic

James Priory is Headmaster of The Portsmouth Grammar School and Martin Stephen High Master of St Paul’s School.

Martin My hero had stoicism with style. I just had the stoicism. The great thing about fiction is that it’s just that, and it was alarming to find that in order to survive I had to adopt characteristics from someone existing in my imagination. I think the world should be spared The Diary of Headship unless there is a crying need for a new cure for insomnia.

HERE&THERE Enterprise award for Hymers teacher John Gravelle, head of business and economics at Hymers College in Hull, has been awarded the John Cracknell Award for Enterprise, in recognition of his huge contribution to the Young Enterprise programme. The award was presented by Alan Johnson MP at the recent Youth Enterprise Partnership Conference during National Enterprise Week. Under Mr Gravelle’s expert guidance and tuition, three companies from Hymers College have qualified for the National finals in recent years. Over the past three years, two Hymers College companies run by students have won the National Finals. Avian Enterprise, a company which sold a range of decorative bird feeders, came first in the national finals and second in the European finals in Oslo, in 2005. A third place was also achieved by Tops Off which produced credit card sized bottle openers in 2006.

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Flee Blighty and get a life! Jonathan Price undertakes a recruitment drive All the old colleagues I saw at Christmas seemed to want to retire early. “I've been to see Trevor and he says I can go in 2009. I've worked out the pension. We don't need much to live on. We've got the house in Normandy and we'll spend the winter in the flat” et cetera, et cetera. We flew back with parents – “Why is he putting up the fees again?”; Year 3s – “Hello Mr Price” – supply primary school pupil intonation – “will you read us a story?”; and members of staff – “should I renew my contract?” It was good to come back for the festivities. One needs to reconnect with the homeland once a year and Christmas is undoubtedly the best time to do that. The city was the same. House prices were still sky high, but flattening. There was a gentleness about the place, a tranquility and that inimitable historical beauty. I left the inlaws who were preparing yet more plates of food and went off to find the County Library, but it was closed and being turned into a Discovery Centre with computers. Presumably there will still be books? If I ever live there again, I shall be able to pass the time deleting offers of Viagra. The College was as beautiful as ever. The courtyards were suggestively silent. The tangled wisteria was still silently throttling the stone balustrade beneath the College clock. In my old classroom – I still have a key – someone had left a holiday essay title on the board: ‘I believe in the forgiveness of sins and the value of a liberal education. Discuss.’ Nothing much had changed. But I kept bumping into old colleagues who said the same thing. "God, I envy you! How long have you been out there now?" I tell them. Since the staff in an international school turns over every four years or so, I am always looking for new teachers. “Would you like a job?” I jest in total seriousness. They look worried, realising I mean it. We chat. One or two struggle to remember my name, but I supply the necessary clues to help them complete the conversation with dignity. Harry was very definite. He says that he is going to make a clean break. He has bought a house in the Aveyron and is going to settle there. I wonder whether he will really be able to do it. He loves the College. It has been his life. In my experience old beaks often move away at retirement only to come back again after a year or less and live just down the road. As soon as some housemaster has a nervous breakdown or no-one wants to be exams officer, they are back. They suddenly acquire a deep-seated loathing for the French and start scanning the property pages for a decent sized terrace within a mile of Alma Mater. It is nigh on impossible to leave these ancient schools. The headmaster's valedictory speech and the glass bowl inscribed ‘Snodgrass, Tadcaster College 1966-2006. He gave his all’ are not enough to sever the umbilical cord that grows back after the long years of service. Teachers who always swore blind they would never set foot in the place again are there at the annual cricket match against St Bastard’s, or in the examination hall (provided they are capable of staying awake

Go East, old man! for three hours), or perhaps in the Careers Department helping the young men to decide whether it’s to be the City or the Bar. There was something very final in what Harry said. He seemed genuinely to have lost faith in what he was doing. He said he saw a vast gulf between the values implicit in what he was teaching and those of his pupils and Modern Britain. The country was only interested in house prices, school dinners and the priapic unzippings of randy politicos. He pointed to the unmitigated tedium of the media on the forthcoming demise of Blair. Freedoms, he said, were being eroded in the name of security. Political correctness was rife and all opinions, however prejudiced, were equally valid. Britain had become money obsessed and inward looking and was being eaten away by the cancer of materialism. All this came flooding out in front of Sainsbury’s. I had only asked him how he was keeping. “What's wrong with them all?” I asked an old friend over a pint of Summer Lightning. “It’s not the College,” he said. “It's Britain. They've had enough of Blighty...” After spending the last three weeks in England, I suppose I see what he means. The Telegraph says that the city is the most desirable place to

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live in the whole country. Certainly there seem to be more estate agents than ever. In a new development, a two-bedroom ‘penthouse’ – that means the flat is on the top floor and has a large window – will set you back £400,000. Bookshops are like supermarkets – three for two, stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap. There are so many rules – every five minutes you are braking fiercely to avoid speed cameras or ducking furtively out of some all-seeing surveillance. Everyone is obsessed with housing, cars and pensions. And people are so rude. The service in restaurants is abysmal: out here waiters would be sacked for behaving like that. No one seems to be able to see anything beyond their own particular situation. And so we cling on to old nostalgias like Christmas and the College and hope the world will go away. If you ask me – and I know you didn’t – I am not convinced that retiring early solves anything. You need to go and work in an international school! You are too young to mothball the mortarboard at 58. To hang around like a ghost in the precincts of the College until no-one knows who you are is surely to join the ranks of the undead, to live in a kind of twilight world that rapidly turns into night. There is no doubt you can stay in a place too long. You need the College more than it needs you. The love is inevitably unrequited. But there's no need to retire; just move. One old

friend, after decades at the chalk face, has taken himself off to a university in Uganda. I bet he finds there an enthusiasm for mathematics such as he never experienced in Front Court in 30 years: rows of black faces in brilliant white shirts eagerly awaiting the equations that tumble evocatively from the lectern; every inequality copied meticulously from the board; a gaggle of young wranglers gathered about the podium after class, keen to discuss the finer points of analysis. In Brunei I have a lifer from an excellent British grammar school: 33 years in one place. After the interview I ’phoned his headmaster to check for skeletons. “He's been looking for a change of scene for a few years now. Don't worry. I haven't sacked him.” Stopping work is surely no solution. We might as well do something useful as we reach the nether end of the razor blade of life. No-one really retires anyway, we just stop being paid: the only real retirement is in a wooden box. Much better to drop dead doing something useful, than to nod off for ever in front of Nigella’s sensuous celebrations of the merits of goose fat. Flee Blighty and get a life! By the way, if anyone wants to send me a cv... John Price is the Principal of Jerudong International School, Brunei Darussalam.

HERE&THERE

Baroness Walmsley at King’s Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Walmsley came to the King’s School in Macclesfield to dispel what she called, “the widespread belief that The House of Lords is populated by a load of old dodderers, who go to sleep on the back benches and get paid for doing nothing”. “It is true that The House of Lords is in desperate need of reform,” said the former parliamentary candidate of Congleton. “All we have done as yet is to stop any more hereditary peers being made, though there are some 90 still left in the House. Nonetheless it is a much needed institution. “I am always delighted to see the fascination that some young people have with politics today, particularly their concern for the environment and social justice; I only wish that the same spirit I witness on my school trips was seen across wider society” she added.

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Crossing the line Stuart Haggett tells of a school where Greek and Turkish Cypriot pupils can learn in harmony The alarm rings at 5.25am: time for a quick breakfast before leaving the house in Famagusta at 6am to guarantee arriving at the checkpoint before 7am. There, ID cards are checked before joining the other Turkish Cypriot pupils on the school bus which is allowed to travel through the buffer zone to save travelling time. Normally you must cross the buffer zone on foot, past ruined and pockmarked buildings such as the Ledra Palace Hotel, still bearing the scars of battle. If the traffic allows, you should be at the English School by 7.30, in plenty of time for registration at 7.40. In the afternoons, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be away by 2 or 3pm, depending on whether there are games and activities, before the two hour return journey home. This timescale is not typical for all our Turkish Cypriot students since Famagusta is the furthest travelling point in the occupied areas, but it is important for us to remember the physical sacrifices that some of our pupils make to come here every day, quite apart from the mental strain of crossing a check-point twice daily in order to go to school. After the partial opening of the border in April 2003, the English School was charged by the Greek Cypriot Government to re-admit Turkish Cypriot pupils so that the school could go back to its pre-1974 bi-communal status when, incidentally, boarding facilities were available and widely used. After an understandably slow start in September 2003, the project has moved ahead and we now have 87 Turkish Cypriot students on our roll. The majority of these are in the younger years, taking up the 24 places on offer in our first year entrance examination; but there are students in the older years and, indeed, amongst

The English School, Cyprus. our Oxbridge successes this January, two Turkish Cypriot students have gained conditional places at Oxbridge, to our great delight. How integration is proceeding at a deeper level is less clear. What has become evident is that the school cannot divorce itself from the wider political climate. Opinions have changed since the failure of the referendum and are now complicated by the fact that we are facing another Presidential election. In my experience, schools are notoriously conservative institutions regarding all change with suspicion, particularly when older pupils feel that their establishment is changing in character. In my previous school I remember senior boys complaining that although their toilets had not been upgraded for years, now we were building smart new ones for a handful of Sixth Form girls. Offering proper provision for minorities is fraught with difficulty since they may seem to be getting more than their entitlement. In our case, there is no doubt that the government decision to offer full fee remission to those Turkish Cypriot pupils joining the school in the early years created a great deal of resentment amongst Greek Cypriot parents and, although the government has now rescinded this decision, many parents still refuse to believe that we are operating on a level playing field. So what conclusions may be drawn from our experience to date? Communication between all stakeholders in the community is crucial and nothing should ever be taken for granted. We have benefited from the advice and guidance of several interested bodies here in Cyprus and also from a visiting Fulbright scholar from Hofstra University, New York who carried out a survey on pupil attitudes and helped to set up an advisory council representing all groups, including students. This has tried to recommend procedures and policies for preparing students for their university lives in a multicultural UK, but inevitably its intentions are often called into question by those who see ulterior motives at work. Such discussions take time â&#x20AC;&#x201C; is, for instance, discrimination in the classroom an educational or a disciplinary matter and is such a distinction possible â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and we have often felt that events have overtaken us. On the other hand, even with more time to prepare, we

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might well not have anticipated some of the issues that we had to tackle cold. Many of these are inconsequential in themselves but take on iconic significance, such as the holding of commemorations and celebrations for the two main communities, the use of flags and symbols, holiday dates and even the naming of rooms. We have always taught French in the French room but some see it as provocative to teach Turkish in the newly created Turkish room. Whilst one tries to act tactfully, the sins of the fathers should not be a permanent block to progress, especially in an educational context. We have come to appreciate the overriding importance of language as a bridge between the various communities with English as the only common denominator. Traditionally tuition in the majority of subjects in the first year has been in Greek and we have needed to replicate this for the Turkish Cypriot class, which creates an unfortunate initial division, but thereafter students are allocated at random among the six classes and we have an absolute rule for all teachers that, within lessons and the classroom, English must be the sole means of communication. This rule is respected, but it is essentially impossible to sustain it outside the classroom during breaks and free time, when it is clear that the school remains predominantly Greek speaking. In the past, I am told, prefects acted as speech police during breaks and reported those students guilty of not communicating in English to the authorities, but this is hardly appropriate for the 21st century. Our extensive sporting and extra-curricular programme is becoming increasingly effective in bringing individuals together as the English School team, reinforcing our common

identity more subtly. It remains difficult for some Turkish Cypriot pupils to become fully involved in evening activities such as drama and music, given the demands of travel. Last year we unsuccessfully sought UNDP funding to set up an internet chat room which would operate in several languages, but it is encouraging that more students are now taking tuition in either Greek or Turkish. Next year we are extending our IGCSE options to include this possibility for non-native speakers of either language. We may seem to be focusing on problems rather than successes, but the lessons we have learnt about managing the process of change may be helpful to other institutions. We have learned that some things cannot happen quickly but must evolve to allow for the interests of those already in the school. Constant media attention to our Turkish Cypriot pupils, demands for interviews and site visits, does not allow them to settle naturally into the school. We want them to consider themselves as normal, happy English School pupils and, from their general behaviour and their smiling faces around the school it is clear they are integrated, committed and positive and that real progress has been made. Perhaps the most telling proof of this was delivered in November 2006 when a group of right wing thugs from outside invaded the school during break to attack our Turkish Cypriot students. Quite spontaneously Greek Cypriots gathered round to protect their classmates while others drove off the attackers. After the shock of this attack had died down, we were able to take huge comfort from this practical unity and conclude that, whilst it is neither our task nor our mission to solve the Cyprus problem, we can at least offer a message of hope for the future by educating students together in harmony. Stuart Haggett is Headmaster of the English School, Cyprus.

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Sub-continental HMC International members of the HMC are involved in the leadership and development of some highly sophisticated schools in very interesting regions. Some preoccupations are of regional interest alone – but crucial to the dissemination of a UK curriculum abroad. These schools are not just ‘flagwaving’: in many regions a UK education is still held in the highest esteem and our economic influence would be sorely compromised if these schools were to disappear. Around 9% of the UK undergraduate population is from overseas and over 30% of the post-graduate population. Given that the differential in fees for overseas students versus their home counterparts is as high as nine-fold in most cases, and even higher in medicine and certain MBA studies, the work of the international membership is of great economic importance to the UK. This article is part of a series from different regions illustrating the diversity of contexts within which HMC’s overseas heads operate, and some initiatives that may well generate both interest and participation. How did I come to be a Headmaster in India? I suppose that an international perspective was always present as I grew up – my father was the UK/USA liaison officer for intelligence in Washington DC in the late 1950s and I started school there. He had served in Sri Lanka during the Second World War and travelled extensively afterwards, spending time in Iran and Iraq as well as the USA. Following my undergraduate degree, I found myself a research associate at the Medical College of Wisconsin, thoroughly enjoying publishing research, but an existence depending upon grants and constant submissions for support seemed very impermanent. I was reminded by my better half that I really enjoyed teaching and so became involved in both secondary and tertiary sectors in the USA. On returning to the UK after 13 years I had the great good fortune to go to Sevenoaks School as a chemistry teacher and soon became a boarding housemaster amongst a plethora of other tasks. Richard Barker had a knack of summoning one, holding rather bland conversations, and then on departure, literally on the threshold, saying “incidentally, do you think you could give some time to admissions and college placement each week?” The large number of tasks I took on were a great preparation for my first post as Principal of Munich International School in Starnberg, Bavaria. It was there that I first became inspired by the influence of multicultural experiences on students and staff – a concept I never grow tired of. I received a call telling me about the opportunity to cofound a large boarding school in the middle of the Deccan in India, and so six years of thoroughly creative work began – again prompted by my wife. On chatting with my father before accepting the post, it turned out that he had been in Bangalore in 1945/46 and had loved the region. Bangalore as a city illustrates one set of a range of different characteristics you will find in working within India. The context includes the fact that your co-workers will be

Hector MacDonald and Dr Reddy, Indian Minister for Urban Development. multilingual, all speaking and writing English, but usually commanding at least two other languages from the 250-plus in the sub-continent. Your students, from the north of India, will reflect that Karnataka, the state in which The International School Bangalore is situated, is culturally southern India and thus like a foreign country to them. Students from Karnataka generally dislike Hindi as a language as it is associated with conquest by northern peoples, and so division exists amongst students whom a Westerner might simply group as Indian. These regional differences and the intricacy of the caste system are facts of life within India, based upon thousands of years of tradition, and even confer job protection – certain castes do certain jobs and there is a lot in a name. One thing all the students have in common is motivation and this may well be due to the press of population. There is, of course, no welfare state, and the only way to guarantee food is to hold a reasonable job. Students aspire to go to the very best universities world-wide and gain places on merit and sheer hard work. Do you witness boys with hands in pockets, shirts untucked, and the laddish look of ‘teach me if you dare’? Yes you do, but it all seems to be show, an international and superficial symptom of adolescence. Students really work hard as examination times loom and their eagerness and affection on all matters associated with school and their teachers knows no bounds. This is part and parcel of the ‘gurukal tradition’ and Teachers Day, established by Pandit Nehru (which means ‘Bookworm’ Nehru), is one of the nicest days of the year. Teachers have come from highly competitive educational environments themselves, and before being exposed to current process-driven curriculums have a tendency to adopt purely didactic methods of instruction. Their readiness to

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The International School Bangalore. Right: The Auditorium, which was built in four months. adopt new methods is outstanding, so very sophisticated schools can be formed quite quickly. In 2000/2001, when the International School Bangalore was established, there were only three other schools in India offering an international curriculum within the equivalent of the sixth form. There are now 33, their average size being about 700 students. The national system of education was based upon a UK model and many students aspire to attend UK universities, predominantly within the Russell Group. In Bangalore the proportion was as high as 40% of the leaving class each year. On the other hand, scholarships from tertiary institutions within the UK ranged from around £2000 per year upwards, whereas colleges based in the USA and Canada frequently granted sums in excess of £5000 per annum. A reduction in fees equal to at least 25% of tuition is not uncommon, including housing. Students leaving school in June 2006 had attracted awards worth more than £1m from universities and colleges overseas. It would be interesting to see whether UK universities will seek to attract more students by reviewing awards based upon merit. Meanwhile, in India, we face our own legislative challenges. It is now law that up to 25% of places within the tertiary sector must be given to what are called reserved

Summer 2008

castes, irrespective of ability, subsidised by every institution. Secondary schools have been watching the situation as there is a possibility that the scope of the legislation may reach the independent secondary sector. As you can see, we have much in common from governmental initiatives to the challenge of getting our pupils into Russell Group Universities! Many schools within India seek to forge partnerships with UK schools and if you are interested in making such an arrangement feel free to contact me at hsmd-@hotmail.com . As from September 2008, Hector MacDonald will be Principal of Hampshire Collegiate School.

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The Precentor’s Tale Ralph Allwood writes about a remarkable pupil

I am wary of speaking to people on aeroplanes. With the prospect of five hours when I can sit, alone with my book, and be fed, there is too much at stake. Any vestige of sunny affability gets checked in with my baggage, and I read. But I made an exception 18 months ago when the person next to me clearly had the same idea. Briefly greeting him, I settled down. He gave me a desultory grunt and nod and turned back to his book. Aha, a kindred spirit! I thought, noticing that the book anxiously waiting on his lap interested me too. So, to his thinly-disguised irritation, I started a conversation. We talked for four hours. He and his wife run Walker-George Films, making documentaries. Among his latest have been George Melly, old people forming rock bands and a punk rocker learning to conduct an orchestra. He is also a novelist: Countdown to Hiroshima, notably. After an hour or so of conversation I had an idea. We have at Eton a series of seven or so ECMS concerts each year devised and organised by senior boys and performed by boys of all ages. They are supposed to be chamber concerts, but we often make exceptions. A few weeks before my fateful flight, a boy had come to me asking to conduct the Bach Magnificat. “Oh come on, Alex," I replied, while impressed with his pluck. “I could give you plenty of pieces by Bach which would be so much easier and no less musically

satisfying”. No, it had to be the Magnificat. So, playing for time, I told him that if he could get the permission of the Head of Wind and Brass and the Head of Strings, he could do it. Hah, that’ll put paid to his idea! But two days later he came back to me with a victorious grin. Digging a feeble last ditch, I asked him if he had a boy in mind who could sing ‘Deposuit’, and did his teacher approve? Yes, yes, yes. And he produced a (draft, I pointed out) list of players and singers. Now this would be a merry little story of everyday music department cut-and-thrust if it weren't for the tragic sting in the tail. This friendly, intensely musical, intelligent and highly enthusiastic boy, Alexander Stobbs, has the ghastly lung-wasting condition cystic fibrosis. If you had met Stephen Walker and his wife Sally on one of their many subsequent visits to the Brompton Hospital or to Eton to film Alex with his friends, teachers and fellow musicians, you would have been forgiven for an impression that they were kindly aunt and uncle. Every move they made was in Alex's best interests, and they became firm friends of doctors, nurses, family and colleagues. The Magnificat, filmed in Eton College Chapel in March last year, was a triumph, and the resultant documentary was shown on Channel 4 on January 24th, 2008.

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Gravel and Stones Abingdon School’s latest film is premiered at the National Film Theatre On Friday 16th November, 2007, the Abingdon School Film Unit (AFU) premiered their latest film Gravel and Stones at the National Film Theatre on the South Bank. This was the culmination of the AFU’s most ambitious project to date.The 30-minute documentary focuses on the impact of disability on people in Cambodia, a country that, after 30 years of war, has one of the highest rates of disability in the developing world. There are more than 40,000 people limbless as a direct result of landmines and UXO, as well as tens of thousands more who are disabled in a variety of ways because of grinding poverty, illness and a range of causes arising from conflict-generated devastation. Four pupils from Abingdon School, aged between 16 and 18, filmed the documentary during an 18-day trip to the country last December.

With Um Sopha. Below, preparing to interview I Sukhat.

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The project, which took three years from planning to completion, promotes the work of Landmine Disability Support, a small UK NGO. LMDS aims to provide disabled people, in less economically developed countries and in situations of post-conflict, with support and, especially, the means to start and run their own businesses. The charity offers disabled people and those around them a chance to show that they can lead useful, productive and independent lives as members of their communities. The chairman of LMDS, Rodney Mearns, can be contacted on 01235 525387 or mearnsr@lmdsupport.org.uk The AFU was formed in September 2003 by the school’s director of drama, Jeremy Taylor. Meeting once a week, it enables roughly 30 pupils a year between the ages of 13 and 18 to devise, shoot and edit their own short films under the guidance of a team of film professionals led by the renowned documentarist and former Abingdon pupil, Michael Grigsby. In June 2004, at the end of its first year, the Unit screened three of its films at the National Film Theatre in London as part of Grigsby’s retrospective season there. Those first AFU films bore the hallmarks of Grigsby’s own compassionate approach to documentary. There was a concern for the quiet dignity of ordinary people’s lives, an eye for what Lindsay Anderson called the ‘poetry of the everyday’ and a style of editing that allowed the audience time and space in which to form their own judgements. Above all, these early AFU films showed the influence of Grigsby’s feeling for documentary as a medium that offered ‘a voice to the voiceless’. One of the AFU films dealt with the experiences of homeless people in Oxford, whilst another showed the benefits of horse riding for an autistic boy. A third gave a recovering drug addict the chance to express his views on development in Reading. To begin with, the Unit focused exclusively on documentary, partly through practical concerns about the challenges of tackling fiction (scripts, actors, lighting etc), but also through a desire to encourage pupils to engage directly with the world around them. Since then, fiction has been tackled successfully by experienced members of the Unit and has included a black-and-white film shot on 16mm film and an original tenminute situation comedy for which Paul Mayhew-Archer, one half of the writing team behind The Vicar of Dibley, joined the tutorial team. In its third year, an animation section was added to the Unit and Joanna Harrison, an animator who worked on The Snowman, took charge of this group. She encourages the students to work in the traditional ‘handmade’ forms – drawing, claymation and cut-

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Filming Mrs Kosal. out – as well as pixilation. There has also been a music wing to tackle the production of original scores for the films. The AFU has made 43 films to date. In addition to Grigsby and Harrison, tutors include Jonas Mortensen (cinematographer), Mikkel Eriksen (sound designer), Arvid Eriksson and Nikolaj Larsen (editors) and Geoff Dunbar (animator). AFU films have been screened at the NFT in London, at the Dinard Film Festival in France and the Buff Film Festival in Sweden. A number of the films have won awards, including the award for best young person’s film at the Oxdox International Film Festival, and best film at the New Shoots Festival. The Unit is currently developing partnerships with other schools in the UK and abroad. Please visit www.abingdonfilmunit.com or jeremy.taylor@abingdon.org.uk Gravel and Stones captures the experiences of three disabled people living with the consequences of their impairment – poverty, discrimination and exclusion – but facing up to the challenges with humour, resilience and determination. Kosal, a teenage polio victim, earns money by singing at the local market; Um Sopha is a 22-year-old woman who, despite losing both her legs through disease, dreams of becoming a dancer; and Chiang Yin is a 50-year-old landmine victim. Chiang Yin, despite losing both his legs during the war and being forced into an arranged marriage by the Khmer Rouge, has learned to walk on his hands so he can scratch a living from the soil with a wife he has grown to love. The documentary takes its title from a phrase used by the young boy Kosal, who, when asked to describe how he copes, said, “I am just putting up with it, living with the problem for the time being. It’s like eating gravel and stones.” There is a cultural stigma to disability in Cambodia. Buddhists view it as a sign that the disabled person's ancestors

did wrong, and regard it as part of the burden one carries as a form of karma. Partly through the influence of this general view, it remains law that no one with a disability can become a teacher in Cambodia, although there are signs that this will change. Nevertheless, a disabled person can still be regarded as nonproductive and a waste of precious resources in a country where food is scarce and basic survival is already difficult. In the film, Kosal tells how one day his step-father threw his bowl of rice away and shouted at him that a dog with four legs deserves food, but a dog with two legs is useless and doesn't deserve any, so he should not even think about being fed. The pupils from the AFU who made the documentary (of which a clip may be seen on www.abingdon.org.uk/go/gravelandstones) were Edward Hofman, Tom Wakeling, Andrew McGrath and Ben Hollins. Ben, who is now an upper sixth form pupil at Abingdon, says of his experience, “It was both chilling and wonderful; chilling because we were surrounded everywhere we went by mementos of an unimaginable war and genocide; wonderful because we at last saw for ourselves that behind its shocking past and difficult economic situation, there is a people who can be warm, quick-witted and hard-working and who will accept us, without prejudice, into their homes and tell us their histories with honesty and candour. We all forged friendships that will not be easily forgotten.” The AFU, together with the pupils, parents, staff and Old Boys of Abingdon School, raised all the necessary funds to send the expedition to Cambodia through events such as concerts, a dragon boat competition, a whole school sponsored walk, a re-enactment of the 1966 World Cup Final and a special show at the Lyric Theatre in London. Geoff Dunbar presented an evening of his films and donated a signed copy of his and Sir Paul McCartney’s new book, High in the Clouds.

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A Herefreudian look at the Aristophallic Siobhan de Souza reports on a fledgeling theatre company with a mission to bring Greek drama to the 21st century “What would be absolutely perfect”, says Sally McCamley, Head of Stoke Prior Primary School, who has bravely rung up to investigate the suspicious promise of something for nothing, “is if every child in the school could experience something of Greek drama”. I record the details on one of the increasingly crowded scraps of paper covering the desk, as though the classics department at Hereford Cathedral School deals with similar requests every day of the week. Three classes, covering 70 pupils aged from four to 11. Yikes! “Our theme this term”, she adds, “is Special People, so it will be wonderful to have some really Special People coming to see us”. “It’s funny you should say that…” That is, arguably, exactly what kaloi k’agathoi means. Or at least, some five years after the christening, we’re still arguing about the interpretation: The Cool Gang, The In Crowd, The A-Listers, The Gentle Folk or, as Simon who mocked up the logo for us insists, The Beautiful and the Good. I can’t quite bring myself to agree. It’s what the snobs in Socrates’ time called themselves; the glitterati meet the intelligentsia. As an educator, I should no doubt be happy that a room full of past pupils are happy to hold their own for half a decade on a detail of translation, but sometimes I wish I’d never mentioned it. What I have no doubts about, however, is how happy I am that a room full of past pupils is scratching its head over plans to share some of their undoubtedly privileged classical

education with local primary schools. Kaloi k’agathoi is a fledgeling theatre company with a mission to bring Greek drama to the 21st century. Born in the classics department at Hereford Cathedral School, the venture was originally pupilled and the aim at first simply to bring to life the texts pupils were studying and have a good time. When Lorna Hardwick, director of the Open University’s project on modern reception of Classical drama, came to interview pupils after one of their early productions, the young director, asked why they were doing it, looked surprised. “Because we can”, he said, as though it were obvious. Later, those same pupils, now out in the wider world, collaborated with current pupil enthusiasts – not just classicists, but artists, technicians, musicians, comedians, writers, costumiers and composers. Their first productions were based in the school theatre and aimed largely at our own pupils and those of other schools: Euripides’ Elektra in 2002, Aristophanes’ Frogs in 2003, Menander’s Dyskolos (also 2003), Euripides’ Hippolytus (2004), Medea and Bacchae (2005), Sophocles’ Philoctetes (2006). Most recently, Aristophanes’ Clouds (2007) was on a grander scale, and went on what I noticed billed on a subsequent UCAS form as an ‘international tour’. “Abergavenny – London – Hereford”, the

HERE&THERE Airport attracts Ardingly chess pieces! Students from Ardingly College, near Haywards Heath, transformed Shoreham Airport into a secret landing strip in the Far East as part of their recent production of the popular musical Chess. Three members of the cast taking part were whisked off to the airport to film scenes as part of the musical which was staged at the College earlier this week. Harriet Smith, Dan Osbourn and Stewart Russell played out the scene at the local airport in which Svetlana is flown in to upset the Chess Championship. The production had a cast of over 50 with Florence, the part played originally by Elaine Page, being taken by Pandora Long.

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Drawing: Nick Adam, Alleyn’s School.

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Adult Aristophanic Tug of Peace. young lady pointed to a recent flier when I queried it. “Wales is another country…” The workshop idea came about accidentally, in the deepest sense of the word. In 2006, while the company was taking on a life of its own and incorporating into one of the government’s newly invented non-profit-making Community Interest Companies, real tragedy took the place of literary. One of our founder members, secretary, and dear friend, Edward Tomlinson, died in Beirut of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty water heater. On his bedside table was his Greek lexicon and an open copy of Aristophanes’ Clouds which he was translating for our summer production, booked for the Three Choirs’ Festival Fringe. Instead of the play, we held a series of three community workshops in his memory. Eddie, agreed Heather Tomlinson, his mother, would have wanted to share the privilege of his education (he had just graduated in Classics from St John’s College, Oxford, where he was President of the Union) with everyone. No-one was quite sure what to expect (least of all the company) at the debut class: Free and Gratuitous, or a Herefreudian look at the Aristophallic. But the boisterous success soon showed that this was the way forward, or, as we say to each other when the need arises to justify any excess, iqve – id quod voluisset eduardus: it’s what Eddie would have wanted. Since then the company have worked with a diversity of humanity, from the metropolis to the Welsh Marches, through every school year group up to A level classics and drama pupils, and beyond, to the classics PGCE students of KCL and the wider public – including a gig at Chickenstock, a charity music festival in a field near Malvern, where the Sunday afternoon crowd had been relaxing in the June mud since Friday night and proved an unexpectedly receptive audience. Most gratifying of all was a week’s worth of sessions for local schools, free at the point of delivery, thanks to the generosity of Hereford Cathedral School. The partnership between the company and the School has been key to the venture throughout. Headmaster Paul Smith is happy to lend me out for the day here and there to join the team of Old Herefordians, which keeps costs down on the facilitator front. Impressed by the success of this pilot week, the Oxford Classics Outreach Project is now offering grants to schools for pupils of any age to cover up to half the costs of a workshop.

The key to a good workshop, as to any good learning environment, is give and take – or, as we say in the trade, inter-activity. As we found out when we took a workshop performance of Clouds up to the Outreach programme of Liverpool University’s School of Classics, hosted by a Catholic girls’ school where one of the teachers held her hands over her ears as she rocked with laughter, the only thing more exciting than watching a really good production of Aristophanes is being part of it. We also found out that no-one has yet proved too young to understand, without the need for explanation, the principles of drama. Tragedy is the art of turning myth into drama. The timeless motifs and lessons of the ancient stories still ring true. As a grief-stricken Daedalus sheds tears to a few plaintive chords from a school piano (specially tuned in his honour) over a drowned Icarus, 16 tiny rescuers abandon their imaginary wings, launch themselves onto the corpse and resuscitate him roughly but effectively. One young lady – obviously, despite her four summers, second in command only to the Headmistress and falling naturally into role as Leader of the Chorus – steps up to address the protagonists with authority. “It’s all right!” she says, urgently, clutching Daedalus firmly and authentically by the beard. “We’ve dragged him to the shore and he’s promised never to do it again.” What price Aristotle? Siobhan de Souza is Head of Classics, Hereford Cathedral School and Education and Schools’ Liaison Officer, Kaloi k’agathoi.

The Fall of Icarus, after Breughel.

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Fringe benefits Peter Fanning gives advice to those planning a production at the Edinburgh festival It is that time of year again. The mowers roar in garden plots, sap rises and blue birds sing. The heart sings too, for with the spring come summer thoughts and memories of Edinburgh, that four week Fringe carnival where dwells the faithful heart. Dr Johnson declared that ‘the greatest sight a Scotsman ever sees is the highway that leads him to England’, but for many of us the reverse is true. The M6 is the Yellow Brick Road that leads us Over the Rainbow to the Athens of the North, the high road to the Fringe. For 15 years John Moore, director of music at Shrewsbury, and I, along with a band of loyal friends, have travelled this dangerous highway. We have encountered heartache, hazard and injuries of every kind; burns and scars and broken noses; actors unable to act and singers unable to sing. We have seen our shows threatened by total disaster, technical failures and acts of God. Picture the scene – the dress rehearsal: the fire officer has arrived demanding to see our pyrotechnics. The rehearsal comes to a grinding halt while a panic-stricken stage manager attempts to connect the relevant wires. We wait for 40 minutes. I lie on the stage and meditate. Still no pyro. We decide to abort; the fire officer departs – and the spark suddenly connects. A resounding bang and a plume of smoke activate the fire alarm for the entire building. Everyone is ejected and we wait disconsolately on the pavement for the fire brigade to come and check that all is well. Precious minutes drift away. The firemen arrive and give the all clear. We pile back into the building only to find that the power backstage has failed. The show cannot go on until we rectify the fault. The dress rehearsal has to be abandoned halfway through and we adjourn to the nearest pub to re-group. We have seen worse: rows and resignations; loss of all our microphones; the sudden disappearance of a venue manager who had his hand in the till. On one occasion, our van full of lights and scenery was arrested and impounded by the Cumbrian police at three in the morning. In terms of near calamity, the Fringe beats any extreme sport, which is maybe why we go on, year after year. Because, without question, the Fringe is also the greatest theatrical festival in the world. With 400 companies and nearly 2000 productions, the chance to shop-window your own contribution is one that can’t be missed and to set yourself up against the very best is quite a challenge. You are judged by results, not loyalty. Fringe critics can be icily cutting about ‘school shows’. Catty ‘one-star’ epigrams demolish below par productions, so winning a ‘five-star’ review from a critic who has already watched six or seven shows that day is something to write home about. After a Fringe success with a musical in 1993, Alex Went, John Moore and I hit upon the idea of writing our own shows. Our first adventure, Jekyll!! won a coveted Fringe First (the

The Time Machine. Fringe equivalent of an Oscar) and all the shows since then have earned good reviews. We start the shows at Shrewsbury the previous November, rehearsing at breakneck speed, with the cast learning lines and notes and improvising moves in one fell swoop – a fine educational experience. This year we are staging Harry! – our post-modern take on Hamlet, set in a cardboard box factory, with plenty of real magic and theatrical illusion. Will it work like the others? The band kicks in. Giant squids of cable trail around the theatre; the musical director cannot see the stage or hear the actors; we cannot hear the band; but, as the lights fade on the final number, the audience cheer – and the real work begins! An army of 70 or so – cast, technicians, band and staff – is to be transported, lock, stock and scenery up to Edinburgh; a venue booked; publicity handled; feeding and housing, dressing and staging – all within impossible limits of time. Tempted? Try this ten tip check list! 1 Is your show any good? 2 Can you afford it? 3 Contact the Fringe Office (www.edfringe.com) or go to the open meetings for advice of every kind. 4 Plan far ahead – accommodation needs to booked nine months in advance and some venues are receiving applications before Christmas. 5 Don’t be over ambitious – go for a venue which you think you might reasonably fill. 6 Visit the venue – check the measurements – don’t leave anything to chance! 7 Keep the set and the staging simple. ➥

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8 Book to play for at least a week: if you get a review you won’t benefit if the show has already closed. 9 Plan your publicity now: you have to sell the show before and during the Fringe. 10 Hope for the best – expect the worst – and have a wonderful time! We generally book university flats and we make sure we have sponsorship. Without very careful budgeting, a trip to the Edinburgh Fringe is a surefire way to ignite the bursar. Finding a venue is like playing poker – it’s largely a question of keeping your nerve. Unless you’re already a household name, you’re unlikely to find a welcome in many of the posher venues. Publicise your show with 20,000 flyers minimum. Average audiences on the Fringe vary from zero to 21, so, if your hall holds 150, you need to work like blazes. With shows running without a break from breakfast time to 3am and only 15 minutes to get your show in – and 15 to get it out again – keep the set simple. Book your transport; find staff prepared to give up three weeks of their summer holiday; and, when you finally arrive amidst a throng of eager faces, find food to sustain the army – endless trips to the cash and carry.

You need to contain them, keep them sober – and let them loose to sell their show along with the jugglers and fire-eaters in the carnival life of the Royal Mile. It’s a round the clock existence, which relies above all else upon having a group of experienced adults whom you like and trust. After breakfast with them, start the day with a full company briefing, planning ahead and tracking in detail all the pluses and minuses of the previous night. Problems? Yes there are always problems – they merely vary in size and tone. Maybe your car has been towed away, or maybe your bike has been stolen; the radio frequencies on the mikes may have been tampered with; or somebody’s broken the scenery; or lost the key to the van. But the highs and the thrills and the energy and excitement of the company – that old fashioned sense of camaraderie – these are hard to beat. The surprise and joy if you manage to pull things off is quite extraordinary. ‘This Company sets new standards for any other musical that wants to brave the Fringe’, ran one recent Scotsman review. Ah, but that was in another country – now there’s an idea – a musical version of The Jew of Malta. I must get onto John Moore… Peter Fanning is Senior Master of Shrewsbury School.

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Yorkshire schoolboy collects South Bank Show award Yorkshire schoolboy George Longworth was among the winners at the South Bank Show’s annual awards ceremony, screened recently. Fourteen year-old Leeds Grammar School pupil George, from Harrogate, played one of the leading roles in English National Opera’s recent production of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw. The production, directed by David McVicar, won the South Bank Show award for Best Opera and George was among those who stepped up to the London stage to receive the award. Just two-and-a-half years ago the only singing George had done was in the school choir. He wasn’t even a big fan of opera. All that changed when his big sister entered him for the BBC New Talent competition along with 25,000 other young hopefuls. Since then, George’s singing career has snowballed. He is now concentrating on his GCSEs but music and performing are sure to continue to be a big part of his life.

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HERE&THERE BOOKREVIEWS

Books for review should be sent to the Editor, Tom Wheare, 63 Chapel Lane, Zeals, Warminster, Wilts BA12 6NP

Heads: Expert advice for changing times Edited by Brenda Despontin and Nigel Richardson Published for GSA & HMC by John Catt Educational Ltd ISBN 978-1-904724-49-0; price £12.50 This is a very timely collection of essays about leading independent schools in the 21st Century in which 15 effective practitioners offer their expert advice on headship covering a whole range of areas including managing staff, appraisal, parents, the curriculum, governors, pastoral care, finance and boarding schools. There are also interesting chapters on development and fundraising, marketing and public relations, whilst the first 100 days and early stages of headship are also considered along with a helpful chapter on ‘looking after yourself’. The book provides very useful advice, guidance and insights based on the authors’ many years of experience and obvious expertise in school leadership. As the National College for School Leadership says for the state sector, leadership development and succession planning have never been more important. It makes reference to the demographic ‘time-bomb’ which, it is argued, needs defusing, and part of the answer to the challenge of filling headship vacancies is to question the time it takes to become a head and to make the job an attractive option. We are in need of more people who see school leadership, especially headship, as their preferred career choice. In both the state and independent sectors much attention is currently being given to leadership succession and the attraction of the next generation of school leaders. As stated in the Introduction to this collection, application for headship posts in the independent school sector are fewer than in the past and a cross-Association leadership initiative is being considered to train and secure future school leaders. This is to be welcomed and much needed for the sector. Leadership development in our schools is key and we need to ensure we have the correct balance between on-the-job opportunities for development and off-site training courses and accredited programmes. We know from research into school leadership that most leaders make reference to the former – workplace learning – as being a key factor in their own learning and development. Off-site training and development are important too and can create those opportunities for reflection which often are so difficult to find time for in the hurly-burly of daily school life.

The essays aim to celebrate and recommend headship. The collection does this very well but it is not seen as a definitive guide, rather it hopes to encourage those contemplating headship to proceed with their job applications. It also wishes to reassure those already in post that what they do is crucial not only to future generations of our children but also for the next generation of independent school leaders. Michael Fullan, the well known leadership guru, draws on the work of Jim Collins to say that the success of school leaders should be measured in how many leaders they have developed and left behind who can go further than they did. What kind of heritage heads leave is a good question and this highly accessible book raises some interesting issues about the nature of modern headship. Ultimately its tone is very positive, which accords with research into headship which finds consistently that heads themselves see it ‘as the best job in education’! Professor Peter Earley London Centre for Leadership in Learning, Institute of Education, University of London.

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BOOKREVIEWS

Foundation on a Hill

A signal moment in the lifetime of St Edmund’s School, Canterbury came with the publication of Foundation on a Hill, its history, compiled by one of its most faithful servants, Jock Asbury-Bailey, (1953-1989). A former acting Headmaster, second master and housemaster, Jock is uniquely placed to give an overview of St Edmund’s. This he does with some style. Taking in an account of the earliest years when the clergy orphans were sent to a private academy in Thirsk, through its time in London, to its present hilltop location in Canterbury, the author lovingly details the vicissitudes of a minor but much loved public school. There have been times when it almost sank without trace but it survived under the guidance of some inspired headmasters and – something that emerges very clearly from the well-judged and well-researched text – some outstanding, often long-serving staff, such as the author, many of whom Jock knew personally. The story begins in 1749 with the formation of a Society for ‘Maintaining and Educating poor Orphans of Clergymen until of age to be put to Apprentice’. There was no money for

building or buying a school and why Thirsk was chosen remains shrouded in mystery. The first man in charge, the author suggests, may have been Revd Anthony Routh, Vicar of Thirsk before Revd Daniel Addison, who took responsibility in 1762. The ‘academy’, as it is referred to in The History of Thirsk by J B Jefferson, was likely to have been in Castle Gate and home to about 20 boys. The first recorded is John Pyrke, later ‘apprenticed to Mr Bromwich, paperhanging maker, Ludgate Hill’. Others were ordained, one went to Oxford and one to Cambridge in these early years before the school moved in 1798 to Silton Hall in the nearby parish of Leake, now privately owned – poignantly, the old school bell can still be seen! The Yorkshire years had been hard. Six pupils died, money was scarce (it eventually rose to £24 per annum per pupil) and the school barely survived. That it did was due in no small part to the heroics of Daniel Addison the Younger, who personally delivered 26 boys to Acton in London in 1804 and the beginning of what was to become the Clergy Orphan School. Personally, I enjoyed the 19th century history most. The

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first-hand accounts are vivid: one explains the elaborate signalling system boys used to maintain contact with the girls next door in St John’s Wood. Wall tapping and kite flying give some inkling of the ingenuity! School food, the dubious dish of ‘lobscouse’, and sneaking a view of cricket next door at Lord’s, provide fascinating observations – while the bullying and physical punishments remind the reader of Dickens’ worst visions. But, as with all things Victorian, there was a brighter side and the famous figures of Dr Samuel Warneford (benefactor of a famous Oxford Hospital) and Mr Joshua Watson, who persuaded the former to invest his wealth in the current building, helped secure the move to Canterbury. In those days the cook earned £16 a year and the school once bowled King’s Canterbury out for ten runs! Among other highlights are some splendid photos – and not just of august men with beards – showing the old layout of the school, with the stage where an oddly elevated house room is today; and ‘Big Dorm’, reputedly the largest in England, spanning the skyline. Great sportsmen merit mention too: E G Cuming, who took an astonishing 124 wickets at 4.9 runs each in 1888; Stuart Townend, accomplished athlete at the Empire Games of 1930 and later Prince Charles’s headmaster at Hill House Prep School in Kensington; Robin Jackman, the England cricketer, and, poignantly, the late Ian Taylor, killed tragically in 2007, athlete and Olympic hockey player in Rome (1960), Oxford graduate and musician and perhaps the greatest St Edmund’s all rounder. There are moving sections on St Edmund’s in both world wars, where losses were heavy, and justifiable tributes to eminent Headmasters such as Revd Canon W F Burnside (1908-1932) who enhanced the school’s academic standing considerably. I enjoyed the account of Benjamin Handley

Geary’s Victoria Cross – and the resulting award of a captured German cannon – while the traditions of early morning swims, air raid shelters under the classroom block and the wartime escape to Cornwall all make rewarding reading. St Edmund’s may be one of England’s smaller schools but it has supplied at least one Headmaster of a ‘great school’, B M S Hoban, who went on to Harrow, and who was said to have been most happy in his Canterbury appointment, and several celebrated actors and musicians. Orlando Bloom and pianist Freddy Kempf from the 1990s are now internationally celebrated figures and older readers will recall Rev Roger Royle from radio and television. Who knows what future talent may emerge, especially perhaps from Choir House, the School’s outpost in the Cathedral precincts featured in a recent television series, where the Canterbury Choristers board. However, the most lasting impression from this history is one of the extraordinary loyalty St Edmund’s commands – from some eminent teachers, and from former pupils and their families such as the Hoppers, who have been part of life for ‘all but 18 of the last 62 years’. The former chairman of governors, John Todd, praised the book’s ‘addictive’ qualities, qualities not just for insiders: there is much engaging social history here for a wider readership. The author has done an excellent job of winkling out information wherever it has been available. Indeed, with its highly readable text and immaculately researched facts and figures, Foundation on a Hill provides both a superlative record of the school and a most enlightening read. Jon Dagley is Head of English at St Edmund’s. The book is only available by print-on-demand and cannot be obtained through bookshops. Further information is available from St Edmund's School, St Thomas' Hill, Canterbury, Kent CT2 8HU; telephone: 01227 475600; email: info@stedmunds.org.uk

End piece

A spell at Hogwarts For two days Harry and Ron – not forgetting Professors Snape and McGonagall – visit The King’s School, Gloucester No two days in a school are ever the same, but in my (not so very lengthy) experience as a Head Friday, 8th February would definitely count as an unusual day. Beginning with an unexpectedly bountiful cooked breakfast out of a long, silver van parked against the side of Gloucester Cathedral, I certainly felt well and truly fortified for the day ahead. And what did it bring? A scowl from Professor Snape himself (alias the great Alan Rickman) as he hurried past the Chapter House to the mobile toilet; a wintry smile from Professor McGonagall (alias the extraordinary Maggie Smith) as she stood regally amidst a heaving and giggling crowd of our Year 9 girls in their long Hogwarts gowns; a glimpse (through a mullioned window) of Harry Potter himself (alias the unexpectedly diminutive Daniel Radcliffe) walking round and round the Cathedral courtyard fountain and apparently muttering insistently to himself. “What do you think’s bugging him?” I naively asked one of the gofers, wondering if the scar on his forehead was

troubling him again or whether he was practising one of the three forbidden curses before yet another encounter with the fiendish Voldermort. “He’s just learning his lines,” said a passing eavesdropper, which struck me as eminently sensible when you have to perform your ‘scenes’ in front of hundreds of people who are looking forward to their (overdue) lunch break and expect you to deliver your lines in take after take with the same relentless professional élan. Friday, 8th February was certainly a memorable day, but for all of us at The King’s School, Gloucester, just one part of a much longer process. Sixteen days before the celebrities appeared to film what will probably amount to no more than two or three minutes of finished film, the first lorries arrived to begin the business of setting up. Marquees were established on our two much prized hockey pitches at the front of the school. Heating and lighting equipment and water tanks followed and in a short time it was only barely possible for parents to drop their children off in

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A nice bunch of kids. the usual place at the beginning of the school day. In time, too, we began to adjust to the yellow-jacketed security men and women in our midst – just as we also got used to walking around our school by strangely circuitous routes. And, of course, the Cathedral, which is where we normally gather for Assembly every morning and where the main filming was centred, became a place to wonder at all over again as it slowly filled up with scaffolding, lights, electronic desks and monitors – a little as if some part of Air Traffic Control at Heathrow Airport had been lifted up and sent back through time to inhabit the ancient cloisters where our pupils paraded like the monks of old! And this, obviously, was the core of the experience of being in Harry Potter from our point of view. When we heard that The Half-Blood Prince was to be filmed at King’s Gloucester, we were delighted; but we were ecstatic when we heard that nearly 200 of our pupils would be needed as extras. Certainly they would be missing two days of lessons in a crucial term, but there is education and then there is Education – and this, we believed, would count as the latter. Watching two of the stars of the film, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint, spend ten minutes of their precious free time talking to two of our year 7 pupils who had been selected because they bore a close resemblance to the young Harry and Ron – you could definitely say that they were learning that celebrities do not exist solely in Celebrity Heaven.

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In fact, the stars’ down-to-earth charm was so down to earth that the two King’s pupils didn’t, for a moment, know how to react, as if Daniel and Rupert were simply concealing their powers and would, with a wave of their plastic wands, turn back into Harry and Ron in an instant. And so, thinking of the staff who were also involved, what did we learn? We have had the chance to practise skills that even the best Staff Inset will not cover, such as negotiating with film people, coming up with quick solutions to seemingly impossible logistical problems and how to carry on functioning as a school in the face of the pupils’ and, let’s face it, our own rising excitement. And what did the vast team from Warner Brothers learn about us? Considering that the filming at Gloucester Cathedral amounted to no more than ‘Shooting Day 87’ and ‘Shooting Day 88’ on a seemingly infinite series of filming days – and considering too that The Half Blood Prince is but one film in a sequence of seven – it would be reasonable to think that they didn’t learn much. But, as I heard one member of the crew say to another, “They’re a b****y nice bunch of kids, aren’t they?” – it was good to be reminded. The pupils at King’s are a nice bunch of kids – and, language aside, it was nice to have it so succinctly confirmed. Alistair Macnaughton is the Headmaster of The King’s School, Gloucester.