Spectator independent schools supplement September 2013

Guide to Independent Schools September 2013

Anthony Seldon • Harry Mount • Pippa Middleton • James Delingpole • Ross Clark Aidan Bellenger • Ysenda Maxtone Graham • Harry Phibbs • Molly Guinness Will Heaven • Tim Wigmore • Mark Palmer • Sebastian Payne In association with

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In pursuit of excellence As every parent knows, no school can be right for every child. Some thrive on strict discipline, others need freedom to express themselves. In the independent sector, free from the state’s unifying grip, a diversity of schools can flourish. They tend, nonetheless, to share one attribute: excellence. Fee-paying schools can pick and choose teachers and keep class sizes down, with obvious benefits. Not only are their pupils three times more likely to achieve top grades at A-level, but 92 per cent go on to higher education — twice the rate in the state sector.

The excellence of independent education is something to celebrate — and that is what this supplement, kindly sponsored by Brewin Dolphin, aims to do.

So we have Ross Clark describing how our leading public schools are so revered that they are cloning themselves for the Asian market. In Africa, as Harry Phibbs explains, aid money is being directed away from government schemes towards private school vouchers.

While Britain’s independent schools soar, however, our universities may be falling behind: Anthony Seldon tells us that internationally minded parents are increasingly sending their progeny to British private schools, but prefer American universities. There’s plenty of fun, too. Harry Mount explores the glorious world of school slang; Pippa Middleton regales us with her memories of school sports; Molly Guinness asks what makes a great teacher; Tim Wigmore ponders the future of the school trip and Mark Palmer considers the enduring quality of friendships made at school.

We hope you find it informative and entertaining, and please watch out for our next edition in March 2014.

Editor

Freddy Gray

Making the grade Will Heaven

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A Sir to remember Molly Guinness

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Rise of the clone schools Ross Clark

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Friends for life Mark Palmer

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Drawings

John Jensen Supplied free with the 7 September 2013 edition of The Spectator

Innocents abroad Tim Wigmore

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Class acts Ysenda Maxtone Graham

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Sporting memories Pippa Middleton

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Aid that really helps Harry Phibbs

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Universities challenged Anthony Seldon

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Whither libraries? Aidan Bellenger

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Slang culture Harry Mount

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Lessons from technology Sebastian Payne Course correction George van den Bergh

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Bridging the gap Daisy Dunn Independents’ day Sarah Reynolds

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Learning to teach James Delingpole

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Regrets and retakes Will Heaven on what to do if you haven’t made the grades

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very year — according to Fleet Street legend — the Telegraph prints a lovely photograph on its front page after the A-level results are published. It shows happy, bright young ladies clutching important letters and leaping into the air with glee. These lissom blondes are, of course, the students with straight As. ‘Yessss!’, they have just got into their first-choice university: ‘OMG this is, like, the Best Day Ever!’

What you don’t see is a photograph of the students who fall short of their predicted grades. There will be no leaping, no Daddy buying a bottle of champagne for this lot. They’ll be in hiding, blubbing over the letter or pathetically phoning their director of studies to ask him to perform a miracle.

Not too long ago, I made one of those humiliating calls myself. ‘Um . . . you know how it says I got a B for French?’ I said anxiously. Yes.

‘Well, please can you double-check just in case it was misread?’ Nope, still a B. Oh well, I got over it pretty quickly because my grades still earned me a place at York University. But what about those who mess things up badly? I mean the would-be straight-A students who accidentally get ABC (a ‘Justin Welby’), or BBC (an ‘auntie’), or — in these days of grade hyperinflation — AAA when they really need an A* in the mix. These panicking schoolleavers will hurriedly start thinking about re-marks and retakes.

There are a few elephant traps to watch out for.

When asking for a re-mark, parents and students should remember that marks can go down. And if they do, you’re stuck with the lower mark (and a bill to pay).

A positive change is a rare event. As one exam board warns: ‘The majority of re-mark requests do not result in a change to a grade — simply because the re-mark

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has shown that the original grade was accurate.’ (Think Concentration of exam markers as being a bit like 1970s trade union- may be the key ists. They stick up for each other.)

The second option — and here’s where it gets a little complicated in 2013 — is a retake. Until this year, school-leavers could retake their A-levels the following January. They’d get a job or go backpacking for a few months, reapply to universities in the autumn, and have another crack at the exams in the New Year.

Nasty Michael Gove has changed all that. Or, to be more precise, nasty Ofqual, the government body that regulates exams. It issued an ex cathedra pronouncement in November 2012 which said that January retakes were to be scrapped because of concerns over a ‘resit culture’. Glenys Stacey, Ofqual’s chief executive, said: ‘Teach- How were universities to spot ers in particular said that A-level stuthe difference between the dents approach examinations with the expectation they will always get lazy oaf and the star student? a second chance.’

It’s true, the culture did exist.

One newspaper reported the case of an idle teenager who was allowed to retake his maths A-level a total of 29 times until he passed. How were universities, overwhelmed with applications, supposed to spot the difference between that lazy oaf and the star student who worked hard and passed first time?

It’s a bit late for the rights and wrongs of Ofqual’s change, which has certainly ruffled feathers among teachers. The question now is: if there are no January retakes, what are the options? The short answer is to retake exams the following June, but there’s more to 6

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it than that. Everyone I’ve spoken to in education has had the same advice for A-level students who slip up: take a deep breath, don’t get steamrollered and seek advice. If you want to go to a good university, this can be fixed. One thing is clear, however: this advice is no longer aimed at the students who have flunked their exams, the U-grade students and the GTFs (Eton-speak for ‘general, total failures’).

Why? Because the whacking great cost of university tuition fees — £27,000 over three years — means that there is no point retaking A-levels to get CCC and a place at the University of Sainsbury’s to study Windsurfing Sciences. Add living expenses to tuition fees and you’d be wasting a small fortune on a course that probably wouldn’t lead to a job.

The good news for middling students is that the cap on those with an A and two B grades has this year been lifted: universities can accept as many as they like. So if a student with a ‘Justin Welby’ thinks they can push it up to ABB, then it’s time to look seriously at June retakes and — if you can afford the fees — a crammer.

A good place to start is cife.org.uk, an association that represents a group of 18 independent sixth-form colleges in London, Oxford, Bath, Birmingham, Northampton, Market Harborough and Cambridge. Importantly, given the scrapping of the New Year retakes, the colleges offer short courses from January until June, which are due to expand.

The four-letter problem with this model is UCAS. Prospective students still have to apply to universities in the autumn for entry the following year. And if they haven’t started at the crammer, they will have to go through the process with their old school — which is unlikely to give them higher predicted grades.

That’s why colleges like MPW offer split courses which start in the autumn, include supervision of the UCAS process, but have a break halfway through the Michaelmas term until mid-February. It means a bit of freedom to work or travel, but the right help when you need it. Steven Boyes, MPW’s London principal, explains that this impresses universities: ‘Admissions tutors want to see a clear plan of action.’ They want to know, from the word go, what is this student doing to improve their grades?

Ultimately, as he and other teachers say, students are more likely to do better at a university they are proud to attend. And when you consider the earning power of a Russell Group alumnus with a first, investing in a few retakes becomes a no-brainer.

Will Heaven is on the staff of the Daily Telegraph.

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Send in the clones Why some of Britain’s best schools are building replicas of themselves across the Far East. By Ross Clark

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n China you can see replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the Great Pyramid, St Peter’s Square and a large slice of Amsterdam. But more remarkable than any of them in its own way is a red-brick militaryacademy-style building in the Hongqiao district of Tianjin. It is a replica — or thereabouts — of Wellington College in Berkshire. And unlike a lot of other replicas, it wasn’t built by a Chinese property developer but by Wellington College itself.

Wellington College International Tianjin, which was opened by Prince Andrew in 2010, is more or less

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a full-size working model of its mother school, albeit without the full complement of rugby pitches (there is one Astroturf pitch) or boarding houses (its first boarders arrive this month).

Its website brims with pictures of children playing the trombone, starring in last year’s production of Bugsy Malone and enjoying a school trip to Berlin.

Only an uncommon emphasis on Mandarin — plus an invitation to translate the page into that language — give the game away that this is not a school in England.

Soon there will be a pair of Wellingtons in China: another replica is due to open in Shanghai next August.

While the coalition dreams on about independent schools sponsoring academies in Britain, it is in the Far East that many are choosing to replicate themselves.

Dulwich College is well on its way to becoming an international brand, with three schools in China and one in Seoul. None is as architecturally derivative of their mother institution as are the Chinese Wellingtons — Shanghai has a rather half-hearted brick and con-

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crete bell tower, but that is about it — but neverthe- Founder’s day, less seek to replicate a public-school experience. For Harrow, 1954. team-building, they go camping on the Great Wall and The school now building yurts in Inner Mongolia. There is even a Dul- has branches wich College Asia Games, at which all four Far Eastern in Beijing and Bangkok — branches compete. complete with Harrow, meanwhile, has cloned itself in Beijing, comboaters plete with boaters. Harrow was the first to beat a path to the Far East, opening in Bangkok in 1997. Shrewsbury followed in Bangkok in 2003.

You don’t necessarily have to have a big reputation to get in on the act: even Bromsgrove School now has an outpost in Thailand. There is one notable absentee: Eton refuses to have anything to do with the rush to Ought we to worry that our the Far East, saying it would rather leading schools might go concentrate its energies at home. the way of the Hilton hotel?

It is difficult to know what to make of this oriental expansion.

Does one take a fogeyish pride at the thought of children walking around Beijing in boaters, welcome the schools as a prime British export, us doing what we do best? Or ought we to worry that some of our leading

schools are going to go the way of the Hilton hotel — once a byword for luxury, and now a name emblazoned in illuminated lettering on nasty concrete towers at every international airport?

‘There is a reputational risk if the Chinese school does badly, of course,’ says Anthony Seldon, master of the original Wellington College, or ‘Wellington Classic’ as the marketing men would no doubt call it. ‘But it is a prestigious thing to do. Wellington is one of the great schools of Britain and we can add to it by taking it to the great economic powerhouse of the 21st century.’

Financially, he says, there is no risk. The Chinese schools are private companies whose profits can be repatriated to support Wellington College in Berkshire, but money cannot flow the other way.

What do the parents of children at the Chinese schools think about some of their fees helping to fund the education of Wellington pupils 600 miles away?

Parents who send their children to private schools in China are used to establishments being run for profit, he says, and so it is not an issue for them.

One thing you will not find much of in the Chinese outposts of British independent schools are Chinese pupils. Chinese children can attend Wellington College in Berkshire, but Chinese law prevents their parents sending them to international schools at home. The pupil roll of the British schools reflects the relative numbers of American, British and European businesspeople who have ventured out to China with their families. At Dulwich’s Beijing outpost, for example, only 35 per cent of pupils hail from Asia, while 26 per cent come from North America, 15 per cent from Britain and Ireland, 14 per cent from the rest of Europe and 8 per cent from Australia and New Zealand.

Wellington, however, has its eyes on the domestic Chinese market. As well as a third English-speaking international school, this one in Hong Kong, it is planning to open a Chinese-speaking school in Shanghai, which local children would be allowed to attend. This is potentially a huge, untapped market for British schools and education companies. As some US state schools have discovered, there is a significant number of welloff Chinese parents who do not like the ethos of China’s own schools and are prepared to spend large amounts of money sending the children to be educated abroad — even to schools which have less than golden reputations.

Stearns High School in Millinochet, a fading mill town in Maine, might have closed were it not for 60 Chinese students enrolled there. It is no Wellington: only four in ten of its US pupils meet state standards for reading, writing, science and maths. Yet for the Chinese parents who are paying $13,000 per child in fees, and a further $11,000 in boarding costs, any American school is regarded as a stepping stone to Harvard and other US universities.

If the Maine experience is anything to go by, you don’t need to be a public school with a big reputation to attract Chinese parents. You just need to be able to offer a western-style education. Now that No. 10 has retracted its suggestion that British state schools could accept fee-paying overseas pupils, maybe a few of these academy chains should get on a plane to China and bang a few stakes in the ground.

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To boldly go Tim Wigmore on the future of the school trip

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he school trip now seems rather quaint. When you can see the whole world on Google Maps, what’s the point of traipsing to the seaside to see longshore drift in action? In an age of austerity, moreover, the school trip might seem an unaffordable indulgence.

Yet parents seem to think otherwise: according to a recent Family Finances Report, 69 per cent of parents are willing to pay for school field trips in Britain. Experiencing the real world — rather than merely reading or writing about it, or staring at it through a computer — should be an essential part of education.

The government agrees. Last October, Michael Gove unveiled a £5 million scheme designed to fund trips to the first world war battlefields for thousands of pupils in England. The aim, Gove said, was for children to learn about the sacrifices made ‘to secure our nation’.

Gove has attacked the bureaucratic educational

culture which led to schools not organising trips for fear of contravening rules they did not even understand. Thanks to his ‘bonfire of the regulations’, 150 pages of official guidelines on school trips have been cut to eight. The Health and Safety Executive has further issued a report entitled ‘Tackling the health and safety myths’.

No one disputes that sensible regulations are needed to keep children safe, nor the stress involved for teachers looking after exuberant teenagers on a day out of the school bubble. But when it’s considered too risky to take children out of the confines of the classroom then something is not quite right.

What Gove would have made of the actions of Bromet Primary School this July has never been made clear —but we can hazard a pretty accurate guess. An 11-year-old pupil was banned and her mother forced to undertake a 160-mile round trip through the night to collect her. The girl’s offence? She ate chocolate in defiance of a ‘charter’ which parents and pupils had signed before the trip. The school only found out about the crime by reading one of the girl’s letters home.

But such a depressingly closed-minded attitude towards school trips is the exception rather than the rule. Take the Duke of Edinburgh Award. It was

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established 57 years ago with a simple aim: to give children the active, outside and real-world experiences they would otherwise be denied.

As the world around it has changed, the D of E Award has not only endured but expanded: it now has 275,000 participants a year. Part of the requirement to obtain an award is to do community work: it’s the ‘Big Society’ in action. But the fun lies in expeditions — ranging from a weekend away in the case of the Bronze Award, to a whole week in the case of the Gold Award. This involves lots of hiking, lots of getting lost and plenty of self-reliance: when traipsing across the moors, I can tell you from experience, there is no substitute for old-fashioned map-reading skills.

For all of the D of E’s worth, some schools take an even more ambitious approach to school trips. Cardiff Sixth Form College is one example. It is involved in the gloriously named International Space Settlement Design Competition. In both 2011 and 2012, Cardiff won the competition, which is held at the NASA headquarters in Houston, Texas, and requires participating students to come up with proposals for developments in space. Very different in tone but equally stimulating is the school’s Goodwill Ambassador Programme, which it runs with Malaysia and Bahrain: this varied scheme gives students the chance to go to schools and universities in between immersing themselves in local life and visiting the sights.

It’s a very 21st-century approach to the school trip: more ‘global race’ than Famous Five. It provides students with an experience far removed from their For a generation too often normal existences, with the poten- glued to screens, school trips tial to shape their future lives. are more valuable than ever As laudable as such schemes are, less glamorous school trips need a helping hand too. National Heritage figures show a 28 per cent drop in visits to its sites from school children from 2002-03 to 2012-13. For schools with ever-tighter budgets and ever-greater pressure to climb the league tables, school trips can seem a waste of time and money.

But reports of the demise of the school trip may have been exaggerated. Measures exist to make trips open to all students, regardless of their parents’ income: wherever possible, contributions for school trips are voluntary.

The government is eager to ensure school trips remain an integral part of state education. Independent schools should take advantage. This year, English Heritage has announced that £120,000 a year will be used to offer free bus journeys — prohibitive transport costs often put schools off organising trips — to sites including Hadrian’s Wall and Stonehenge. Schools already benefit from free admission to more than 400 National Heritage sites in the UK. Far from being obsolete, schools trips are needed more than ever for a generation too often glued to screens. For all the benefits of interactive learning, it is no substitute for going somewhere. The school trip is about education for life, not just education for exams.

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barometer

Market price Independent schooling versus private tutoring: which is the biggest market?

Some 579,700 pupils are educated at independent schools, for an average annual fee of £13,788, making for a total market of £7.99 billion.

Based on a 35-hour week and a 40-week academic year, parents are paying an average of £9.80 per hour.

A survey by tutor firm EdPlace found that 28 per cent of parents employ private tutors for at least one child. They pay an average of £2,758 per year, making for a total market worth £6 billion.

The average charge is £22 per hour.

Independents abroad What percentage of children attend independent schools in the following countries?

15.0% 9.8% 7.8% 7.0% 6.7% 5.6%

France US Germany UK Japan Canada

History paper There are 2,500 or so independent schools in Britain, some of them very ancient. How many were already in existence by these dates?

268 203 73 49 33 27 16 14 7 1

1700 1600 1500 1400 1300 1200 1100 1000 700 600

Global dorming Which countries do overseas pupils in independent schools in Britain come from? (This only includes pupils whose parents live abroad.)

Hong Kong China Germany Rest of EU Spain Russia Nigeria US

1,966 1,696 1,322 902 843 841 372 278

Source: Independent Schools Council

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Confessions of a sporty schoolgirl Pippa Middleton on her memories of athletic achievement – and the opposite

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hen I close my eyes and think about school sports, I envisage myself on the hockey pitch, stick in hand, a luminous gumshield locked on to my chops and a bandana across my forehead. (Bandanas were all the rage back then.) Boys are ­watching. I can also hear the booming voice of Mr Markham, our fierce but undeniably fanciable coach, urging us all on. The other Mr M in my life (father and also coach) is on the sidelines, and I’m desperate to impress him most of all. My knees and knuckles are

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badly grazed from the astroturf, my shins are battered and bruised from the bully-offs. But my focus is on winning and making sure that my hair — fashioned into a slick Sporty Spice ‘up do’ — is just right. Did I mention the boys watching?

Hockey was my favourite: I was captain and proud.

But all good things come to an end, and hockey ended with the Christmas term. The following term, we had to play netball. People say netball is like basketball with all the fun bits taken out. I’d tend to agree. You can’t run with the ball and only two members of the team

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can shoot. You spend most of the time playing a complex version of piggy-in-the-middle, except the piggies are a pack of vicious girls. My petite physique enabled me to nip and tuck my way past the bigger-chested girls.

Elbows always helped; as did the derriere for defence (my ‘chest’ hadn’t developed back then) and a bit of shoulder-barging here or there. It was brutal, but turns out to have been very useful practice for handling the media in later life.

Some of my fondest memories are of school sports day. I recall the odd personal mishap: forgetting the baton in the 4 x 100m relay race, dropping the shot put on my foot and treading on my brother with a spiked running shoe are three that spring to mind. There was always a stray dog that would defecate in the longjump pit and the high-jump mat was always soaking from either rain or tears. Best of all was the mothers’ and fathers’ race — a fiercely competitive event which brought about more injuries per contestant than any other.

On the subject of mothers, I must touch on crosscountry — one of the most gruelling compulsory school activities, along with public speaking. Unlike many of my friends who ‘suddenly got the flu’, we Middleton girls were always at the starting line — albeit reluctantly — fuelled by Lucozade tablets and bananas. Rain was inevitable and we’d get caked in mud from head to toe, in our tiny athletic shorts, white Aertex and all.

To really rub our faces in it, the teachers would wear fleeces, gilets and waterproofs. I was born more

of a long-distance runner — something to do with my endurance and sturdy ‘piano legs’. On one occasion I recall being in second place, and as I passed my mother on the perimeter, I was feeling quite proud of myself until she called out, ‘Run faster, Pippa, run faster!’ What did she think I was trying to do?

The real horror — far worse than netball or crosscountry — was the swimming gala. Everyone had to walk around sheepishly in tight Speedo bathing suits and streamlined swimming caps.

And with swimming, of course, ‘Run faster Pippa, run faster!’ came the nightmare of the pool changing rooms: those awkward my mother called out. communal showers, the lingering What did she think I was scent of ­c hlorine and adolescent trying to do? body odour.

But all the hot weather of the last few months brings back cheerier memories of playing rounders. When batting, I always took pleasure in hitting the ball into the stinging nettles. Fielding was usually boring, unless I was bowling or at 3rd base, where all the action is.

On Saturday afternoons, after rounders matches, I’d go off to watch my brother playing cricket. I recall one match when he got the yips trying to bowl spin, and kept being no-balled. He gave away so many runs that his team eventually lost the match. I was so embarrassed that, rather than rallying to his support, I hid behind the scoreboard and missed out on match tea. ­Family, eh?

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Left behind The needs of our sixth-formers are changing, says Anthony Seldon – can British universities keep up?

T

he traditional edifice of sixth form, university in Britain, and a job for life is still the norm for many, but major cracks are beginning to appear in the infrastructure. As the father of three children, two of whom have been through university and one who is still there, as well as headmaster of a school which sends more than 200 young ­people to university each year, I have to say that I am neither surprised, nor indeed sorry, that the traditional model is beginning to implode.

Increasing numbers are beginning to question whether higher education is right for them at all. Too few ask themselves the question, ‘Why am I going to university?’ Too many sleepwalk their way through the experience, without making the most of it as a result. Many more companies are now offering direct entry schemes for school-leavers. One of our most promising students last year, a senior prefect, has gone straight into an apprenticeship at The responses I hear such a firm, rejecting her place at from vice-chancellors a top university, and wrote to say that many more would benefit from are not encouraging working hard and learning on the job for three years rather than whiling away their time on abstract study. Adverse stories about repaying tuition fees are leading increasing numbers to form the same conclusion.

British universities are doing an outstanding job in many ways, with three in the world top-ten rankings and five in the top 20 of the best universities which are less than 50 years old. But there are growing problems around the experience of undergraduates. Outstanding though many of our universities are in their postgraduate experience, and in their record for research, I am yet to be convinced that they have fully woken up to the need to consider the experience of undergraduates. This article is certainly not a diatribe against our universities. I am writing in a personal capacity, as a parent and an observer, far more than as a head. But I am concerned.

At one end of the undergraduate spectrum stand highly vocational degrees, such as ‘Accounting and Business Administration’, while at the other end are degrees in pure academic subjects, including philosophy and literature. How well and fully educated do vice-chancellors really believe their leaving graduates are?

It seems that the lot of the undergraduate comes low in the hierarchy of many universities. Academic staff are rewarded, as we know, for their ability to further their academic discipline, not generally for their teaching skills. Many are not very good at either lecturing 16

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Today’s undergraduates are seeking more concrete results

or tutoring, and would appear to be reluctant to learn how to improve their skills. The students often feel short changed, and find that their academic staff, in contrast to their teachers at school, are hard-pressed and unable or even unwilling to engage in discussion about their work.

When I was at university, to become an academic was the very apex of aspiration. I wonder if this is still true.

Organisations like Teach First have promoted the status of school teaching, and top graduates vie to achieve places on their programmes. School teaching has become the new university lecturing.

Universities can be highly defensive about their prowess at caring for undergraduates pastorally, and many think they are doing an excellent job looking after the wellbeing of their undergraduates and tackling issues such as binge drinking. Some universities, like Essex, are doing a very good job, but I wonder about the general picture. Many young people find it difficult to transfer to higher education, and feel themselves isolated and in need of greater pastoral care, particularly in their transitional first year.

Some courses at universities are too rarefied and abstracted from the world at large. Too many university tutors are more interested in engaging in abstruse academic debates with each other than describing the real world that their subjects purport to illuminate. Undergraduates can leave university having studied a degree in economics but understanding very little of the way that companies and governments operate in practice; or hav-

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ing studied sociology but understanding very little about how society works or people or institutions think. They can study politics but leave with little grasp of how power operates within the nation state or between countries; study philosophy but understand little about the issues that have occupied the greatest minds in the world; study history,but acquire only a patchy sense of chronology because courses suit the researched interests of tutors more than the intellectual needs of undergraduates; study literature but leave immersed in the muddle that is much of literary theory rather than engaging with the works of the finest writers the world has seen.

The undergraduate experience thus too often fails to turn out rounded human beings, has little sense of what an educated young person is, and does too little to help make them employable in the marketplace, which, rightly or wrongly, will be the preoccupation of the vast number.

Some universities have risen to the challenge, such as Birmingham, which offers a ‘liberal arts and sciences’ degree, a four-year course with a year working abroad, promising rich intellectual, leadership and employment experience. The history department at UCL has redesigned its course to make it far more intellectually coherent and stimulating to its undergraduates.

A.C. Grayling’s New College of Humanities, which opened to its first undergraduates last year, is capitalising on the malaise in traditional British universities. In contrast to the standard 12-module undergraduate degree, its undergraduates take a total of 20 modules as part of a broad liberal arts curriculum. In addition to their single honours degree, all undergraduates study four modules in a second humanities subject, as well as modules in applied ethics, logical and critical thinking and science literacy. To help them prepare for the world of work, they also participate in a ‘professional programme’, which offers them seminars on topics including financial literacy, marketing, problem-solving, entrepreneurship, innovation and team-building.

Universities in the US have become powerfully popular precisely because they offer much broader courses which suit the vast majority of young people who will be going on to lead enquiring lives and work in a variety of businesses requiring a broad range of skills. When I joined Wellington College seven years ago, a bare handful of sixth formers applied to US universities. Now over a third actively inquire about going. It is not only middle-class children from British schools who want to cross the Atlantic: the Sutton Trust has set up summer schools for ‘non-privileged’ sixth formers to consider becoming undergraduates in the US. The response I hear from British vice-chancellors is not encouraging. Rather than analysing why US universities have become more popular, and amending their own institutions to offer greater breadth of experience and sense of belonging, they dismiss it as a fad for rich kids. I wish only the best for British universities, which is precisely why I want those who run them to spend more time considering the experience of the undergraduate, and work to enrich it.

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From shag to Funking Monday Harry Mount explores the strange and wonderful world of public-school slang

‘G

ive me a child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man,’ said St Francis Xavier, cofounder of the Jesuit order. Public schools are given children until they’re 18 — it’s no surprise they can control their world view for the rest of their life.

And their language, too. When Prince William teased his new-born son for his ‘tardiness’ in arriving some time after his due date, he was unconsciously unearthing the memory of Eton’s ‘Tardy Book’ for boys who were late to lessons — erm, I mean divs.

Twenty-five years after leaving Westminster School, I still think of its main hall as ‘Up School’, of afternoon sport there as ‘station’, even of my own clothes — rather than school uniform — as ‘shag’. Yes, really.

That’s the funny thing about school slang. Hypersensitive teenagers, terrified of saying something silly,

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let alone something sexual, are set free by the conventions of slang to speak a nonsense language without fear of embarrassment.

You’re safe from ridicule because you’re sanctioned by the universal use of slang by everyone around you.

Public schools — particularly boarding schools, particularly remote, rural boarding schools — are like undiscovered islands in the far reaches of the Pacific. The tiny group of indigenous pygmies speak and develop their own language, untouched by the outside world. Identical words have different meanings on different islands. In ancient Winchester slang — or ‘notions’, as slang is called there — a ‘bob’ is a big, white beer-jug. At Eton, a ‘wet bob’ rows; a ‘dry bob’ plays cricket; and ‘slack bobs’ do neither.

In these exotic bubbles, archaisms linger on for ever.

The Lower and Upper Shell — junior years at Westminster — derive from the semicircular apse at the end of Up School, where the boys were taught several centuries ago.

Given that public schools were largely devoted to classics for half a millennium, a lot of archaisms are ­Latin-based. The popular term for a short holiday, an ‘exeat’, is formed from the tricky subjunctive of exit, meaning ‘Let him go away’. Eton’s ‘dames’ — their

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matrons — get their name from the Latin domina, meaning mistress. Wykehamists came up with the term nihil-ad-rem — literally ‘nothing to the thing’ — to mean vague.

The formality of Latin was often abbreviated by boys. ‘Aegrotat’ — the Latin for ‘he is ill’ — was used for the result granted to an invalid who was too sick take his exams. Abbreviated to ‘Aeger’, it became popular at Felsted School, Essex, as recorded in an 1890 edition of the Felstedian: ‘What’s up with Smith? He went aeger before school this afternoon.’

The -er suffix is particularly widespread. ‘Brekker’ — in wide use at Stonyhurst and Harrow in the late 19th century — became universal in the 20th. The -er habit migrated to universities: in a self-mocking way, the ­Martyrs’ Memorial on St Giles in Oxford was nicknamed the ‘Maggers’ Memoggers’; in 1883, yellow Canadian canoes on the River Cherwell were called ‘Cannager-canoodles’.

For all its archaisms, school slang still changes with time. I never called milk ‘bag’ at school — although, according to the Public School Word-Book of 1900, it was popular at Westminster a century ago. Nor did I have to ask masters for a ‘dor’ — an ancient Westminster term for permission to have a doze (short for dormio — I sleep, in Latin).

And Westminster’s Birch Room — once extremely popular with masters — is obsolete these days; as is the Block in Eton’s Upper School library, where a boy knelt to be flogged. ‘Boner’, old public school slang for a

sharp blow on the spine, now means something entirely ­different. I imagine the Bearded Cad no longer exists at Winchester. That was the nickname for the college porter who carried luggage from the railway station. The Public School Word-Book says that he was named after ‘an extremely hirsute individual who, at one time, acted in the capacity’. Do pupils at Christ’s Hospital still call the first Monday after the end of the holidays ‘Funking Monday’ — surely too much room for improvisation?

Traditionalists needn’t worry, ‘Boner’, old school slang for a though. There’s still some tre- blow to the spine, now means mendous Molesworth language something entirely different around. New bugs at Winchester can still buy Winchester Notions, which lists the school’s slang. Invaluable if you want to translate something like ‘First-year boys, not in college but keen on exercise, will take part in the cross-house matches after half-term, before evening prep, under the supervision of all masters, the governing body, and the two joint heads of school.’ In Winchester slang, that reads, ‘For Commoners looking for Ekker, Winkies in Cloister Time for the Junior Part will be held after Leave Out, before Toytime, in the presence of all Dons, the Go. Bo., the Aul. Prae and the Sen. Co. Prae.’

Clear as mud — or, as a Wykehamist might say, it’s all pretty nihil-ad-rem.

Harry Mount is the author of How England Made the English (Viking).

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Summer lessons A gap year isn’t the only way to see a little more of life before university, says Daisy Dunn

I

n the summer before university, I rode a minibus to Blandford Forum in Dorset to attend a Greek summer school. Sitting next to me was a boy with Scout badges pinned to his polo shirt. ‘I like your costume,’ he told me, eyeing my blouse. ‘You look just like an air hostess. Or a Barbie doll dressed as an air hostess. All my girlfriends look like air hostesses.’

Poor Sebastian. He didn’t need to tell me that he came from a boys’ school in a remote corner of Kent.

It was painfully obvious that he had never spoken to a girl in his life. But the sad truth was, I wasn’t much more experienced. I’d just mastered the art of concealing it.

I hadn’t taken a gap year. Too many of my friends had found the world too exciting ever to settle into university afterwards. So my little Dorset adventure with Sebastian was the closest I came to preparing myself for the transition from school to university life.

And so we rode on, he scaling an even higher wall of mock bravado, me dreading the next fortnight. At the end of the road sat the grand, Norman Shaw-designed Bryanston School. Roughly 300 budding classicists poured into the building, most of us on the advice of teachers who said that the Greek course (‘Geek camp’, ho ho), an intensive residential language course held in Bryanston each July, would be the making of us.

I had lots of friends taking summer language courses

Learning to meet birds at a Greek summer school

at the same time, many of them abroad. The idea was to get our grammar and vocab in good shape by the time we enrolled at university the following October.

That was the idea. In practice, although I learned a lot from some fantastic teachers, I was just as grateful for the early introduction to a certain kind of boy. And to a lack of privacy: I shared a dorm with a girl who ate chicken in bed. And to really terrible wine. All these things would soon be the norm.

The most exhilarating experiences were the ones in which school rules were most obviously flouted. Despite being on a school campus, we were allowed to drink, which most of us learned to do with some skill. We had teachers, but we could address them by their first names, and we only had ourselves to blame if we fell behind.

There was dancing every school night.

Greek isn’t for everyone, but a short residential course is a great way to fill the gap between school and university. There’s no point in jetting off to Chile to teach if you haven’t learned to learn — and to unlearn.

Obviously no one wants to arrive at university worn out having spent his entire summer working. Nor does anyone with an iota of self-awareness want to mark himself out as an oddball with his opening gambit. A printmaking workshop, or a poetry course, or something parallel to the forthcoming university course may provide, above all, the opportunity to shape opinions and forge a unique connection to the course — and to other people.

It seemed to do the trick for young Sebastian, anyway. On the last night at Bryanston, I pottered down to the Greek theatre to watch the student play. As I took my seat, I caught sight of him, perched on the front row, lip-locked with the female lead. The last time I saw him, as an undergraduate, he was in much the same ­position.

170 open days in one hall ‘Finding the right school for my child is the most important decision I will make as a parent, a major emotional investment as well as a financial one,’ says David Wellesley Wesley, director of the Independent Schools Show.

‘School selection is no longer a question of which old school tie your father wore but rather which school best suits the child’s disposition, needs and skills.’

Independent schools have faced many difficulties in recent decades — the Lloyd’s crash, recessions, political opposition, rising costs and fees and so on.

Some schools survived, others didn’t. But the sector as a whole has emerged stronger than ever. Today, with ever more 20

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international interest in British private schools, marketing has become more important, as well as league tables and other measures of excellence.

Nowadays, a private education is more rounded; schools devote as many resources towards what they call ‘pastoral care’ and extracurricular activities as they do to excellence in the classroom.

Gone are the days of the cold, impersonal school corridor and distant parents. Modern parents want to be engaged with their child’s education from the start.

As a result, however, school selection has become an intensely stressful process. With so much at stake, families don’t just want to sign a cheque and be done with

it. They want to make sure they pick the right school, but they may not have time to research all the available options.

The Independent Schools Show was established to meet that growing demand. For two days, the show brings together 170 private schools from all over the country. It might sound exhausting — all those pushy educationalists — but it is a great help for making an informed decision quickly.

This year’s Independent Schools Show is at the Battersea Evolution, Battersea Park on 9 and 10 November 2013. Tickets are free for visitors who register online: visit www.schoolsshow.co.uk.

Sarah Reynolds

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Great educators can mould pupils in their own image

A breed apart Molly Guinness on those teachers everyone remembers

M

y brother’s Classics teacher Mr Maynard had a pet rock called Lithos (Greek for stone); his teaching methods included ‘subliminal learning’ sessions, during which he’d walk around the room conjugating verbs in a soft voice while everyone else suppressed giggles. He was also fond of a physical demonstration, hurling himself across the room with no warning when describing how Aegeus had thrown himself into the sea. As a result, most of his class at school chose Latin or Greek for A-level.

Another of my brothers is surprisingly knowledgeable about plant virology because he was taught by a man who threw pot plants at people when they weren’t listening and who made his students chew diseased tobacco to demonstrate the point that viruses cannot be transmitted from plants to humans.

I learned maths from Mr Harrison, whose motto was ‘tell ’em a story, teach ’em maths’. I don’t remember him doing anything but regaling us with tales of his very short professional football career, but somehow, by stealth, he turned us into pretty competent mathematicians.

Teaching ought to be a profession filled with mavericks and optimists, with people who adore their subject and are bored by the trivial, people who can deploy wit, cunning and showmanship to lure children into learning maths or Latin.

Independent schools have two advantages: they can take a risk when appointing a new teacher, and they can

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give their teachers more freedom to cover subjects that aren’t strictly on the syllabus. Anthony Little, headmaster of Eton, is happy to take on people with no teaching experience at all. ‘In recent years I’ve employed a barrister, a city trader and an army officer,’ he says. ‘None of them has a teaching qualification and they are all first-rate teachers.’ The master of Dulwich College, Joe Spence, says he persuades a head of department to take on someone untrained about once a year. ‘Eight times out of 10 it’s the right call when you’ve found someone with real enthusiasm for their subject.’

The problem for a lot of teachers is that they’re hidebound by the syllabus, and the syllabus can be deadly.

The GCSE reading list for English literature, for example, includes a token bit of Shakespeare and an awful lot of terrible poetry. A desire to make literature relevant and accessible (as if it wasn’t) has resulted in a patronising mishmash of ‘poems from other cultures’ and clunking modern poetry. We studied a poem called ‘Valentine’ by Carol Ann Duffy. It begins like this: ‘Not a red rose or a satin heart./I give you an onion./It is a moon wrapped in brown paper./It promises light/like the careful undressing of love.’ How we wished that someone would wrap Ms Duffy in brown paper and send her to the moon. It’s enough to put some people off English literature for life, but at least the prescribed reading list is relatively short. If you’re lucky, you’ll get it over with quickly and move on to something better.

‘The real learning is what happens beyond the curriculum – that’s where we make the lifelong learners,’ says Dr Spence. ‘With great teachers you may not understand every word, but years later you remember what they’ve said — they’re filling the vessel, not just showing people how to get full marks in next week’s test.’

I escaped relatively unscathed from the onslaught of right-on propaganda, because I was already a convert. When we were 11, Mr Butt, our English teacher at Farleigh School, had introduced us to the books he loved, and we loved them too. For a term, we sat solemnly listening to a tape of The Mayor of Casterbridge; he encouraged us to learn poetry off by heart and to keep a reading log — something some of us became furiously competitive about. In turns we read out loud the whole of The Go-Between, complete with illicit love affair, suicide and the loss of childhood innocence. He was right to show us the grown-up stuff. My mother has always sworn by Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory, with its disturbing child deaths and apparent castration, as a surefire way to get 13-year-olds reading. Teenagers are drawn to the sinister in the same way as children are drawn to the dark mischief of Roald Dahl. Mr Butt chose the books well, but the key thing was that he chose them; it sticks in the mind when you’re taught from the heart. It wasn’t just the adult themes that got our attention, but also the sense that Mr Butt thought we could handle a serious book, and that made us want to.

It’s a rare talent to be able to treat a class of children like adults while acting like a child yourself, but when a teacher leaps on to a desk and declares that Plato is his personal friend, or builds a trench in his classroom, or lets you hand over a fresh fish instead of your homework, you’ll joyfully remember whatever he tells you.

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together, united mainly in our loathing for Ludgrove just down the road.

When Mr Sheepshanks retired, the Dawson twins took over, and those of us who were good at football went to the top of the class while non-believers in the beautiful game were left largely to their own devices.

It remained pretty much the same sort of school until only a few years ago, when Tim Dawson’s son, Tom, took over and put up some pretty curtains. This means that whenever I meet a Sunningdalian of whatever vintage it’s like establishing contact with a kindred spirit. We grew up with the same smells in the darkened boot room; negotiated the same creaking staircase up to the dorms; picked conkers from the ground under the same trees in the woods near the chapel. And that’s important.

Yes, but will you come to my 50th birthday party?

The young today seem to have close friends but I wonder if, like me, they have friends with whom, if given the choice, they wouldn’t be friends at all.

In fact, at that birthday dinMark Palmer on the friends he made at prep school – and kept for life ner there were at least two chaps who have become awful bores. And another has got himself in such finanome years ago (well, nearly ten if you must cial and emotional bother that one should really set up a know), I gave a dinner to mark my undistin- direct debit in his favour to make sure he eats properly guished half-century. Nothing grand — but a and has a decent roof over his head. convivial gathering of ten men and ten women Friends are ‘God’s apology for relations’, observed in the basement of a restaurant where several the writer Hugh Kingsmill, but it’s also the case that we of us used to hang out in loon pants in the early 1970s. don’t always get to choose our school friends just like we Looking down the table, I realised that five out of the don’t get to select our relations. That has to be positive. It ten men had been at preparatory school with me. This was teaches you loyalty and tolerance, and it’s something prep a good feeling but not one that struck me as unusual. schools in general — boarding, single-sex schools in parI loved Sunningdale — although when I think about ticular — should be proud of. those freezing lavatories, those sagging beds, those terrifyIt is often chorused that those sent to boarding school ingly stern rebukes from Pauline the matron, those Search from an early age lack ‘street cred’ because they exist in a the Scriptures lessons that introduced us to the trials of bubble (normally described disparagingly as a ‘privileged eternity, there were plenty of reasons to hate the place. bubble’) but, believe me, you had to have your wits about Ah, yes, it’s easy to suggest that I made such good you living at such close quarters with a cast of characters mates because friendship was the only bonus on offer in variously known for their violence, brilliance, stupidity, such a bleak environment. But that would be doing the kindness, whingeing, vulnerability, arrogance, lack of perschool — and those five men seated around that table — sonal hygiene.You learnt how to stay out of trouble or, an injustice. rather, how to sail close to the proverbial wind if you were When I arrived at Sunningdale in 1961, a few weeks to survive without sustaining too psychological damage. shy of my eighth birthday, Charlie Sheepshanks was the No, there weren’t armed gangs on the playing fields headmaster (his wife Mary’s memoir, Wild Writing Gran- of Sunningdale but when the Dawsons flew off the hanny, covering some of this period, comes highly recom- dle because you’d given away possession in midfield or mended) and the whole notion of ‘modern facilities’ was hoofed the ball forward rather than played it to feet, you yet to take hold in the independent sector. knew about it.

There were a couple of fives courts and a few cricket ‘You are a total disgrace!’ Nick Dawson hissed into nets but no art room or tuck shop. A rusty old hut doubled my ear while refereeing a game in my last term. This punas a theatre when it was deemed necessary to allow par- ditry probably put me off my stride at the time — but I ents on the premises — though the idea of one of those think it also gave me a sense of perspective, which, sure‘meet the teachers’ evenings was unthinkable ly, is something worth acquiring in one’s formative years.

There were only 84 of us and we all rubbed along Indeed, worth paying for.

Lessons in friendship

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Getting your act together Ysenda Maxtone Graham uncovers the secrets of a storming prep-school play

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etter home from prep-school boy, c. 1949: ‘Dear Mummy and Daddy, last night was the school play. It was Hamlet. A lot of the parents had seen it before, but they laughed all the same.’

Guffaws from the audience at lines that are not supposed to be funny; total absence of laughter at lines that are: these are what actors and directors dread. The world of prep-school drama has come a long way since 1949. The three-hour Shakespeare-tragedy marathon has generally been ditched in favour of swiftness and inclusivity. Under an hour is the preferred length, and it is not done to have lengthy black-outs while scenery is changed.

Props have been simplified: one armchair is shorthand for a drawing-room, one hay bale for a barn, one front door for a house. Each year, wisdom is passed from director to director. Here, gathered from some of the top prepschool-play directors and writers — and some observant parents — is up-to-date advice for the coming year.

All agree that putting on plays is wholly good for children, the highlight of the school year, marvellous for teambuilding and confidence and broadening the vocabulary and imagination, and the key advice is: don’t underestimate what chilYou see a boy hobble in from dren aged between seven and 13 are the rugger pitch – and turn capable of. ‘The children love it, and there’s always someone who surprisstraight into Cruella de Vil es you by shining out with his or her brilliant acting,’ says Lucie Moore, the headmistress of Cameron House. If you look at the website of Eagle House school (renowned for its drama) you’ll see a moody-looking 12-year-old Macbeth standing in front of a brick wall (the gym?), and two 12-yearolds gazing into each other’s eyes as Romeo and Juliet.

Does Shakespeare really work for this age group, I asked the head of drama Matthew Edwards. Absolutely, he said, provided you do an adapted and shortened version. ‘Our 12-year-old Romeo and Juliet were just amazing — even the tender moment when they first meet and have to kiss each other was so moving.’

Choice of play: Nick Morell, who directed an exuberant 101 Dalmatians for St Philip’s School in March, and is now writing his own West End musical called Del Sol (set on the Costa), advises: ‘For a whole-school play, you need something with enough lead parts for the children who will rise up to that, but you also need a play that can accommodate as many children as would like to be in it.’

Joseph, The Jungle Book, Bugsy Malone: these are ideal.

‘You need a quick hook — primary-colour good and evil, and the opportunity for quick-flash choruses.’ By writ26

ing the play (and many of the fizzing songs) himself, Morell makes sure that 75 per cent of the cast have a line of their own: a moment (however brief) to take the stage, which means a huge amount to them.

Tapping into children’s boundless energy and inventiveness: that is what you need to do, says Morell. ‘Prep-school children have a remarkable elasticity and inner energy. You see a boy hobbling in from the rugger pitch, covered in mud — and able to turn straight into Cruella de Vil. The trick is engaging with them, getting them back into the world you’ve been creating.’

How many hours of rehearsal do you need? It’s important to get the balance right, my interviewees said. ‘I’ve been to plays where they’ve tried to be too professional,’ says Nick Morell. ‘The children are clearly not enjoying it. They’ve had it rehearsed out of them.’ But Matthew Edwards at Eagle House says, ‘Try to do it as properly as possible: spend time getting it right. “Just one more time!” That’s my mantra.’ Damaris Lockwood (who has directed many prep-school plays) has calculated that 98 hours of rehearsal are needed to get a school play ready: nine or ten hours a week for ten weeks, but be careful with the scheduling: ‘It’s vital that children are not kept at rehearsals for any longer than necessary. They get bored and stop concentrating.’ As for crowd control backstage on dress-rehearsal day, ‘It’s impossible unless you have at least three dragon-ladies keeping order.’

Special effects or not? ‘Don’t think that by spending a fortune on technology you’re going to have a great show,’ advises Morell. Over-reliance on light effects is a pitfall: a play needs human energy and soul. But these days when most schools have ICT departments, it can be a good idea to be ambitious with your effects, especially if the play is Peter Pan. For a recent Sherborne Prep production of Peter Pan, the director Maria Trkulja (with the help of the ICT department) did ‘green-screen technology’ which involved Peter and Wendy lying on a piano stool in the flying position: this was digitally converted into impressive flying effects.

Should you let a schoolmaster or mistress loose on writing or directing the play? Beware the teacher who fancies himself as a playwright. I’ve heard of a dreadfully tedious play at a leading prep school, by a history master who had taken half his life to write it: it was about a minor local-historical event, and it went on for hours. There were more scene changes than words. It’s vital, a mother at the school said to me, that in such cases the parents are given a large glass of wine before the play to blur the experience. ‘Everyone thinks they can direct a play,’ said Damaris Lockwood. ‘I went to a prep-school play recently which was directed by the headmaster’s wife after the head of drama had been sacked.’ It was dire.

But don’t write off history masters as playwrights entirely. Among the prep schools of England you still find some self-effacing geniuses who change children’s lives by their brilliance. One such is Adrian Boote, inspiring history master at Hanford School for girls in Dorset, writer of spot-on school reports, and married to the headmistress

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of Bryanston. He writes the fabulous last-day-of-summerterm plays for Hanford, performed on the lawn beyond the hockey pitch, basing them on classics (Cinderella, Odysseus and the Pied Piper) but bringing in references to Miranda, Downton Abbey, William and Kate, and The Apprentice. Adrian Boote’s own ‘don’ts’ are as follows: ‘Remember that it’s not for you, it’s for the children and their parents. Let the pupils “own” it if they can. The more you can incorporate their ideas, the better. Don’t force the play to turn out the way you saw it in your head.

It’s bound to take on a life of its own. Don’t have too much action: too much fighting, too much running, too much keeling over and dying. Focus on costume and dialogue, not on props and scenery. Keep it moving. Don’t expect all the pupils to love their part; but try not to let them swap too much, as with 40 or 50 one-line parts this could turn into a nightmare. Don’t expect every lovingly crafted line to hit the mark. All too often, the girls (over-keen for their moment) will speak their line while the laughter for the previous line is still going on, drowning out the sound. If you get a two-thirds strike rate, you’re doing well.’

Finally — and this is the case for all schools — don’t be bullied or swayed by competitivnes and discontentment about parts. I’ve heard of a competitive father (one who scored six sixes in a row in the fathers v. boys cricket match) who was furious because his son had a small part; of enmities between parents and boys caused by this; of children counting and comparing how many lines they’ve got in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The important thing is to show each child what he or she can do to make their own role, however small, the best it can be.

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education voucher system — under which aid money pays for pupils to attend low-cost independent schools — has proved a success, following a programme run by the Punjab Education Foundation. As a result of the voucher scheme, which is supported

by DFID, more than 140,000 children are now enjoying the benefits of private education.

A report for the Reform think tank by Michael Barber says: ‘Since the data shows that these schools on the whole achieve better outcomes for less cost, the programme has significant implications for the future.

‘The three PEF programmes combined are educating more children than, for example, Denmark.

The beneficiaries are not just the children on the PEF programmes; the whole of Punjab benefits because of the competition effect.’

Professor James Tooley of Newcastle University runs a business called Omega Schools Franchise Ltd which runs 40 low-cost private schools in Ghana along with another three in Sierra Leone. They are expanding into Liberia and South Sudan.

Grammar school pupils in Ghana in 1956 Omega is not a charity. It is a business. ‘There are certainly a lot of state ghost schools which do not really exist,’ he says. ‘But usually the reason that parents, including the very poorest parents, pay for priSchool vouchers are the best use for overseas aid, says Harry Phibbs vate education is that state schools are available but they offer a very low standard.’ Tooley agrees that he handing over of aid money to governments overseas aid funds would be better spent on education to spend on state schools has often proved vouchers than state education and is pleased that there disastrous. Thousands of villages in the devel- is growing recognition of this. oping world now have ‘ghost schools’, where Andrew Mitchell, then International Development buildings are empty or half-built. The teacher Secretary, visited private schools in Africa, as did Steve is paid but doesn’t turn up. A local official is bribed to Hilton during his time at Downing Street. Both were confirm that all is well. impressed with what is being achieved. ‘If we are going to In a recent paper for Civitas, ‘Aiding and Abetting’, spend more on aid then this is where it should be going,’ Jonathan Foreman gives examples of bad practice. Offi- say Tooley. ‘It helps make choice more effective, especials in India admit that at least £70 million of the £388 cially if targeted at the very poor.’ million contributed by the Department for International However, Tooley also sounds a warning. ‘The marDevelopment to India’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (‘educa- ket is a fragile thing,’ he says. ‘Private schools do well as tion for all’) programme was stolen or otherwise lost. The they are accountable to parents. That must not be undercountry’s comptroller and auditor general also found mined. While I would favour vouchers for the very poor, that £14 million of British taxpayers’ money for anoth- it is true there could be moral hazard. In one home the er education programme was embezzled by Indian offi- father is a drunk and they get a voucher, in another the cials in 2005-6 and never reached schools. Foreman adds: father works hard and they have to pay the fees. There ‘Standards and teacher attendance in Indian government are difficulties. However, vouchers would help far more schools are often so wretched that large numbers of the children get the chance of a good education.’ poor scrimp to pay for private education.’

Tooley first became aware of private schools for There is, however, better news about funding for low- the very poor when visiting the slums of Hyderabad in cost private schools in developing countries. In Punjab, an India more than ten years ago. He found schools full of

Distance learning

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ambition and rigour charging annual fees as low as $10.

He spoke to Mohammed Wajid, owner of a school in a converted family home. ‘His fees ranged from 60 rupees to 100 rupees per month ($1.33 to $2.22 at the exchange rates then), depending on the children’s grade, the lowINDEPENDENT SIXTH FORM TUTORIAL COLLEGE est for kindergarten and rising as the children progressed through school,’ says Tooley in his book The Beautiful Tree. ‘These fees were affordable to parents who were largely day labourers and rickshaw pullers, market traders and mechanics — earning perhaps a dollar a day.

Parents, I was told, valued education highly and would scrimp and save to ensure that their children got the best education they could afford.’

At the time Tooley found nothing but hostility for private schools from the development bureaucrats: they were undermining the state schools by ‘creaming off’ the best pupils, they were run by businessmen ‘exploiting the A Levels poor’, and so on.

Yet the ideological hostility to private schools is GCSEs undermined by the evidence. Bihar in northern India has hopeless state schools: a study for Harvard University Re-sits found that only 61 per cent of teachers turned up for work. Yet the state Weekly exam practice has thriving private schools. The DFID is now funding Annual Status of Education Report studied a district of the capital Patna education vouchers which showed that children in pri- in Punjab and Sindh 27 Queen Square, Bath, BA1 2HX vate schools had significantly better results for maths and reading Tel: 01225-334577 www.bathacademy.co.uk than did those in government schools. In Kenya, figures from the Integrated Household Budget Survey suggest typical annual fees for private schools at $40, compared with annual spending per pupil of about $80 a year at the bath_spec_qp.indd 1 22/8/13 state schools.

To the very poor, $40 is a lot of money, of course.

Sometimes 30 per cent of household income goes on school fees. However, an LSE study found much higher standards in the private schools. There was a ‘large effect of private schooling on test scores, equivalent to one full standard deviation’. The scores for the private school pupils would be 15 to 22 per cent higher depending on the district.

Last year a DFID paper confirmed that low-cost private schools offer a better standard of education than government schools. ‘If private schools are seen to be beneficial to low-income families, then this points to the possibility of policy initiatives such as vouchers that would enable the poorest to access private education.’

DFID is now funding education vouchers in Punjab and Sindh, and helping creating a better business environment for private schools in a number of other countries, including Nigeria. These schools are often subject to regulatory harassment by state officials, forcing them to stay small to avoid being noticed by the authorities and preventing investment to improve quality.

In some ways it is curious that the British government favours education vouchers for parents in Lagos or Hyderabad, but not for Liverpool or Hull. Nevertheless, the shift in policy is very welcome. The coalition govLONDON • OXFORD • MONACO • DUBAI ernment should not boast about spending more on aid, but on spending it more wisely. Nothing could be more effective than education vouchers.

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In the beginning was the word Dom Aidan Bellenger on the importance of libraries

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ave school libraries had their day? The printed book’s previously unassailable supremacy as the medium of learning is rapidly being replaced by other more sophisticated electronic means. Books are still popular among the young, often promoted by social networking, but with the internet and much else, is their future (if they have one) merely recreational?

In allocating budgets, school managers often see the library as a place where all forms of information ‘technology’ (including books) can be integrated. It is often a suitable room or area for computers and terminals of all kinds. In some schools the gracious but underused library, the vibrant study place of a past age, is now designated a place of quiet study — tolerated somnolence.

In some educational philosophies reading has a crucial place, and this is true of the Benedictine model. In St Benedict’s Rule a special place is reserved for lectio divina (sacred reading). This is a way of reading which emphasises reflection and contemplation. Books are singularly suitable for this task, and the codex, the origin of the modern book, probably began life as a sacred text. Within this tradition books are perhaps irreplaceable.

If you visit Downside today, it is the great neo-Gothic abbey church which dominates the scene. It signposts the monastic priority of prayer. The largest of modern monastic churches, it also has the claim to be the most beautiful. Its imposing east end is presently under a cover of scaffolding, part of the major restoration intended to coincide with the bicentenary of the abbey and school in 1814. To the south-east of the church is a striking free-standing building, built of concrete, glass and stone, very 1970s modernist in style, in marked contrast to the church. To some visitors it appears, with its octagonal shape and its significant relationship to the church, to be an oversized chapter house. In fact it is the monastery library, perhaps Downside’s greatest hidden treasure, a scholarly Cinderella about to go to the ball.

The architect Francis Pollen, whose influences included Lutyens and who had been a pupil at Downside school, designed the monastery library to house the abbey’s great collection of books, manuscripts and archives on six floors of varying sizes and shapes. The books had previously been stored in the monastery. The exterior has been compared with a rocket launchpad, a giant sundial or even a variation of Umberto Eco’s library in The Name of the Rose.

The building, which like the Doctor’s Tardis seems bigger inside than out, surrounds a central staircase and is beautifully lit and furnished with fine purpose-built bookshelves. The collection is bursting at the seams and

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Downside’s monastery library and, right, some of its treasures

every inch of the building seems to be filled with books and papers. It is a collection of rich and quirky diversity.

It includes the historic archives of the English Benedictine Congregation, the largest collection of ‘Recusant’ books (that is, Roman Catholic books printed in the ‘Long Reformation’) surviving in England, significant historical, patristic and liturgical holdings, and the richest collection of medieval manuscripts in the south-west of England.

Its character reflects the interests of the monks over the centuries as well as the library’s numerous benefactors. The library at Douai was largely lost at the Revolution, but the collection was built up at Downside from its earliest days. It was given a great impetus by the scholarly circle of Cardinal Aidan Gasquet, who ended his career as Vatican Librarian at the end of the 19th century, and most notably Edmund Bishop, whose great liturgical library forms the core of the special collections. It owes much, too, to its monk librarians, notably Dom Raymund Webster, in the interwar years,

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who had a great gift for acquiring rare books at bargain prices, and more recently Dom Daniel Rees (who died in 2007) whose enthusiasm and knowledge on things bibliographical was combined with an inability to say no to any donation of books.

The monastery library has always been separate from Downside school library, which is known as the Petre Library and is accommodated in a fine Victorian room in the school quad. It is essentially a scholar’s library, particularly devoted to aiding the learning of the monks, but its contents are so interesting and important that the monastic community has always made them available to external users. The monks have recently decided to make the monastery library more accessible to the public and have made detailed plans to open its collections. This has led to a recent, and very generous Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £865,000, which will help make the monastery library one of the principal cultural resources of the region.

The plan, which is creative and exciting, and has

been much helped by other benefactors, seeks to conserve the collections, digitise the catalogue, organise exhibitions and welcome visitors. The monastic community hope that the monastery library will be a beacon of learning in the West in an age when the book, the codex, Christianity’s characteristic means of communication, is being challenged by other media. The library, like the The traditional library may seem Doctor’s Tardis, seems to have had its day, yet the power bigger inside than out of the text, and the beauty of the image, remain compelling and can reach wider audiences through new technology. The Downside Library project, symbolised by the juxtaposition of church and library, hopes to combine the best of old and new. It challenges the adjoining school to think again about the place of the book in its curriculum and the role of the library on its campus.

Dom Aidan Bellenger is Abbot of Downside.

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I is for iPad

used to bore pupils into submission, even though most of them could have worked out the whole course for themselves, given the chance. Instead of Sebastian Payne on the changing role of technology in the classroom incubating a generation of computerliterate youngsters, ICT instead turned them off technology. Good thing that Michael Gove has removed it from the new national curriculum.

The third phase is the one schools h, happy memories of the 1990s class- have entered today. Computers and curriculum now room. The flicker of the CRT screen; have a symbiotic relationship. Thanks to Moore’s law, the interactive whiteboard; the screech- which states that the power of computing doubles ing from the dial-up internet modem; the approximately every two years, pupils now hold more frantic searching for the Encyclopedia technological power in their hands than an entire school Britannica CD-Rom. These images are now as archaic had 30 years ago. Tablets and iPads are ubiquitous, as the blackboard and the slide rule. Gone are the boxy with one for every pupil in some cases. Lessons can be computers under a dust sheet in the corner. They’ve recorded and distributed as podcasts. Notes and teachbeen replaced by hordes of gadgets, now mostly in the ing materials are stored online through virtual learning hands of the pupils. Walking into a classroom today is environments, fully accessible from home. ICT is being like visiting an Apple Store. replaced with more sophisticated computing or compuThe role of technology in schools has evolved in ter science courses. three phases. It all began in the 1980s with the arrival The Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST), a network of of the BBC Micro and the affordable personal com- 24 independent schools in England and Wales, prides puter. These shiny wonder machines provided useful itself on pioneering teaching methods and making the diversion for excited pupils and confused teachers. In most of what technology can offer. Kevin Stannard, the the 1990s, the computers became bigger, more colourful GDST’s director of innovation and learning, says that and easier to use, but their role in the classroom barely we are entering a golden age. altered. Even the addition of the odd ISDN line and ‘Oddly enough it’s not the tradition [of our schools] flaky internet connection did not bring computers out that has acted as the obstacle,’ he says. ‘It’s the state of of their lonely corner. technology. We’ve been constantly told we’ve been on The second phase was the introduction of the dread- the cusp of a revolution, and it’s never been realised. ful subject of ICT, or Information and Communications But now technology has got to the stage where it can Technology. The concept of coaching pupils to use com- begin to add real educational value.’ puters for everyday tasks was sensible, but barely anyComputers are becoming cheaper and more powbody knew what they were doing. ICT lessons were erful, but what practical advantage does that bring to often taught by non-specialist teachers who didn’t like teaching? For the GDST schools, the rise in smaller lapor understand their subject, so they blindly followed tops and tablets has been key. the manual. PowerPoint slides and clipart images were ‘One-to-one computing [one device for every student] is what has made all the difference. Learners are using computers to enhance their learning, not teachers to enhance teaching,’ says Ever since it became a lesson really the best forum to say, they react badly to Stannard.

GDST schools are using the required topic in 2002, for discussing them? the prescribed citizenship internet to make it easier to learn citizenship has crept into I now run a website material. Time after foreign languages. Year 10 pupils at lessons where it doesn’t (www.thisislanguage. time while filming in the Central Newcastle High School belong. Languages are one com) that hosts authentic Paris, Berlin, Madrid or have joined forces with counterof the casualties. language videos for GCSE Bogotá, the young locals parts in Paris through Skype. They ‘What do you think students. Our mission is we interviewed would share content on agreed topics — about the dangers of to teach young people to laugh nervously or stop exchanging audio files about their smoking?’ ‘Do you have speak foreign languages answering when the citizenhobbies, for instance. It beats speakproblems with pollution in in a natural way about themed questions came up. ing French to a classmate who has your local area?’ And my subjects that might actually Why continue to impose no better grasp of the language than favourite — a suggested be useful to them. We these questions? It’s time you have. Teachers on both sides of question for French GCSE: have a growing library our language courses the Channel have found the girls’ ‘What is the best thing that of more than 2,000 short received the same kind of listening and speaking skills have has happened to you as and spontaneous videos clear thinking that Michael improved dramatically. a homeless person?’ All featuring young French, Gove has applied in ICT. But unfettered access to techsignificant problems, ça va Spanish and German

George nology in the classroom poses chalsans dire. But is a French speakers. And needless

van den Bergh lenges too. Keeping pupils focused

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Another case for course correction

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GOTO 2013: The way schools handle computers is finally emerging from the shadows of the ICT class and the BBC Micro Model B

on the subject they are supposed to be researching can be a constant struggle when Facebook and other social networking sites are just a click away.

The recent case of Hannah Smith, the schoolgirl driven to suicide by the abuse she received online, has highlighted the threat that the internet can pose to young people. Schools have two options: to absolve themselves of responsibility by blocking social networks, or to tackle the potential problems by instilling a sense of responsibility. GDST has gone for the latter approach, and so far it has been successful.

‘We are very keen with the girls at GDST schools to stress the protocol that should be adopted in using social media,’ says Stannard. ‘We’ve done a lot of work on acceptable-use agreements that pupils sign up to, with different versions for different age groups. They understand what is acceptable, and what isn’t.

‘Girls are particularly susceptible to social pressures and presenting themselves in certain ways online and we thought we needed to bring that to their attention.’

Hopefully, the future of education in the classroom will not only be about protecting children from the nastier aspects of the net. As the benefits of technological integration become more obvious, schools will inevitably spend more time, energy and money acquiring the best possible equipment.

Thanks to their flexibility and willingness to innovate, independent schools can lead the way when it comes to using technology to learn. Students can truly become their own teachers, as long as they have teachers who are willing and able to show them how.

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That’ll teach me

know? Because we already have the perfect model of what punters want in education when given the choice: it’s called the private system.

James Delingpole has always thought of himself as a rebel. But put What parents (and schoolkids, if only they knew it) are looking for in a school him in charge of a class, and he’s an old-fashioned disciplinarian are the kind of things I saw every day in my time teaching at Malvern: enthusiastic, dedicated staff who don’t just teach the subject but teach round the subject; an ethos which prizes discipline, hard work, competitiveness, aspiration, rigour; smart uniforms proudly worn; sport iving with great white sharks, speeding round — lots and lots of sport; and so on. the track at Brands Hatch with the world It’s easy to mock those qualities — which many would sidecar racing champion, being eaten alive in have us believe belong to that bygone era when the puran interview with Lou Reed… though I’ve pose of our public schools was to train young men to die done lots of exciting things in the course of with dignity in colonial hellholes. Quite possibly, I would my life as a journalist, none has come even close to match- once have felt a teeny bit cynical towards them myself: ing the visceral thrill of the four days I spent earlier this certainly, when the school made the mistake of turning year as a teacher at my old school, Malvern College. me into a prefect, my only contribution in the tedious, I don’t mean that the pupils (or whatever grisly term ­pretend-grown-up meetings we used to have with the you’re supposed to call them these days: students? cli- headmaster was to petition for the school’s renowned first ents? learning co-travellers?) were in any way frightening XI pitch to be turned into a croquet lawn. or unnecessarily difficult. Nor that I found the experience But going back to my alma mater as a teacher enabled remotely traumatic. I’m merely trying to capture the mix me to see this Victorian system in its proper light. I was of elation, absorption and high-wire danger which teach- impressed that all the kids had their ties and buttons propers experience every day of their working lives but which erly done up (and were told off if they didn’t) because most of us (unless maybe we’re actors, lion tamers or it presented to the world (notably those all-important bomb disposal engineers) will never know. fee-paying parents) the image of a tightly run ship. When When I first wrote about the profession in these you’re a schoolkid you scoff at this kind of sticklerishness. extravagant terms, a teacher from a northern comprehen- I certainly did. But what is going on here, I now realise, sive kindly wrote to invite me to try teaching at his school is akin to what happens in those wartime units where, no and see how I felt then. I may yet take him up on it — matter how dreadful the conditions become, the officers though I can’t see what I’d gain from continue to insist that every man shaves properly every the experience other than to discov- day. It’s the Kohima spirit. And it matters.

When you’re a schoolkid er that I’d make a really bad stateBefore I had a go at teaching, I’d always imagined I’d you scoff at this kind of school teacher. be one of those cool, groovy, slacker teachers who is not This isn’t a snob thing. It’s an ide- too hot on discipline but gets away it, just about, because sticklerishness. I certainly did ology thing. The reason I’m a classi- he’s amusingly eccentric. What I learned to my surprise is cal liberal is that I believe the leprous that I’m much more of a traditionalist. The least I require hand of the state taints everything it touches because from my pupils is absolute attention every second till the the state’s values are false values. There are one or two final bell. You can joke; you can try to digress; but what excellent state schools out there — the old grammars, the I won’t tolerate is if you won’t engage. It’s insulting to Toby-Young-style free schools, the state boarding schools me and all the effort I’m putting in to making your class like Old Swinford Hospital — but such excellence as they as interesting, informative and useful as possible; and manage to attain is invariably achieved despite the state’s it’s insulting to those of your classmates who are making influence, rather than because of it. the effort.

Let me put it in another way: if you were trying to set God, it’s weird hearing myself saying this stuff. How on up a successful school in an open educational market, earth do I reconcile it with this role I’ve carved out in life here are some of the things you wouldn’t feature in your as Delingpole the snark; Delingpole the batshit-mad, outprospectus: ‘child-centred’ learning; teaching literacy with there, no-prisoners revolutionary; Delingpole the tooth the ‘Real Books’ method; non-competitive sports days; flicker at all forms of arbitrary authority? no school uniform; reports that don’t tell you how well More easily than you’d think. If you want to be a realyour child is performing academically or their position in ly top-class rebel, it seems to me, you need a structure the class; a curriculum that majored on empathy, political to rebel against. You also need the basic knowledge and correctness and information-gathering at the expense of intellectual grounding to understand why you’re rebelling. solid knowledge.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

All the stuff I’ve just described is the handiwork of ‘progressive’ educationalists, who would never have had James Delingpole will be appearing at Radley College as anywhere like as much influence in a free-market system Provocateur in Residence this autumn. Other interested because the customers wouldn’t have worn it. How do we schools can contact James via The Spectator.

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Š The National Trust/Rupert Truman

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