Spectator independent schools supplement March 2014

Guide to Independent Schools March 2014

Stephen Robinson • James Delingpole • Sophia Martelli Will Heaven • Ross Clark • Ysenda Maxtone Graham

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Class distinction Who can afford private education these days? The fees are so astronomical as to seem out of reach to even the most upwardly mobile members of the middle classes. Private schooling is widely considered to have become another exclusive luxury for the super-rich, like yachts or jet planes. The reality is different, however. Of the roughly 620,000 private pupils in this country today, only a fraction are the children of oligarchs and hedgefunders. Most fee-paying parents are normal people with good but not spectacular incomes who have decided to be less comfortably off for a few years in order to give their children the best possible start in life.

This guide aims to show that the manifold advantages of a good private education are still available to those of us not blessed with a great fortune.

On page 11, Will Gore looks at new ways in which elite schools are becoming more affordable, Anita Belman discusses the ‘state till eight’ (and private school thereafter) fad, while Ross Clark examines whether technology can open up access to high-quality teaching for ever greater numbers of people.

Sophia Martelli shops around at the Independent Schools Show and, just in case you thought we had forgotten them, Stephen Robinson asks what foreign billionaire parents actually expect from a British school. There’s plenty more, so enjoy reading, and look out for our next independent schools supplement in September.

Editor

Freddy Gray

Teaching in the cloud Ross Clark

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Choosing a university Carola Binney

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School architecture Lara Prendergast

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On discipline Sophia Waugh

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Drawings

John Jensen Supplied free with the 15 March 2014 edition of The Spectator

Going free Will Heaven

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The pony goes too Camilla Swift

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A head speaks Celestria Noel

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Take the red pill James Delingpole

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In search of value Will Gore

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Boarders with bling Stephen Robinson

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State till eight Anita Belman

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Independent Schools Show Sophia Martelli 32

Teacher fashion Ysenda Maxtone Graham

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A guide to Easter revision courses

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Teaching without teachers The e-learning industry claims to be the future. Is it? By Ross Clark

W

hen I was ten, a box full of laminated cardboard worksheets arrived in my primary school classroom. This, our teacher informed us, was a ‘reading laboratory’. We were each to take one of the sheets, read the passage on the front and then answer the questions. Finally, we were to mark our work ourselves using the answers on the back, all without any input from her whatsoever.

I don’t know whether she felt threatened by it — she seemed more concerned that we might dog-ear the worksheets, which would be terribly serious as the boxful had cost £56, an enormous sum in 1976. But she might have been terrified to know where it would all lead. It was an early experiment in teaching without teachers which would culminate, 40 years later, with e-learning.

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It isn’t hard to find evangelists for the concept of teaching children by computer. In Britain there is the e-Learning Foundation, a charity which helps schools set up computer-based teaching programmes as well helping to supply tablets and internet access for children.

There are companies like Cambridge-e, set up by a sixthform college in Cambridge to offer video-conferencing in subjects such as Latin and AS maths in schools which lack the right teaching staff. Supplying materials for e-learning is a massive global industry.

Practising what the e-learning industry preaches, I took to the internet to find out a bit more. I found a study led by Dongson Zhang at the University of Maryland which compared the performance of two groups of students. One lot were taught via traditional lectures, the other were taught via lectures on a computer which could be stopped, started and reviewed. There was also

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a text-based forum for students to ask each other questions. In the first test the traditionally taught group scored 9.24 out of 15 and the e-learning group 10.88.

Against that, I found a study at St Mary’s Academy in New Orleans, a private school for girls, predominantly black. They were given a three-week teach-yourself Microsoft Word course, supported only by a book, followed by three weeks in the classroom. Eighty-four per cent of them reported that they found it harder to learn when left by themselves — confirming what most of us already know: that Microsoft’s manuals might as well be written in hieroglyphics.

But nothing caught my eye quite so much as the parsimonious Mr Russ S. Hart, principal of Gibault High School in Waterloo, Illinois, who has hit upon the idea of teaching children over the internet on snowy days when they can’t get into school. Do that, he says, and you don’t need to make up for lost days at the end of the school year. ‘We’re saving a lot of money,’ he tells the US publication Education Week. ‘Because we’re not making up the days in May, that’s five days we’re not sending out buses to pick up students; we’re not paying maintenance and janitorial staff those days; heating is much lower than normal; and we’re not using all those supplies, like soap and toilet paper, that we would on a normal day.’

You are not just saving on toilet paper, Mr Hart. Not having pesky children around the school means fewer scuff marks on the stairs, less smoking weed behind the bike sheds, fewer kids being held upside down with their heads in the lavatories, less risk of the headmaster’s car being sprayed with paint stripper, fewer groping opportunities for pederast schoolmasters, and just about every­ thing else that can go wrong in a school. In fact, why not go the whole hog and close the school down altogether and flog off its site for a bowling alley and drive-thru and instead just give every child a computer and let them get on with it?

If you think this is just me being cynical, perhaps you haven’t heard of Sugata Mitra and his concept of selforganised learning environments. Mitra is professor of education and technology at Newcastle University but previously worked in Delhi, where in the late 1990s he had the idea of installing a computer in a hole in the wall in a city slum. A few hours later he returned to find the local children eagerly tapping away having already learned the basics of using the installed program, even though it was in English, not their first language. He then repeated the experiment in a village 300 miles from Delhi and got the same result.

He next installed a computer beneath a tree in a Tamil village in the south of India, installed with software about DNA replication — a subject which would not normally be tackled by children of their age, and again in a language, English, of which few had any knowledge. He returned a couple of months later to find that they appeared to have picked up some of the basics of the subject.

His argument is that traditional schooling is a product of the British empire and was designed to turn out people to have an identical way of thinking, but succeeds 6

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Ideal for virtual environments (and expensive tech conferences): Sugata Mitra

only in closing down the minds of children who, left to their own devices and given an internet connection, would happily teach themselves. The role of teaching, he argues, could be reduced to one of asking the questions which children can then solve.

If I had a Delhi slum on my doorstep, I would go round there now and see if there were any eight-yearolds capable of setting up an email address on my new Blackberry, a task which has proved completely beyond me.

It isn’t hard to pick holes in Mitra’s arguments. If the British Empire model of schooling was so damaging to children’s minds, why did we have this explosion in scientific discovery? It is easy to find entrepreneurs, fashion designers and the like who failed at school but Not having kids around succeeded afterwards. Then there was means fewer scuff marks, less John Gurdon, the Nobel prize-­winning weed-smoking, less risk of the Cambridge professor who came bottom of the science class at Eton. But head’s car being spray-painted he didn’t exactly teach himself.

We are all of course into e-learning now — how do you think I started researching this piece?

The ultimate question for those who preach the case for extreme e-learning, perhaps, is: would they want to be operated on by a surgeon who had learned his medicine entirely on a computer installed beneath a tree?

There is also the issue of social mobility. The idea of having kids educate themselves at home on their computers runs counter to the evidence from the early academies, where huge improvements in results came about from extending the school day, keeping children in a disciplined environment rather than sending them back to do homework in dysfunctional homes.

One thing strikes me about Professor Mitra. I learned about his work by watching one of his lectures on the internet. He is a highly skilled speaker, with good timing and wit. But what was he doing? Talking to an audience of several hundred people, all sat in rows at a conference in America listening to him intently. It looked an awful lot like the traditional model of teaching which he claims to despise. guide to independent schools | 15 March 2014

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Building stories The last great age of school architecture was Victorian.

But we may be in another, says Lara Prendergast

I

f you want to study the history of British architecture, take a tour round our independent schools.

Go to Stowe, where you will be introduced to the world of Palladian architecture. Lancing’s chapel is an outstanding example of Gothic Revival. Eton has a smorgasbord of styles: Baroque, Georgian, Arts and Crafts, Neoclassicism. Marlborough will give a lesson in the late decorative style. Westminster’s abbey is, well, Westminster Abbey.

It’s a point often ignored when the question of charitable status arises, but independent schools look after a sizeable chunk of our nation’s physical heritage. Many schools are custodians not only of generations of children, but centuries of architectural innovations.

For your average 15-year-old boy, this heritage might not mean much. Playing sport and snogging girls usually takes preference over an appreciation of a 15th-­century vaulting system. But the impact of great architecture is often subconscious. ‘Part of the legacy of a school is the benefits it brings later on,’ says Dr Niall Hamilton,

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­ arlborough’s senior admissions M tutor. ‘If children are surrounded by harmonious design, it will leave a mark. They might not understand it immediately, but it will almost certainly have a civilising effect.’

He refers to Plato, who discusses in The Republic how the surroundings we choose for our young affect their upbringing.

Hamilton is an expert on the history of British school architecture. ‘The 19th century was the golden era of school design,’ he says. ‘Vast amounts of money were invested in school buildings. It was the heroic age of new foundations.’ Many of these buildings were designed during the height of the British empire, with the aim of fostering national pride. Often those messages still shine through.

British school buildings divide into two types — the appropriated and the purpose-built. And in the 19th century, just as they do today, purpose-built designs relied on parental donations. Parents who find themselves pestered to pay for a new science block can blame Nathaniel Woodard — ‘the father of modern school fundraising’.

The mission he gave to the middle classes was one of intense educational progression: he founded 11 schools, including Lancing, Ardingly and Hurstpierpoint.

By the 1890s, the pioneering slowed — and for most of the 20th century, school design suffered. But in the past 30 years, independent schools have once again begun to revive enlightened attitudes to design. guide to independent schools | 15 March 2014

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Graces of learning: Lancing’s Gothic chapel is elegant outside (above) and in (left). Far left: Papplewick in the January mist

‘Schools don’t have to be old to be inspiring,’ says Kevin Stannard, director of innovation and learning for the Girls’ Day School Trust. ‘At many of the schools we run, an old building will be at the heart of it, but there will be cutting-edge modern design surrounding it.’ An example can be seen at the Royal High School in Bath: a 150-year-old Grade II-listed building has recently been updated with a state-of-the-art science discovery room.

Many of the schools run by the GDST are encouraging their pupils to involve themselves in the design process. ‘At Shrewsbury High, we asked the girls to let us know what they wanted when we were renovating a new boarding house,’ says Stannard. ‘The message we received was that they wanted to preserve the original architectural features, but create more spaces suited to both leisure and study. If pupils feel they have creative input in some way, they respond to the school’s design.’

A number of independent schools are also commissioning buildings that incorporate the latest research on sustainability. At South Hampstead High School, a redevelopment will include areas to ‘think, reflect and socialise in’ and will feature a glass design and a blossoming ‘green’ roof. A building committee, comprised of pupils from all year groups, has given input about how the new design should look. Stannard describes this as ‘learning sans frontiers’. Architecture can be used as a way to ‘reflect and reinforce an educational vision’, he says.

Given that we are witnessing a new era of thoughtful design, blended with the opulent heritage already on offer, picking a school Plato would approve of has never been easier.

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Going free

at Cardiff Sixth Form College, which topped the league.

It may not surprise you to hear that, in September last year, the It’s predicted that 100 independent schools may join the state sector King’s School became an academy, merging with a primary school next in the next decade. By Will Heaven door. Publicly at least, its reasoning was to do with social justice: ‘We are keenly aware of the difficulty that many parents have in meeting the school fees, and indeed that many are here’s a mediocre Ricky Gervais film — we’re prevented from choosing King’s in the first place due to talking two-star reviews — called The Inven- the cost.’ It is now free to attend. tion of Lying, set in a fictional world where But it may be that the King’s School simply jumped everyone blurts out the truth all the time. ‘I’ve into the state sector before it was pushed out of business. just had a sip of this,’ says a waiter as he puts Were the £10,000 fees justified, with those A-level results? a cocktail down on Ricky’s table. ‘We both know that one Hardly. At Emmanuel College, a mixed comprehensive day you’re going to lose your looks,’ a young man tells his just 12 miles away in Gateshead, 40 per cent of A-levels date. ‘It’s basically just brown sugar water,’ announces a were A*/A. Eight pupils went on to Oxbridge. Their parTV advert for Coca-Cola. Just imagine, for a moment, the ents didn’t pay a penny for it. same rules applying to an independent school open day.

In the last few years, I’m told by the Department for Teacher: ‘Welcome to Trumpington for our eighth Education, no fewer than 16 independent schools have open day this year — we really are scraping the barrel used the free schools and academies programmes to make now. What brings you here?’ the leap from private to state education. That number Parent: ‘I didn’t really have a choice, did I? The local could rise rapidly. Lord Adonis, the former Labour educomprehensive is a sink school and the grammar down cation secretary, said earlier this year that up to 100 indethe road was closed 25 years ago, so... here we are.’ pendent schools may become free in the next ten years.

Teacher: ‘Are you interested in scholarships?’

That would represent a massive revolution, affecting tens Parent: ‘I sure am. I haven’t had a decent pay rise since of thousands of pupils and their ­parents. the credit crunch. I’ve thought about setting up a meth lab One school that has defected makes Michael Gove but unfortunately chemistry isn’t my forte.’ particularly proud. Liverpool College, for pupils aged four And so on. The point is, if parents were forced to tell to 19, was one of the original members of the elite Headthe truth about independent schools, they’d admit that masters’ Conference of Independent Schools. Again, the they don’t really want to send their children to them, but school — which was charging fees of about £10,000 for felt they had to. Who in their right mind would choose to day pupils — claimed that its new academy status was spend £30,000 a year on their child’s education if the state about social justice. It would allow ‘many more pupils could do it just as well for free? to enjoy the benefits of a college education’. But behind We’re some way off achieving Michael Gove’s great the scenes, Liverpool College carried out research which ambition — that ‘when you visit a school in England revealed that ‘the number of parents able to afford fees standards are so high all round that you should not be [in the city] is shrinking and is likely to continue to shrink’. able to tell whether it’s in the state sector or a fee-paying So it made the jump — and the school will consequently independent’ — but second-rate private schools should grow from 730 to more than 1,100 pupils in the next five quake in their boots when they hear that kind of thing. If years. the Education Secretary is successful, parents will soon Similarly, Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School in have a genuine choice between two roughly equivalent Blackburn has decided to become a free school because, schools — one expensive, one free — and they’re going to in the words of the headmaster, ‘the local economy is such choose the latter. One by one, the second-rate independ- that it’s becoming increasingly difficult, even for highent schools will have to close. Elite, high-achieving schools earning parents, to afford fees for education’. Numbers are safe, but at places where less than 50 per cent of A-lev- had plunged at the school, which was founded in 1509, el results are A*/A, there’s going to be a tectonic shift. from 1,200 in 1997 to below 500 in 2012.

The only other choice these schools have is to take the That is the truth behind this emerging trend. Struggling ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ approach. In other words, independent schools are joining the state sector because the private schools will have to stop charging fees and join of market forces. But in the shape of the academies and the state sector. And that’s already beginning to happen. free schools programmes, they’ve got the best possible Take, for instance, the King’s School in Tynemouth. It safety net: one that should increase pupil numbers for was a historic private school — founded in 1860 — but it them, maintain freedom from government interference, wasn’t a truly first-rate one. In the Telegraph’s 2013 league and more broadly promote competition in Britain’s edutable of independent schools’ A-level results, the King’s cation system. Despite the inevitable whingeing from the School was at number 279. Of all the results, 31.55 per cent teachers’ unions, it’s a godsend for parents. were at A*/A. That’s not disastrous, but there’s a huge gulf between that and the 93.85 per cent achieved by pupils Will Heaven is a Daily Telegraph journalist.

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Talking head Celestria Noel meets Jonathan Forster, the industrious man in charge of Moreton Hall School

‘S

o, if I were a prospective parent, why should I send Little Lucy here?’ I ask Jonathan Forster, principal of Moreton Hall School. ­‘ Circumspice!’ is the gist of his response, although he doesn’t put it like that, since he is a down-to-earth Yorkshireman, friendly and bespectacled. ‘Bring her here to have a look round, or for a three-day taster,’ is what he actually says. ‘Then ask her what she thinks.’ He sounds confident that she will want to come, as well he might — 90 per cent of those who look round do.

The school seems to be celebrating its centenary in great heart, while similar establishments are closing or merging. It is girls only, at a time when co-ed is in fashion, and it is a boarding school, when many prefer day schools. Moreton Hall is quite small, with 410 girls, aged three to 18, and it is on the Welsh border, a long way from the prosperous south-east. It could be said to have less cachet than its more famous rivals. Madonna did not inquire about sending Lourdes there, as she did with Cheltenham Ladies’ College.

Forster’s strength has been to turn all the above into pluses. He is an advocate of single-sex education and has the results to back it up. The boarding houses are comfortable and well equipped. ‘I do not mean to boast but 150 of the rooms are en suite.’ What about the facilities compared with big public schools? ‘It is an arms race and you can never be complacent. You cannot be careless or casual. I would never build just to show off. My proudest boast is that £8 million of investment has been paid for out of income, without any borrowing.’ Did I mention he was a Yorkshireman?

Is he winning the arms race? There is an indoor pool and excellent art, music and indoor sports complexes and Astroturf pitches. The tennis courts and huge play-

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ing fields are immaculate — Moreton’s lacrosse team is legendary — and there are stables and a golf course. However, Forster admits that he would like a purpose-built theatre to supplement the hall.

As for the school’s small size, it means that classes do not exceed 15 and everyone knows one another. Older girls mentor younger ones and there is a genuine family ­atmosphere. This goes back to the founders, the local Lloyd-Williams family, who started a school for their friends and relations. It is also still a liberal foundation, as Miss Bronwen Lloyd-Williams, known as Auntie Lil, intended — but it is not, says Forster, ‘flabby’. His own style is open and accessible. ‘I like taking ideas from the girls.’

As for it being off the beaten track, you only have to look at its 120 acres of oak-studded parkland to see the advantages that gives. Mind you, Forster insists it is only semi-rural. ‘It is just 17 minutes to Shrewsbury by train.’ ­Incidentally, for a period in the early 1990s, the local ­station was kept open by the girls staffing the ticket office.

If the pupils can’t just walk out and into a town with pubs and shops, they do have their own shopping mall, with a bank, chemist, café and stationer. It is run by the Lower VI as part of Moreton Enterprises, a proper business with a turnover of £52,000, where the girls learn to take responsibility. ‘They actually run and own it and are mentored by old girls and parents.’

So what about the location? ‘We have the advantage of an excellent local catchment area. Most families live within one and a half hours of the school.’ He has made strong links with the local community and is a governor of two state schools, and Moreton Hall offers a range of scholarships and bursaries. He believes that girls benefiting from such bursaries add to the school and aid its success. ‘They are often the best and the brightest but once they are here they become all the same. I have never heard any girl remarking about background or race or whether someone has a scholarship.’

As for overseas pupils, who have been the financial salvation of so many independent schools, Forster encourages them but believes in limiting their numbers to below 10 per cent, as more can risk destroying the very culture the parents are seeking.

He is also robust about the school not being a hothouse. He does not want to put so much pressure on the girls that their development as ‘whole people’ is jeopardised. Moreton Hall’s broad-based entry means that the school, which now gets excellent exam results, also comes at the top of tables in the UK for value added.

A danger at a school like this is that with its relatively isolated community (many staff live on site), it could guide to independent schools | 15 March 2014

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surrounded but not encircled by a variety of contemporary buildings, some more attractive than others. The not very beautiful dining room is, however, home to a remarkable series of proverb-themed murals by the artist Denise Rylance, who in the 1950s was head girl. They have been written up in World of Interiors and were shown at the Fine Arts Society in Bond Street as part of the school’s centenary celebrations.

The most ambitious addition is the science building, which includes a medical science facility, a first for any UK school, never mind a smallish Shropshire girls’ school. With close links to Keele University and the orthopaedic hospital at nearby Gobo- What about the facilities? wen, itself a centre of excellence, ‘It is an arms race and you the school has been supported by can never be complacent’ the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Walker Trust and Lord Leverhulme’s Charitable Trust. ‘It will be used by students and local state-school children as well as our pupils. The focus is on biomedical sciences and we are lucky to have David Kelly, who is a research biochemist at Glasgow University, involved.’

Forster is warm, engaging, and never lost for words.

The only time he hesitated was when I asked about famous old girls. He came up with some worthy citizens but no household names. Moreton Hall does not do celebrity. However, he soon rallied: ‘We’ve got some fantastic girls coming through.’

become inward-looking. Forster has actively sought to counter this by employing staff such as a working writer, a working artist and a chemistry teacher who came from industry. In fact, perhaps surprisingly, one of the school’s strong points is how ready its girls are for the real world.

Public speaking and debating are seen as important, and Forster is big on manners and social skills: ‘They thank the teachers at the end of every lesson. They can talk to anyone and make that person feel important. There is no hiding place out there. They will need to be conversable, unstuffy, humorous. They need to be themselves, not identikit.’

Forster came to the school in 1992 from Scotland, where he had been head of English at Strathallan. ‘I fell in love straight away and was offered the job over lunch and I took it without consulting my wife.’ The school was at a low ebb. ‘I knew I wanted it to be good enough academically for what I aspired to for my own daughters.

It would either be three years revitalising the place or 20 years. . . ’ In fact the love affair is still going strong and will probably see him through to retirement. He is a pragmatic visionary, full of ideas and not one to look back. ‘I am still excited and there is so much to do. You have to keep up. It is a constant challenge.’ In 2000 the junior school and nursery opened and more recently a linked but separate international study centre came into being.

Forster’s headship has been one of building and expansion. He has left the original Tudor manor house

inspires We are a leading 11–18 boarding & day school for boys & girls in rural Hertfordshire, only 20 miles from central London. Come and see how we encourage our pupils to use intellectual exploration and practical ambition to fulfil their potential. We offer a choice of IB Diploma or A Levels in the Sixth Form. Our next Open Mornings are Saturday 29 March 2014 (13+ & 16+) and Thursday 15 May 2014 (11+).

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Bargain hunt Will Gore meets the heads who are working to make an independent education more affordable

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hroughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, my parents put my three siblings and me through boarding school. With cruel timing, this roughly coincided with a period in which school fees rose by 100 per cent. My dad has always liked a laugh but I now realise that his particularly enthusiastic joking around as we were growing up was his way of dealing with severe financially related pain.

In the past ten years, school fees have continued to increase, although the rate of growth is slowing. Figures from the Independent School Council’s 2013 census show that on average school fees rose by 3.9 per cent compared to the previous year. This represents the lowest annual fee rise since 1994, and the census suggests that this demonstrates the ‘commitment of schools to keep fee rises as low as possible in recognition of the challenging economic climate faced by parents’.

However, it will take more than just slowing the rate of growth to help cash-strapped parents. Boarding schools now charge an average of £9,204 per term and this huge cost is starting to drive people away. The census also found that there was a 1.4 per cent fall in the number of pupils attending boarding school last year, and despite the fact that the report offers the mitigation of ‘the context of long-term trends’ (in other words, boarding going out of fashion), it’s surely not too daring to suggest that finances must be playing their part in the drop-off.

According to Janette Wallis, editor of The Good Schools Guide, while money might be no object for the increasing number of overseas parents putting their children through our public schools, many of their British counterparts in danger of being priced out.

‘With British parents generally, with professional families of doctors and lawyers, there is a limit to what they can afford,’ she says. ‘I received an email recently from parents who send their children to a private school, a professional family who have been paying and paying — but the straw has finally broken the camel’s back and they just can’t afford it any more.’

Wallis has some sympathy for the predicament that boarding schools are in. Fierce competition means they must keep the standards of their teaching, accommodation and facilities extremely high. Any cut in fees could lead to falling behind the competition. However, she believes the ‘penny has dropped’ that fees must stay under ­control.

Signs of this penny dropping can be seen not only in the slowing rate of fee rises but also in the way that some schools across the independent sector are starting to offer discounts. St Joseph’s College in Reading blazed a trail three years ago when it cut its fees in an attempt

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to reverse falling pupil numbers, and now other schools are following its lead. Milton Abbey in Dorset has come up with a reduced rate for day pupils to attract parents and pupils from its nearest big towns, Bournemouth and Poole. Boarding fees for the school are currently £10,400 per term, with the current handful of day places costing £7,800 per term. That latter figure will fall to £5,495 for the next academic year. Milton Abbey is able to offer this discount because extra capacity for day pupils has been created with new buildings.

‘We could fill those day places at the current rate but there is a mission now to make it cheaper,’ says headmaster Magnus Bashaarat. ‘It’s about fixing a fee that’s affordable for families where both parents are working.

We have carefully tried to work out what people might be able to afford month by month.’ Response to the discount has, he says, been overwhelmingly positive, with a recent open day attracting Milton Abbey’s biggest ever numbers for such an event.

As well as addressing the issue of cost, one of the aims of the initiative is to tackle the point the ISC census raised about ‘the context of long-term trends’ in which boarding is not as appealing as it might once have been. As Bashaarat puts it, it’s about offering pupils ‘a boarding experience without the boarding’.

Along similar lines, Warminster School in Wiltshire is also bidding to attract parents who might not be sold on the idea of full boarding for their children. Rather than offering discounted day places, they have come up with cut-price weekly boarding. guide to independent schools | 15 March 2014

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Schools are finding new ways to minimise financial pain

The school’s headmaster, Mark Mortimer, is some­ thing of an evangelist for the benefits of boarding. He admits, though, that ‘increasingly, parents want to see their children at weekends’. Coming up with an attrac­ tive offer for weekly boarding will provide them and their children, he believes, with the best of both worlds.

With the school’s discount seeing full boarding fees cut for the senior school from £8,530 to £5,500 (Year 7 and 8) and £6,900 (Year 9 to sixth form), and from £6,305 to £4,995 for the prep school, Mortimer, like Bashaarat, is optimistic about bringing parents into the public school sector who previously couldn’t afford it.

He says that around 7 per cent of parents send their children to independent schools, but that close to 50 per cent of parents would like to do so. A key part of the Warminster strategy is in attracting new pupils from London. ‘Wiltshire is not in the middle of nowhere,’ he points out.

Despite what’s being offered by the likes of War­ minster and Milton Abbey, there is still plenty of work to be done to make the independent sector more affordable and ensure that its classrooms and playing fields of the future are filled with more than just bankers’ offspring and little Vladimirs.

At present these initiatives are isolated examples, and there is surely scope for more creative thinking. Paying fees by monthly instalments is, for example, one innova­ tion that could be of help to parents who are struggling to afford the fees. But at least a start has been made — although about ten years too late for my poor old dad.

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Open Mornings

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tory school entry points, and the more ambitious girls’ prep schools have started to open matching gateways.

State till eight permits children plenty of time to be prepared for common entrance and scholarships, as well as allowing for a full dose of the Hogwarts theme-park experience.

The benefits of going state till eight appeal not only to privately educated young British parents, who can overcome the guilt they feel that they are unable to pay for their children to have the education their parents lavished on them from day one.

Excellent church primaries are much sought after by affluent European The advantages and embarrassments of switching your child and American expats, delighted with the support of a parish community as from state to independent in mid-stream. By Anita Belman they settle their young children into strange foreign climes and an even stranger foreign education system. tate till eight’ was first whispered to me by a The legions of French financiers who have migrated hedge-fund manager’s wife, with a breathless here for big jobs, big salaries and not-so-big taxes are enthusiasm I’d only previously heard from her some of the most shameless employers of the state-tillin front of a buy-one-get-one-free offer in the eight strategy. While these bankers would have no probchampagne aisle at Tesco. lem affording even the most exorbitant private school ‘State till eight?’ suggested the overfamiliar estate fees, the notion of paying for anything other than a French agent, as he showed me and two toddlers around a gross- education is lost in translation; and if little Louis acquires ly overpriced, small, ugly terraced house looking over two more fluent English than his father in the ­process, so much notorious council estates, a building site and an outstand- the better. ing state primary.

No one had prepared me, however, for the anguish of ‘State till eight,’ barked the insufferable QC next to me removing my daughter from her wonderful local school, at dinner, after a long boast that his twins were at Eton where she was not only very content but well enough eduand Wycombe Abbey respectively, both on — arguably cated to be in the running for a place at one of the coununnecessary — scholarships. try’s leading girls’ prep schools. I’d sheepishly concocted Everybody, it seems, is state-till-eighting — sending intricate lies about the necessity of urgent treatment for their children to state school until the age of eight, then her nonexistent verrucas to cover up her absence for the shoving them into private school — and so, in turn, am I. prep-school entrance assessment, only to find myself Soon after our eldest daughter was born, I was convinced amazed and aghast ushering her in alongside two of her that private education would be too expensive for us. I current classmates’ mothers, both apparently only conwould not, in early years at least, be swapping juicing tips cerned to discover how many hours of tutoring we’d subat the school gates with supermodels, Hollywood royal- jected her to in anticipation of the ordeal. ty and sporting legends, but contributing my pasta reciThe heads and governors at the country’s leading state pes to the spiral-bound fundraising cookbook for a new primaries have clocked the state-till-eight fashion, and — school roof. quite understandably — don’t like it one bit. The better Yet the lure of private education, so ingrained in the the primary, the keener the upwardly mobile middle classfabric of my expectations, meant moving my daughter into es are to use it as a free prep-rep with a convenient school the independent sector was inevitable sooner or later. run. ‘There’s almost an incentive to keep the edges rough, However, state till eight isn’t simply a four-year defer- so you get an honest intake at least,’ despaired my daughral of the burden of school fees. If the state-till-eight ter’s marvellous headmistress. My husband and I were the droves feel smug about the financial relief — a cool saving seventh set of parents in her delightful year-three class of about £60,000 a child for London parents — they can to have announced their intention to remove their highfeel warmer and fuzzier still about granting their children achieving, happy child to new, wildly expensive unknown access, albeit brief, to their local community, before wedg- pastures. ing them safely into the socio-demographic micro-bracket The headmistress’s frustration pales in comparison to of the privately educated elite. the social Siberia I am exiled to at the local school gates, While a few able children can, and do, move over from where our second daughter only started last September. the state to the private sector at 11, 13 and 16, thereby sav- ‘State till eight,’ huffs the hardworking chair of the PTA, ing their parents an even bigger fortune, it is seven-plus within my earshot. I don’t know if I’m imagining a batand eight-plus that remain the traditional boys’ prepara- squeak of envy.

From primary to prep

‘S

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Using your School Branding System©

Some places still available for September 2014 The logo This is the new logo for all members of the Jesuit Institute group of schools and should be used across all communications materials within the school to help promote the links with the Jesuit Institute.

It is designed as a unit with the ‘sunburst’ crest and the lettering. They must be kept as one unit. These 2 elements should never be used in different proportions to those shown below. They can appear discretely and we would recommend they feature no smaller than 35mm wide.

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We have also created an extra logo artwork for use when applied to uniform and is being stitched or embroidered.

White out of 425U and 1945U A Co-educational Catholic Boarding Black andsolidDay School for 3–18 year olds Stonyhurst Clitheroe Lancashire BB7 9PZ Tel 01254 827073 admissions@stonyhurst.ac.uk

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6/3/14 13:04:19

Who makes your gowns?

Ysenda Maxtone Graham seeks fashion tips for teachers

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eachers are much-gazed-at people. Many of them are the opposite of vain and would prefer not to be looked at all day long, but it’s a hazard of the job. Through lesson after lesson, they are stared at by children who are always on the lookout for something to laugh at; at break time they must cut a dash with their colleagues in the cocktailparty atmosphere of the staff room; on duty in the playground they must stand still in the cold; all day, they must dodge flicked ink, spilled mince and drying artwork; and at collection time they are appraised by parents, who (like their teenaged children) are not immune to crushes. It is not surprising, with all these different demands, that the general trend in teacher fashion is and always has been to wear understated, durable and highly protective clothing.

But how have teacher fashions changed in the past 30 years — if indeed they have? I rang several schools to find out and some didn’t call me back. I think their marketing departments decided that the subject of ‘teacher fashion’ There’s no point in splashing — even if I sometimes disguised it out on an £800 suit, because as ‘teacher dress codes’ — was too frivolous and was simply designed schools are still grimy places to make fun of them.

They were not wholly wrong, it has to be said. The very thought of these cerebral beings, guardians of the mark-book, wielders of the red pen, deciding what to put on in the mornings is somehow intrinsically comic. Some of the most memorable moments of my school days were those mornings in early January when the bachelor Latin master entered the classroom with a new V-neck jersey on: quite obviously a Christmas present from his mother. He looked rather sheepish and embarrassed about it. It was never long before a hand went up and someone said, ‘I like your new jersey, sir!’

At a recent show-round for parents at a London senior school, I was pleased to spot the whole range of traditional teacher clothing on display: the headmaster in a well-worn suit, flashing his cufflinks as he boasted about the school’s improving results; the head of curriculum in a sagging woollen skirt with an even saggier petticoat showing beneath it; the head of science in a white coat marred by acid holes; the oldest, baldest master still wearing a gown; and the young blonde 18

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head of PE in a scarlet tracksuit and whistle — in the morning. (PE goes on all day long these days, in those echoey aircraft-hangar-sized PE halls.) I was glad to see that staff dress codes obviously hadn’t changed all that much — although the gown was no longer flecked with chalk dust.

To the people who did, bravely and kindly, speak to me about what they wear to school every day: thank you.

My panel consisted of Diana Vernon, the headmistress of City of London School for Girls; Andrew Douglas, deputy head of same; Gerard Evans, director of studies at Eton; two classics teachers, one a man at a London girls’ day school and one a woman at a boys’ senior school; and the headmaster of a boys’ prep school in London. From these people, I learned about the climatic conditions which direct how school staff dress.

Diana Vernon spoke up for the snappy matching skirt and jacket and mid-to-high-heeled shoes — for a London headmistress, that is. ‘At pretty well every GUIDE TO INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS | 15 MARCH 2014

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school I’ve worked in, the head is likely to be one of the most smartly dressed. You’re marketing the school, you’re seeing lots of prospective parents. I used to work in the City, so I still wear my suits, and I rarely wear the same one two days running.’ She feels that a school takes its unwritten dress code from the people at the top, and it’s important to be smart. The girls in her sixth form don’t have to wear any uniform at all. ‘I don’t want them to look as if they’re going to the beach or a nightclub’ is Diana Vernon’s only restriction; and by dressing smartly herself, she hopes to instil certain standards in the tone of the whole school’s dress.

But there’s no point, the prep-school headmaster and the classics master both agreed, in splashing out on an £800 suit for schoolwear, as schools are still grimy places: in fact, the blue and red ink from whiteboard pens is if anything more damaging to clothing than chalk dust was. Andrew Douglas, at City of London Girls’, still tends not to wear a suit: ‘Today I’m wearing

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a tweed jacket, corduroy trousers and a tie, because I’m doing interviews for support-staff roles. If I’m meeting parents or governors I’ll wear a tie, but I no longer feel I have to every day.’

What is coming very much into fashion among male staff, he notes, is the tieless suit. ‘The open-necked look for some reason always makes me think of politicians trying to look laddish and approachable,’ he remarked — and I am inclined to agree.

At Eton, every schoolmaster ties a white bow-tie every morning of his working life. ‘The dress code for staff is part of what underpins Eton,’ Gerard Evans said.

‘It shows the mutual respect between the staff and the boys. We expect things of them as we expect things of ourselves. Our dress code makes us equals: it underlies the code in the school.’ In the afternoons, like the boys, the beaks can go down the High Street in jeans and an open-necked shirt and that is fine.

The bachelor classics master in London was given 50 secondhand ties by his aunt when he changed careers to become a teacher. ‘I have a real problem storing them,’ he told me, ‘and I do a huge tie-rotation which lasts about a term.’ (Systematic clothing rotation is still common practice among teachers, some of whom, charmingly un-fashion-conscious, have no sense of which tie goes with which shirt and simply pair the two that happen to be next in the rota.) He wears a suit every day, believing that dressing smartly ‘is an attempt to create an atmosphere of good behaviour in an environment that could degenerate’ — he has noticed that less littering of the classroom goes on when the teachers are smartly dressed. He is not so keen on the ‘power-dressing that goes with the senior role’ and feels that the headmistress, who ‘clonks about in incredibly high stilettos’, looks rather graceless.

Temperature plays a large part, said the female classics teacher. Not only do teachers get very hungry teaching, they also get incredibly cold, because although the classrooms are warm, they are forever walking about outside from classroom to staff room to boarding-house to home, and ‘whatever you’re doing, you’re late for six other things’. She prefers to wear a skirt, ‘because I don’t feel like a teacher when I’m wearing trousers: I feel too ordinary. I tend to wear trousers all holidays and skirts all term.’ Of her collection of skirts, she does notice that they seem mysteriously to get longer. ‘It’s something to do with the loose weave. I’m still wearing some of the skirts I was wearing 25 years ago, so they’re now practically trailing on the floor.’

A boy recently asked her, during a Latin lesson, ‘Why do you always wear a woolly cardie?’ Her simple and true answer was, ‘Because I like a woolly cardie.’

‘I do it just for warmth, I’m afraid,’ she told me.

Schools used to be sludge-coloured, with greenygrey walls and brown linoleum. Staff clothing used to be similarly sludge-coloured, with brown dresses, brown cords and brown tweeds. Some say it was the Princess of Wales effect that in the 1980s woke people up: via the cheerful pink shirt with pie-crust collar, colour gradually made its way into staff dress, where it remains to this day.

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Once you’ve got a shortlist of around five universities, visit them.

Both Boyes and Mike Kirby, principal of Ashbourne sixth-form college in Kensington, told me I’d be shocked at the number of students who don’t take this obviously essential step. I kept quiet about the fact that I was one of the useless multitude: I went to one open day, which I managed only because it was a five-minute bike ride from my house. My plans to go to more were thwarted by the fact that most Russell Group universities cap numbers at their open days, and I’d left it too late to book. So make sure you register well in advance, and, once you get there, talk to as many students as possible.

Then there’s the money issue.

Most top-flight universities now charge the full £9,000 a year in tuition fees, but the overall cost of Carola Binney offers a student’s guide to picking a university your degree can vary dramatically depending on where you study. Liverpool University says you’ll need between £6,000 and £7,000 a year in living expenses, while University y top tip for choosing the right univer- College London says you’ll need £9,065 — go to Liversity? Do some proper research. Sounds pool and over the course of your degree you could save obvious, I know, but it’s amazing how the equivalent of a whole year’s tuition fees. few teenagers bother. It’s all too easy to Value-for-money considerations are vital. Kirby’s be distracted by A-levels and social life, advice is to think about how many contact hours you’ll or paralysed by the fear of making big life decisions. be getting, and about class sizes: ‘Be on the lookout for Don’t let that happen. Look at the league tables, get faculties that look as if they behave in a factory-like prospectuses and talk to careers advisers, but don’t be way, trying to get students in and out as economically constrained by the traditional channels. A bit of goog- as ­possible.’ ling can prove the most helpful — online forums like There is, of course, a reason why you might plump the Student Room can give you the lowdown on accom- for UCL over Liverpool despite the price tag. Chris modation, and Twitter and YouTube are good sources Kraft, principal of London’s Duff Miller sixth-form colof ‘day in the life’ material from current students (like lege, is unambiguous in his belief that reputation and Oxford’s ‘OxTweet’ scheme). If you’re considering employment prospects should be a student’s No. 1 conOxbridge, the website of a college’s sideration when choosing their university: ‘My advice junior common room, or JCR, is a to students is to look at the university’s ranking first I went to one open day, which great way to get a feel for its vibe, as and to then try and work out what course they want.’

Boyes takes a similar line, urging students to conI only managed because it was well as being pointed towards alternative prospectuses, subject reviews sider the regularity and quality of graduate employfive minutes from my house and information about events and ment fairs, for example: ‘Remember, everything you do societies. once you leave school is about how you market yourTo make the whole ordeal less self in life.’ intimidating, give your research direction. Steve Boyes, That said, a university’s provision for your course principal of the London branch of MPW sixth-form matters. Sometimes it’s obvious — you can’t read hiscolleges, says he always tells his students to treat the tory at Bath, so I didn’t apply there. Cambridge doesn’t process like buying a house. Rather than wander- do joint honours degrees, so isn’t the place for an aspiring aimlessly from estate agent to estate agent, or just ing chemist-philosopher. But look beyond the degree opening the newspaper and looking for the most popu- names: does the course contain modules, both compullar locations, write down your list of must-haves and go sory and elective, that you’re keen to study? Would you from there. One of my friends, a serious swimmer, made be able to pick up options from other departments? her list far more manageable by only looking at places Are there opportunities to study abroad? Different that had Olympic swimming pools. universities take different approaches to subjects —

Scheming spires

M

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medicine at Manchester is more ‘problem-based’ than at Imperial, and history at Cambridge is more political than at Oxford. Cambridge sniffs at them, but both Boyes and Kraft think that the average joint honours course is easier to get into than single honours. Applying for these degrees can be a good way to maximise your chances of an offer without skimping on reputation: at the LSE, for example, there are 12.6 applicants per place for law, but 6.2 for law with anthropology. But proceed with caution: ‘Make sure you can navigate the degree — they’re not going to simply allow you to jump across from one course to another, especially if you’re trying to go from a less competitive course at entry to a more competitive one,’ says Boyes.

If you want to apply to Russell Group universities, you have to have the right equipment — according to Kirby, four or five A* grades at GCSE and a solid number of As at AS-level. For the cream of the Russell Group crop, you increasingly need to do better than just scraping over the grade boundaries. Universities such as UCL and Cambridge now ask applicants for their ASlevel UMS scores, to see if that A means 81 per cent or

99 per cent. Avoiding this big reveal was one of the reasons I chose Oxford over Cambridge.

It’s not all about your first choice. Another common-sense rule here: ask yourself, ‘Would I accept an offer from this university, if it was the only one I got?’ If the answer is no, don’t be lured by that three-B standard offer into wasting one of your five choices. But don’t do what I did (there’s a slight irony in my being asked to write this piece) and end up with a situation where your first-choice offer is also your lowest, meaning extra pressure on A-level results day. If it all goes wrong in August and you end up having to go to a university that offers lower grades than you were expecting to get, having chosen one in advance is far better than having to go through clearing in a panic. As the ideal back-up plan, Kraft encourages his students to consider putting a university like Birmingham, which makes some unconditional offers, down on their Ucas form.

Finally, don’t file this piece away until the autumn. It’s time to start thinking about your university choice now. As Kirby says, ‘Even a modicum of thought before September will do you a world of good.’

Carola Binney is studying history at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Ten questions to ask yourself before you apply 1. Are you cut out for another three years’ academic work?

University is a mistake if you find academic work a chore or an unending struggle. The benefits of a degree dwindle rapidly if you land a mediocre result. Find out what the work involves, and talk to your teachers about whether it’s for you.

2. Do the benefits outweigh the costs? How much will university

cost you and your family, and will your future earnings more than repay that outlay? Employment prospects vary considerably according to where and what you study. Check out www. bestcourse4me.com for details.

3. Should you choose your course before your university, or vice versa? This may be the

most important question when you are researching university league tables and their subject rankings. ­If you are certain about your career, research which universities your future employer recruits from.

If it’s about the subject you love (usually the best decision), go to those rankings first.

4. Have you examined the course content in detail?

Psychology may not deal with Sigmund Freud and may include more statistics than you think.

That you enjoyed mathematics at A-level does not mean you will feel the same about pure mathematics at university. Taster courses and talking to teachers may help.

5. Have you looked at class sizes and teaching hours?

Most courses operate on a lecture/ tutorial system, so you may be in lectures of 100 or more students for most of the course. Find out the hours offered in tutorials (with far fewer students).

6. Are you a town mouse or a country mouse? What type

of place do you want to live in?

Some people love a campus with everything on your doorstep, others need the variety of a city.

You will be spending at least three years of your life here; you need to be happy with the environment.

7. What’s the accommodation like? Does your university

guarantee a place in halls of

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residence, where it’s easier to make new friends? Will you be expected to share? How far are residences from lectures, and how expensive is private renting? (Most students live in shared houses after year one.)

8. What do previous students think? Many universities have

alternative prospectuses written by their students. Ideally, talk to students who have attended the university and/or the course you wish to pursue.

9. What extracurricular activities are important to you?

Investigate clubs and societies and the possibilities for your preferred hobbies and entertainment.

10. Do you want a gap year?

If so, why? It can be useful if you

really don’t know what you want to study and/or you feel you are not ready for university life. But beware of treating it as a pretext for idleness. Admission tutors’ attitudes to gap years vary, so check these out for your choices.

James Wardrobe Council for Independent Education

www.cife.org.uk

guide to independent schools | 15 March 2014

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Sparing the child

similar to those that you were supposed to be writing. A punishment that becomes an enjoyable game of wits is entirely self-defeating. I am Gone are the days of a dozen lashes. You’re hardly even allowed surprised that Gove has not suggested that children write out poems as to call punishment by its real name any more. By Sophia Waugh punishments. That would have the benefit of an uncultured generation having some contact with poetry, although I suppose it might also add to the school of thought that poetry is a pain.

Some modern punishments are ike everything else in education, the matter of so soppy that they insult and enrage the good children. punishment has its constantly changing fash- I teach at a state school. When a boy in my class set fire ions. At state school in the 1970s I was pun- to his neighbour’s hair, he was sent on a special course ished by being made to sit in the main corri- with the fire service. He spent a lovely day watching dor and read during break (not a punishment films about arson and had the time of his life. Other I minded in the least) while my brother, at public school, punishments that issue from the caring way of thinking was regularly beaten. Mind you, he was a lot naughtier are singularly useless. One day a boy arrived (as always) than me. Beating went out of the window long ago, so very late to my lesson. ‘John, how lovely to see you!’ I how do schools now punish the most extreme misde- cried. ‘Where have you been this time?’ He glowered at meanours? me. ‘Anger fucking management,’ he shouted. ‘All right Michael Gove wants to bring back some more old- miss?’ and slammed out of the room again. fashioned forms of correction, such as writing lines. But We have a unit devoted to children who, for one reawhen we were given that as punishment, it was turned son or another, have genuine difficulties at school. It is into a game. How many pens could you hold to pro- absolutely not a place of punishment, but is designed duce more than one line at a time? How often could to give them a place of safety where they can work in you insert other words without the teacher noticing? peace, with support. However, when it was first set up, And even more enjoyable, how many obscene words more than ten years ago, there was some difficulty with could you substitute? That involved a certain degree of how it was perceived by the students at large. Because it skill, actually, as the key was to put in words that looked involved cups of tea and pink cakes, and because many

L

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of the children who used it were troubled and sometimes in trouble, there was a lot of confused thinking about it. One child looked at me thoughtfully, ‘Miss, how hard would I have to hit you to be sent to RTL?’ he asked.

The current fashion appears to be something called restorative justice. Like communism, it is a brilliant concept in theory. Instead of being punished, you have to think about what you have done and make amends. So a boy who regularly took his sports bag into Tesco in the morning and filled it with stolen food which he sold at break was taken back to Tesco and made to talk to a shelf-stacker who he was told would lose her job if Tesco didn’t make a profit. He wasn’t convinced. He said sorry nicely, and was back in with his sports bag two days later.

As is so often the case with teaching, our big problem is never the children themselves so much as the parents. I had one 13-year-old boy whose mother rewarded him with a pack of cigarettes each day when he did not get into trouble. When I suggested that this might not be the ideal way forward, she was very defensive. ‘Well, he doesn’t get them most days,’ she said. Too right — this was the only child from whom I have ever received physical violence (he threw a table at me when I suggested he stopped When a boy in my class strangling another boy with his set fire to another’s hair, tie).

Some forms of punishment will he was sent on a course I suspect last for ever. Detention with the fire service is a comforting stand-by. And it is easy to make the punishment fit the crime. Don’t do your homework? Come and do it at lunchtime.

Expulsions are much harder to come by in the state system than in the public school system; they have to be built up to with a long history of misdemeanours. Detention is followed by internal exclusion — a real punishment involving being separated from your peers for an entire day. Instead of lessons you sit with a supervisor and work for five solid hours: it’s a real eye-opener for some of the naughty ones.

The next level is an external exclusion, a day spent out of school — and again the parents are often the enemy. Instead of doing the work which we have to provide them with by law, some parents take the child shopping. ‘It was lovely to spend a day with him,’ they gush, and the child boasts about new trainers and a football.

One of the problems is the language of punishment.

Like so much else, it is watered down. A punishment is no longer a punishment, but a consequence. And again, that brings it down to the level of some sort of game.

The teenagers who ran away from Stonyhurst College on their parents’ credit cards were not expelled from the school — or not in so many words. I have friends whose children have been to more schools than I knew existed, but somehow have not been expelled from any one of them.

There should be middle ground in the world of school punishment. Don’t beat the children, but use the scary words — punishment, expulsion — and those really oldfashioned ones most teachers are too nervous to use — right and wrong.

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Stay in the saddle Got a horsey child? At one of these schools, they can ride to their heart’s content. By Camilla Swift

R

iding as part of the school curriculum will sound to many people like something out of an Enid Blyton book. Surely nowadays, when there’s so much focus on exam results, no one has the time? But maybe investing in a horsey education isn’t just an extravagance but can be a good, if expensive, way of teaching a child responsibility.

And we Brits are good at horsey stuff. In the 2012 Olympics, Team GB won five medals, three of them gold, in equestrian events — more than any other nation. If we want to build on these successes and encourage the ominously named ‘next generation’, it’s important that they get as much encouragement to ride as possible.

Day school pupils are one thing — as they can ride outside of school hours. But with boarding schools it’s a bit more complicated. With Saturday school and limited exeats, it’s hard to fit in riding. So allowing horses at school is the solution. Of course it’s not all sunshine and roses; it will also involve early mornings, braving all weathers, and balancing a busy timetable. But as any horse lover knows, it’s all worth it.

Millfield, in Somerset, is internationally famed for its sports facilities Hanford offers early morning — and its athletes. In 2012 there were rides on the Dorset hills as an nine old Millfieldians on the British Olympic and Paralympic teams, and activity, in Enid Blyton style the school boasts 54 Olympic athletes among its alumni. No wonder their equestrian department is one of the best in the country. Their prep and senior schools (both of which are co-educational) offer riding and livery options; at the moment the senior school has 45 ‘full-time’ riders, who ride at least six times a week.

Danny Anholt, director of riding, adds that one great selling point of their stables is that they are right in the centre of campus. One ex-Millfield pupil, who kept two horses at the school, says that this was a major factor in allowing her to make the most of the facilities, as it allowed riding before breakfast, at lunchtime, in the evening and in any free periods. For her, keeping her horse at school allowed her to have the training, support and structure that — with parents who weren’t ‘horsey’ — she would never have had otherwise.

Millfield also pride themselves on their record when it comes to National Schools Eventing Association competitions. NSEA is one organisation that plays a major role in encouraging both schools and pupils to take part in equestrian activities. The number of schools participat26

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ing in these events has grown year on year, and there are increasing numbers of day schools entering teams into their competitions. A surprising statistic is that there’s a fairly even balance between state and private schools; their member base is 49 per cent comprehensive, 51 per cent private.

Many other senior schools offer livery on campus.

Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, opened their equestrian ­centre, with space for 20 horses, in September 2012.

Since it opened, riding and horse care have been popular choices for Duke of Edinburgh Award participants, while the stables have been at over 80 per cent occupancy since summer last year. Their new cross-country course — ready for use in the spring — has been designed by Mark Phillips, chef d’equipe of the United States eventing team, and father of Olympic silver medallist Zara Phillips.

Queen Ethelburga’s, in Yorkshire, also takes riding seriously. As well as offering livery and riding, they also allow pupils to take British Horse Society qualifications and equestrian NVQs. And Bryanston, in Dorset, is another school with riding facilities. One former pupil told me that it took just one look at their cross-country course for her to ‘fall in love’. The school enabled her to mix a good academic education with her riding. Pupils are able to go show jumping at local competitions, including at the Dorset School Games, and school horses are also available for pupils to borrow, with many taking weekly riding lessons.

Cranleigh, in Surrey, are currently the NSEA Dressage champions, and have held numerous other titles, including in show jumping and arena eventing. Of the 60 or so pupils who ride (from both the senior and prep school), about 20 keep their ponies on site, with 15 others bringing theirs in regularly for training sessions. And Blundell’s, in Devon — although they don’t have livery facilities on site — are also holders of numerous NSEA titles. Their first pupil to receive full colours for equestrian, is currently a working pupil for the top British eventer William Fox-Pitt.

Although all of the above-mentioned schools are co-ed, it tends to be the girls who choose to ride. Stonar, in Wiltshire, has an all-girls senior school, and makes riding a core feature. About half the pupils ride, and 40 keep their own horses at school. Stonar also offers Pony Club and British Horse Society assistant instructor qualifications, and works with Ebony Horse Club in Brixton, a charity working with disadvantaged inner-city children. guide to independent schools | 15 March 2014

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Queen Margaret’s near York is another all-girls school, and it offers modern pentathlon as one of its extracurricular activities. It is the alma mater of Sophie Beaty, the current U18 British eventing champion.

Just because it tends to be girls who ride, however, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing for the boys. Polo is still very much a male-dominated sport, and increasing numbers of senior schools offer it. Millfield even has its own polo pitch — indeed, half the England polo team (brothers Mark and Luke Tomlinson) are Old Millfieldians. The Schools and Universities Polo Association (Supa) hosts numerous inter-school tournaments throughout the year, and has seen a rapid increase in the number of schools entering teams, both in the prep and senior school sections.

If children are boarding from early on, then encouraging riding at prep school age is also important. Hanford, a girls’ school in Dorset, is famous for its ponies, with early morning rides on the Dorset hills offered as an activity in summer, in true Enid Blyton style, amd it has its own indoor school and cross-country course. Girls can bring their own ponies to school — as long as they’re willing to share them with other pupils! Walhampton School, on the Hampshire coast, is another horsey prep school — this

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time co-ed. As well as including riding in games lessons and at lunchtime, the school offers a wide range of equestrian sports, from polocrosse and dressage to music, to regular gymkhanas.

Owning a horse isn’t cheap, it’s true — especially when added to the cost of boarding fees. Fortunately many schools, including Millfield, Stonar and Bryanston, offer riding scholarships of one form or another, ranging from subsidised lessons or livery to help with school fees. And for those not lucky enough to have a horse to take to school with them, that by no means need stop them riding at school. The majority of schools with livery facilities offer riding to pupils who don’t have their own horse, and many also offer a ‘part-loan’ option, giving a pupil the responsibility of looking after a horse without the expense. And of course many other schools without riding facilities on campus offer extracurricular riding.

If I hadn’t been lucky enough to play polo at school, I know I’d never have got involved at university, or continued to play to this day. And since my first journalistic commission was for Polo Times magazine, horses probably got me started on this career path as well. Who says nothing useful ever came of horsing around?

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warner brothers/kobal collection

Take the red pill, children James Delingpole on his stints as provocateur-in-residence at Radley and Malvern College

O

ne of the great advantages of forking out around £30,000 a year for your child’s education is that it buys them the chance to have me warp their mind with my perfervid radicalism, open their eyes to the truth about the world and transform the way they think about everything for ever.

That was the idea, anyway, of the two-day stint I did last year as Radley’s provocateur-in-residence. And the one I did before that at my alma mater Malvern College.

Apparently on each occasion there were one or two complaints beforehand from both parents and staff members, but I think it was a bloody good idea. Well, I suppose I would...

Why do I do it? Partly for the dosh but mainly for the love. I can honestly say that I’ve never in my life done anything more satisfying than teaching. A bit like foxhunting, it’s one of those rare activities that allows you to live totally in the moment for many hours at a stretch.

More than that, though, teaching is one of the very few careers where, if you’re lucky, you get to make a real difference.

I was very lucky with my own teachers, first with the ones at school who gave me my grounding in English literature and subsequently, even more so, with my Oxford tutor, Peter Conrad. It’s thanks, above all, to the sinuous, crop-headed Tasmanian’s intellectual boot-camp in his terrifying leather-trousered tutorial sessions that I know how to think critically: question received ideas; take nothing for granted; argue whatever damned case you want

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to argue, no matter how tortured and convoluted, just long as you find the evidence to support it and the eloquence and logic to articulate it convincingly.

Not everyone I teach on my school visits will get into Oxford or Cambridge. Of those who do, few will get a tutor of the calibre of Peter Conrad.

In fact most people, I fear to say, even the cleverest, most expensively educated ones, are destined to go through their whole existence incapable of thinking an original thought or living the examined life.

And I want to do my tiny bit to change all that. It may sound uncharacteristically prim and high-minded of me, but I’m on a holy mission here. If even just one boy or girl, years hence, can look back at some moment in one of my classes and say: ‘That was it. That was when I chose to take the red pill ...’ then everything will have been worthwhile.

The red pill is a reference to The Matrix but if you haven’t seen it, don’t worry. All I mean is that I want, if I can, to shake those kids out of the intellectual complacency and laziness to which we’re all prey at that age. I know I was. But then, no wild-eyed loon had ever hijacked my class and explained to me that there was an alternative...

No one, for example, told me that the Great Works of Literature weren’t things you automatically had to revere, that in fact all of them are failures in one way or another, for the finished work is never as mighty as the initial conception; but that this is not a bad thing but a good thing, for it means you can respond to them as you really ought to respond: honestly, freely, without the barrier of misguided reverence.

My English class is probably my favourite of the ones I do, because it enables me to discuss something I’ve often pondered since graduating: ‘Why do we spend time so much studying English literature? And is it — as those of the Gradgrindian persuasion often argue — a total waste of effort?’ guide to independent schools | 15 March 2014

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James Delingpole attends a Radley parents’ evening

I conclude — English teachers may be pleased to note — that au contraire, it’s absolutely essential. Of all the subjects, it’s the one that best enables us to make sense of our world: who we are, why we’re here, what life’s about, what kind of deal we can expect, how we ought to behave, and so on. Basic stuff, I know, but because it’s so apparently obvious, no one ever actually explains it to you — that the body of literature isn’t just a version of life, it is life.

In a way, I suppose, what I’m doing here is what Hector does in Alan Bennett’s History Boys — only without the homosexuality, kiddy-fiddling and closeted left-wing Greens_spec_edu_mar14.indd 1 21/2/14 27 Queen Square, Bath, BA1 2HX politics. Though there’s a lot I dislike about Bennett’s 01225 334577 admissions@bathacademy.co.uk play, I do sympathise with his thesis: that the most imporwww.bathacademy.co.uk tant part of education is very often stuff that lies beyond the curriculum. @BathAcademy www.facebook.com/Bath.Academy But it’s easy for me to say that. If you’re a proper teacher with exam grades you need your class to attain and key areas you have to cover, then venturing off piste is a luxury you can’t too often afford. Or rather, perhaps, it’s a luxury only a certain kind of school can afford: ones with the confidence, independence of spirit and insouciance to consider it worth the gamble of letting loose so dangerous a radical on a class of impressionable minds.

Which is why I’ve effectively ruined the rest of my life (don’t ask) by choosing to give my kids that intellectual advantage. I love hearing the pride and excitement in Boy’s voice when he tells me, a year before his Latin GCSE, that he’s already reading vast chunks of (entirely course-unnecessary) Ovid. I cherish the fact that, having been denied French at her state primary, Girl has now — thanks to a driven, no-nonsense, inspirational teacher — managed to catch up with classmates who’ve been in the private system all their lives.

One day, I hope all our schools will be this way. If Michael Gove’s bold and necessary reforms are allowed to continue, then I’ve confidence that they will be. ImagIndependent tutorial college offering: ine: a provocateur-in-residence transforming every classA Levels, January to June re-sits room in the land with his or her revolutionary fervour — and banishing for ever from our green and pleasant Easter Revision: 31st March - 18th April 2013 land the taint of stultifying, statist conformism!

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Billion-dollar babies Oligarchs are getting better at dealing with English public schools, says Stephen Robinson – with a little help from their consultants…

I

n the fictional tales of boarding school life — from Jennings to Mallory Towers to Harry Potter — the new term begins aboard the special school train from a London railway terminus. But these days the consumers of an expensive English education may well arrive by helicopter or motorcade.

The demographic shifts within the English public school system are never more vividly displayed than on the first day of term. One teacher at a country boarding school that is popular with Russians calls it the chorus of the three-car convoy.

Staff know holidays are over when the gravel crunches and the rural calm is shattered by three top-of-therange Mercedes braking sharply on the drive outside.

Bodyguards spring from the first and third vehicles. One of them opens the rear passenger door of the middle car, and out pops an oligarch’s little princess, clutching her iPhone and a very expensive handbag. The luggage

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that emerges from the boot will emphatically not be a tatty Hogwarts-style school trunk with stencilled initials on top, but a matching set of Louis Vuitton suitcases.

Now that many of these country boarding schools have a majority of foreign pupils, the cultural clashes can be jarring and cause resentment. Teachers who once taught Latin grammar to the children of clergymen and provincial solicitors now offer instruction in ‘Life skills’ and English as a foreign language to the progeny of the global super-rich.

When the Chinese and Russian invasion began in earnest about 15 years ago, there were terribly embarrassing encounters between the international nouveaux riches and the appalled indigenous parents. The British parents began to mutter — and still they do — that they are damned if they are going to pay out thousands of pounds a year for their children to be surrounded by Chinese and Russian vulgarians.

GUIDE TO INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS | 15 MARCH 2014

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One English mother recalls an overseas father driving his sports car across the cricket outfield, assuming that since he was paying £60,000 a year plus sundries for the education of his two sons, he was entitled to splash it around a bit. A Russian mother who insisted on inspecting the dining room recoiled at her first glimpse of ­English boarding-school cuisine, and ordered boxes of sushi, salad, and quails’ eggs to be driven up from London each day.

With boarding fees now far beyond the reach of the British middle classes, heads are almost powerless to resist these demands. Many second- and third-rate boarding schools would close tomorrow if the Russians, Chinese, Nigerians, and the new wave of oligarchs from the ’stans pulled their children out.

Yet overseas parents are generally more sensitive than they were ten years ago, and schools are better at dealing with the international influx. These parents have friends in Moscow and Beijing who have already sent their children for an English education, so they learn from the trailblazers that conspicuous displays of bling can cause offence.

Many seek advice from groups such as the Good Schools Guide on how to behave. Janette Wallis of the Guide says there have historically been particular problems with the Russian culture of excessively generous giving. Lavish presents will be presented to teachers by parents, or at least by their drivers, at the first exeat. Typically these might be designer leather goods, bespoke suits, offers of a day’s shooting, or cases of Margaux of the very best vintages. ‘We have had to talk overseas parents down from giving some elaborate gifts — keys to the holiday home in Mustique being the grandest example,’ she explains. Instead, she advises international parents to give modest cultural tokens from their homelands — advice that will no doubt enrage housemasters all over England who could surely rationalise any professional scruples they might have during a twoweek Caribbean freebie.

Charles Bonas of Bonas MacFarlane, a private school consultancy and tutoring service, agrees with Ms Wallis that super-wealthy foreign parents are better at blending in these days. Several years ago, his company acted as mentor to the daughter of a Chinese general.

The only form of greeting she could offer staff or housemates was a crisp military salute, but this sort of total cultural disconnection is rarer today.

Though he does urge discretion on the parents who engage him, Mr Bonas thinks it is easy to be too squeamish about lavish gifts for the teachers, whose working days are much longer than when he was a boy at Harrow 30 years ago. ‘They work bloody hard these days, lessons and sports all day, then answering emails from parents and colleagues into the night,’ he says. One of the lessons he has learned through dealing with overseas parents is how incredibly stingy the English are by comparison.

Generally, the current crop of Russian parents are more sophisticated and bourgeois than the wave that preceded them, and far less tolerant of the excesses of their countrymen during the go-go 1990s. Still, there can

be problems, so after talking to parents, teachers and consultants, some tentative guidance can be offered as a Spectator service: —Housemasters can get very shirty indeed if the chauffeur or nanny is sent to parents’ evening, especially if they don’t speak a word of English, which is frequently the case. —While inside the headmistress’s office, do not, as an American celebrity in London did recently when engaged with the head of a top London day school, whip out your The only form of greeting the phone and reply to a text message. —If your child is seriously thick, Chinese general’s daughter or scarcely speaks a word of Eng- could offer was a crisp salute lish, desperate measures may be called for, but it is essential to be discreet. The Russian father of one such boy bluntly asked the headmaster of a leading prep school how much he would have to pay to guarantee his son a place.

Alas, the offer was made in the presence of other parents and staff, so naturally, and regretfully, it had to be turned down.

The more appropriate way for the father to have proceeded would have been to let it be known via a third party that he wished to make a substantial anonymous donation to the bursary fund to assist the genuinely needy in Britain — say, the middle-class parents who cannot afford to send their children to the schools they attended a generation ago.

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Best in show How to get the most out of ‘the largest schools assembly in the UK’, by Sophia Martelli

E

ntering Battersea Park conference hall on a weekend in early November, you might be forgiven for thinking you’d rocked up at a convention of country house hotels: the stands display enormous full-colour pictures of large, handsome historic buildings taken from their most imposing architectural angles. But this event is not a travel exhibition dedicated to the joys of the English countryside, nor a symposium for wedding venues. It’s the seventh annual Independent Schools Show, or ISS. ‘It’s much more visual this year,’ says Carol Baker, the development director at Kent College, Canterbury; exhibiting for the seventh year in a row, she is in a position to judge. With more than 175 of the UK’s leading independent nurseries, prep and senior schools — day and boarding — all represented under one roof, the ISS can justifiably use the tagline ‘the largest schools assembly in the UK’. Every UK independent school one has ever heard of seems to have a tick in the register; as the ­Stonyhurst representative says, ‘It’s noticeable if you’re not here.’ Even Eton College, whose profile probably doesn’t need raising further, has a stand. ‘No, we don’t need one,’ says Charles Milne, ­goodnaturedly. ‘But we’re here to show solidarity with other independent schools and to dispel In the café, a man sidled up some of the myths around Eton.’

They have a wide audience. Over and asked, ‘Looking for a boys’ the course of the wet November boarding prep near Ipswich?’ weekend, more than 3,000 families browsed the educational possibilities for their children — from the highly organised (pregnant mothers presumably under the impression that they had to put their babies’ names down while still in utero — which is not the case even with Eton) to international families and upwardly mobile English ones. There was even the occasional studious young person who seemed to be researching their own education — including a slight Asian boy sporting a ­Gordonstoun-branded bag slung over his shoulder.

For the first-timer looking for schools, the result is ‘overwhelming’, as Louise from Wiltshire summed it up at the end of a long day (sensibly, she had left her ­seven-year-old and two-year-old at home). The amount of information to take in is huge: the many stands emblazoned with names both famous and obscure, the accommodating smiles of the teachers and marketing staff 32

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manning the cubicles, the schoollivery branded bags that wouldn’t look out of place on Sloane Street (though I have little intention, not to mention funds, to send my six- and two-year-old to prep school, I left with bags containing kilos of prospectuses; it seemed rude not to).

The marketing efforts are fascinating: branded pens and pencils are standard, bordering on old-hat; most stands seem to have bowls full of refined sugar in the form of chocolates or lollipops on offer, resulting in thieving children (mainly mine) charging around as high as meth addicts and under the impression that public schools are like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Schools with a hitherto grim image that might possibly want softening — such as Stonyhurst and Gordonstoun — give out the fluffiest soft toy mascots (Gordonstoun’s rabbit sports a fetching tartan scarf). Kent College even produced living mascots: three-week-old ducklings from its school farm, hatched out of season especially for the show. And there are also school branding companies exhibiting (one school whose logo appeared to be a cockroach with a key might benefit from these services).

If all this advertising is too overwhelming, and there isn’t the option of sending your PA or children’s tutor to the show on your behalf (as oligarchal types are rumoured to do), then school placement consultants are also represented. These outfits range from independents with a homespun operation in Chelsea to global professionals. Gabbitas Education is an example of the latter: established in 1873, before many of the schools exhibiting here, Gabbitas boasts websites (and offices) for China, Japan, Russia and South Korea as well as claiming in their literature that H.G. Wells, Evelyn Waugh and members of the royal family ‘have passed through our doors’. These organisations will, for a fee, assess your child and pinpoint the most suitable schools.

And then of course there are also stands for the tutors who might help your child to pass the exams to get into the school you eventually decide on.

The decision, of course, seems impossible: not just because there’s so much choice, but also because every­ one is so willing to please. At times the ISS ­resembled some kind of red-light district: while I was resting my bags at the café (organic, naturally), a man sidled up to me and asked in a suggestive tone, ‘You’re not looking for a boys’ boarding prep near Ipswich, are you?’ (he fled when I said I was reporting the event).

The best strategy is to go in with some idea of what you’re after: day or boarding, single sex or co-ed, preprep, prep or secondary. For some families, location is a priority, while for those overseas it may not matter so much. An idea of the activities that make your child tick is an advantage, although my initial questions about what a school excels in were inevitably met with a statement of how all-round good they are at everything.

It is worth persisting. Ibstock School in Richmond, guide to independent schools | 15 March 2014

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6/3/14 12:20:17

William Vanderson/Fox Photos/Getty images

Know your onions: schools bring all sorts of exhibits to the Independent Schools Show

for example, got the highest result in Mandarin from a pupil in the British system, and the headmistress is very proud of their language department. It’s also worth reading between the lines: a Gordonstoun representative told me ‘We don’t worship sport’ in the same breath as ‘We had three gold medallists in the London Olympics.’

But do keep an open mind, too. I’d never thought about weekly boarding, but Carol Butler of Kent College pointed out the advantages — no morning school run, no nanny costs, no need to move to a bigger house to accommodate growing children — and I felt myself seduced.

Certainly attending the ISS is a great way to find out more about a school you’ve got your eye on — or to whittle out down a long list to a short list. Also, the expert talks over both days offer informative, focusing guidance. ‘Ben Thomas’s talk on Common Entrance was really helpful,’ said a woman from Wiltshire called ­Louise. ‘It gave an overview so I feel like I might have a handle on that now.’

The main thing is to leave with a shortlist of schools to visit. Mine — after the promised crèche refused un­accompanied children due to other parents having abused the service earlier in the day — consisted entirely of boarding schools. Because who wouldn’t want to send their sugar-high tots as far away as humanly possible after dragging them around the ISS? If, that is, any school will take them after witnessing such appalling behaviour.

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Carefully-selected hotels, private transfers and local guides combine to create a hassle-free experience. The Kirker Concierge will arrange activities to keep every member of the party entertained: from outdoor pursuits to cooking classes or perhaps a private guide who will bring the gargoyles and gladiators of Prague and Rome to life.

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15 March 2014 | guide to independent schools

Sophia Martelli schools show_Spectator Schools March 2014_Spectator Supplements 210x260_

d i s c e r n i n g

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Easter revision courses The Council for Independent Education’s list for late cramming College

Courses

Average Dates class size

Fees

Ashbourne College

All main subjects offered at all levels. Specific unit revision courses offered in maths; for other AS or A2 courses, specific sessions restricted to Ashbourne’s exam boards. Useful course pack and end-of-course report.

7

£500 per course (15 hrs’ tuition)

All major A-level and GCSE subjects offered.

Bespoke one-to-one tuition or small group ‘topic specific’ courses, Monday to Friday half days. Daily supervised exam practice and written feedback. End of course report.

2

Cambridge Centre for Sixth-Form Studies 4-5 Bene’t Place, Lensfield

A-level: maths, RS, history, government and politics, business, economics, chemistry, physics, biology, Spanish, French. GCSE: maths, biology, chemistry, English, English as a second language, French, Spanish, German.

6

Mon 7 April–Fri 11 April

A-levels: £450 per course (based on 17.5 hrs’ tuition). GCSEs: £400 per course (based on 15 hrs’ tuition)

Carfax Tutorial Establishment

All subjects at A-level (AS/A2) and GCSE. Group sessions on study skills and exam technique. Formal exam practice. Morning and/or afternoon sessions. Post-course report.

Half days: 22 hrs/week; full: 38 hrs/week.

1–3 (max. 3)

Mon 31 March–Fri 4 April

Groups of up to 3: £395/ £650 (half/whole days) a week. £495/£895 for one on one. Accommodation from £200 a week

All main subjects at A-level (A2 & AS) and GCSE. Homework throughout and reports at the end of course. GCSE Combined science (28 hrs’ tuition) £740. Exam skills day £160, or £80 when booked with full revision course.

5

All main subjects offered for AS, A2, GCSE or IGCSE levels. (Combined science counts as two GCSE subjects.) Individual tuition often available for subjects that will not have a class.

6

All main subjects at A-level (A2 and AS) and GCSE are offered. Combined science counts as two GCSE subjects. Individual ­tuition available on request. All exam boards offered.

5

MPW (Birmingham) 17-18 Greenfield Crescent, Birmingham B15 3AU Tel: 0121 454 9637 enq@birmingham.mpw.co.uk www.mpw.co.uk/birmingham

All major A-level and GCSE subjects offered.

Half-day specialist modules (e.g. in history and English literature) available for £132 per ­session.

4

MPW (London)

All main subjects at A-level (A2 & AS) and GCSE. 40-hour A-level maths £1,032. Eighthour seminar courses in classical civilisation, English lit and RS £295. Four-hour history and geography for £190. 30-hour combined science GCSE course £890. Board specific.

7 (max. 9)

All main subjects at A-level, GCSE, IGCSE and IB. Week-long residential or non­residential courses. Study skills included.

End of course reports provided.

3 (max. 6)

All main A-level and Pre-U subjects offered; GCSE maths, English and science offered on half-day and full-day basis. Fully residential A-level and Pre-U courses £960.

6

Bath Academy

27 Queen Square, Bath BA1 2HX Tel: 01225 334577 admissions@bathacademy.co.uk www.bathacademy.co.uk

Road, Cambridge CB2 1EL Tel: 01223 707942; admissions@ccss.co.uk www.ccss.co.uk

39-42 Hythe Bridge St, Oxford OX1 2EP Tel: 01865 200676 admissions@carfax-oxford.com www.carfax-oxford.com Collingham College 23 Collingham

Gardens, London SW5 0HL Tel: 020 7244 7414 easter@collingham.co.uk www.collingham.co.uk

Duff Miller College

59 Queen’s Gate, London SW7 5JP Tel: 020 7225 0577 enqs@duffmiller.com www.duffmiller.com

Lansdowne College

40-44 Bark Place, London W2 4AT Tel: 020 7616 4400 education@lansdownecollege.com www.lansdownecollege.com

90/92 Queen’s Gate, London SW7 5AB Tel: 020 7835 1355 london@mpw.co.uk www.mpw.co.uk Oxford International College

1 London Place, Oxford OX4 1BD Tel: 01865 240637 info@oxss.co.uk www.oxcoll.com Oxford Tutorial College 12 King Edward Street, Oxford OX1 4HT Tel: 01865 793333 info@otc.ac.uk www.otc.ac.uk

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Revision colleges table_Spectator Schools March 2014_Spectator Supplements 210x260_

Mon 31 March–Fri 4 April Mon 7 April–Fri 11 April Mon 14 April–Fri 18 April

Mon 31 March—Fri 4 April Mon 7 April–Fri 11 April Mon 14 April–Fri 18 April

Mon 7 April–Fri 11 April Mon 14 April–Fri 18 April

Mon 7 April–Fri 11 April* Mon 14 April–Fri 18 April* Mon 21 April–Fri 25 April* *GCSE courses Mon–Thu Mon 7 April–Fri 11 April Mon 14 April–Fri 18 April Mon 21 April–Fri 25 April

Mon 14 April–Fri 18 April Mon 21 April–Fri 25 April

Mon 7 April–Fri 11 April Mon 14 April–Fri 18 April

Small group fee £620 per course (20 hrs); oneto-one tuition £54 per hr. Accommodation £160 per week

A-level (17.5 hrs): £490 for one subject, £940 for two. GCSE (14 hrs): One ­subject £390, two £740, three £1,090 Full A-level £975 (40 hrs). AS or A2 £550 (20 hrs). GCSE £450 (20 hrs). Three or more GCSEs £385 per subject Full A-level £975 (35 hrs). AS or A2 £550 (17.5 hrs). GCSE £450 (17.5 hrs). Three or more GCSEs £385 per subject £485 per course (17.5 hrs’ tuition)

Mon 21 April–Fri 25 April

Mon 31 March–Fri 4 April Mon 7 April–Fri 11 April Mon 14 April–Fri 18 April

Mon 31 March–Fri 4 April Mon 7 April–Fri 11 April Mon 14 April–Fri 18 April

Mon 7 April–Fri 11 April (GCSE: 8 April–11 April) Sun 13 April–Thu 17 April (GCSE: 14 April–17 April)

Per course (20 hrs’ ­tuition): one ­subject £668; two £1,336; three £1,819; four £2,271

£715 for five-day course (30 hrs of timetabled study). Additional £280 for full-board accommodation A-level £660 (24 hrs’ tuition). GCSE £275 (12 hrs’ tuition) or £500 (24 hrs’ tuition)

All of the colleges listed are members of the Council for Independent Education (www.cife.org.uk), a national organisation of independent colleges which specialise in preparing students for university entrance.

17 Old Court Place, London,W8 4PL Tel: 020 7937 3858 admin@ashbournecollege.co.uk www.ashbournecollege.co.uk

guide to independent schools | 15 march 2014

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6/3/14 12:21:24

The 2014 Spectator Schools Conference A League of Our Own: How British Schools Can Lead the World

thursday 3 april,1 wimpole street, London W1 Speakers include:

Tristram Hunt Shadow Education Secretary

Elizabeth Truss Childcare Minister

To find out more, visit

www.events.spectator.co.uk/schools07 call

Amanda Spielman Chair of Ofqual

Toby Young

Co-Founder, West London Free School

Tickets

ÂŁ99 + VAT

020 7961 0044 email

events@spectator.co.uk

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