Spectator independent schools supplement September 2014

Guide to Independent Schools September 2014

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Testing times Exams are the bane of every student’s life, and in this competitive age the pressure to perform is higher than ever. Michael Gove may have left his post as Education Secretary, but he has left one thing in his wake: a new exam system. The GCSE reforms have already started, and the A-level revolution begins next year. To help us all along, Sophia Martelli offers a guide to the changes, and the differences they will make to students.

Exams, however, are not the be-all and end-all (even if they feel like it at the time). South Korea might top many of the international league tables, but the fact that many parents there are looking for an alternative to the country’s intensive education system — Molly Guinness writes about one — just goes to show that too many exams may not be a good thing.

But this supplement, kindly sponsored by Rathbones, aims to celebrate all aspects of the British independent school system, not just academia.

And it isn’t just when it comes to exams that schools have to adapt. As Johnnie Kerr points out, ‘going green’ is increasingly important, while Mark Milling, the bursar at Lancing, writes about how his role involves making the most of the commercial opportunities a school can provide.

It’s not all serious, though; Lara Prendergast considers the joys of history of art; Emily Rhodes investigates how school magazines can inspire a lifetime of creative writing, and Mark Palmer reflects on how a good teacher can transform a school career — and become a friend for life.

We hope that all of you, whatever your interest in education, enjoy this supplement. Please keep an eye out for the next edition, in March 2015.

Editor

Camilla Swift

The exam revolution Sophia Martelli

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History of art Lara Prendergast

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Satellites of St Cake’s Ross Clark

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Going green Johnnie Kerr

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Drawings

John Jensen Supplied free with the 6 September 2014 edition of The Spectator

School magazines Emily Rhodes

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A bursar’s life Mark Milling

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Teaching IT Rhiannon Williams

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Glamorous decay Harry Mount

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South Korea Molly Guinness

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Re-learning the tuba John Newton

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Great masters Mark Palmer

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Public schools and politics Tim Wigmore

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Latin Ysenda Maxtone Graham

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Religious education Aidan Bellenger

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Exams: the great leap forward GCSEs have already begun to change, and the A-level revolution comes next year.

Sophia Martelli considers who benefits from the new rules – and who doesn’t

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year from now, the new A-level curriculum will hit sixth-form classrooms; changes to GSCE have already been partly implemented. The exam reforms initiated by Michael Gove are hailed either as ‘muchneeded’ or ‘carnage’ depending on who you talk to.

Although controversial, most teaching professionals agree that a good sort out of exams is overdue, including Paul Redhead, a former head teacher who now works with the Council for Independent Education. Public exams have been ‘systematically devalued since the 1980s’, according to Dominic Cummings, Gove’s former special adviser. Comparing the UK’s GCSE and A-level results with their equivalents in other countries reveals a 2–3 per cent grade inflation level per year — which over ten years adds up to a lot. The format of A-levels shifted somewhere between 2005 and 2010 to reflect the modular format of GCSEs (including the ability to resit modules until the desired mark can be recorded) — although there is no record of any official decisions to make A-levels modular by the Ministry of Education, Ofqual or the exam boards.

That doesn’t mean it will be easy for everyone to agree on how the exams should change. The new curriculums were developed after the Department for Education looked at the highest-performing countries on exam league tables — from Finland to Shanghai — and applied the best of what they were doing to the English curriculum. Tougher measures have also been included. Thus in GCSEs, maths will have more emphasis on problem solving instead of formulae, and in arts subjects there will be more essays instead of multiple choice. But teachers lined up to criticise Gove over the changes in content to the history curriculum (‘half-baked’) and the manner of implementing reforms (‘undemocratic’), and there will undoubtedly be more controversy when the reforms meet pupils: the mop-up on that awaits Gove’s successor, Nicky Morgan. However, as Cummings remarks, ‘Even Tristram Hunt has agreed kids should be doing more maths and essays.’

What are the reform highlights? The major one is that exams will be linear, not modular. (‘We’re very pleased that modules have been discontinued — in GCSEs particularly,’ says Barnaby Lenon, chairman

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of the Independent Schools Council (ISC), and former headmaster of Harrow.) Instead, students will be examined once a year, in June, which will lessen the burden of bureaucracy in schools, exam boards and government departments, and prevent resitting of modules — and the grade inflation that this practice led to.

The reduction of ‘non-exam-controlled work’ (in other words, coursework) means that core subjects including English, Maths and History will be graded purely on pupils’ output in exams. Many teachers view this as a good thing: coursework has become burdensome, with ‘dull, predictable tasks and coursework not always measuring what it’s supposed to be measuring,’ says Lenon. And let’s not forget, coursework also tends to measure the amount of support a student has at home.

Coursework will remain in some subjects (art, design and technology, drama, dance, PE); however, slightly more controversially, the practical exam module is being discontinued in the sciences. Even though data-logging and manipulative skills will be assessed by the teacher and a grade included separate to the exam results, the system is open to abuse — something that some teachers I spoke to are concerned about, as indeed is C ­ ummings. However, a significant number of the questions in the A-level exam (15 per cent) will be about the practicals the student must have completed.

Thus, argues Lenon, ‘This does not represent a downgrading of science practicals — it might even represent

an enhancement, since with some exam boards practicals are ­limited.’

Another major change — an unpopular one with independent schools — is that AS-levels will ‘decouple’ from A-levels, and will no longer count towards 50 per cent of a pupil’s final A-level mark. It’s not just that AS marks are a useful basis for university admissions (Cambridge, in particular, values ASlevels for this reason); these exams also provide students with a progress check halfway through a course, giving them something to work for — and an inkling of which subjects, if any, to drop.

On the other hand, GCSE grades Students will be examined being more differentiated at the top once a year, which will lessen end may help with university admis- the burden of bureaucracy sions. ‘There have been far too many students getting high marks at the end of their exams,’ says Lenon. ‘These are in exams which are not particularly stretching.’ Under the reforms, grades 1–9 replace A*–F, and it will be much harder to get a grade 9 than to get an A*, which will help the more selective universities identify the best candidates. Which raises the question, who are the best candidates? The unreformed exams favoured students who turned in plodding coursework on time — and with the ability to retake modules, the system didn’t exert much pressure on pupils. That will all change; the students likely to achieve the highest marks now are the ones who thrive under pressure and who can retain a large amount of information for a small amount of time — the ‘mavericks’, as Paul Redhead terms them. Much like the reformer himself.

An education revolution in seven bullet points Big changes are coming to GCSE, AS and A-level exams, aimed at making them more ‘fit for purpose’.

Here are the key points: • In practice most of the changes are designed to make exams tougher. From a student’s perspective, the most challenging reform is the abolition of modular examining. All exams will be done at the end of the course, and retaking bits of the exam to improve overall grades just won’t be possible.

• AS exams will continue but will not count towards A-level marks.

Some schools will continue to use the exam as a useful target for students (in the ‘old days’ when A-level was ‘linear’ — that is, with exams at the end, rather than ‘modular’ with tests at regular intervals — students often took it pretty easy in lower sixth).

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• It’s unlikely that universities will require the new AS, because that would penalise students whose schools decide not to offer it — but if a student has taken the new AS, will those results (for better or for worse) have to be shown? We don’t know yet.

• The new A and AS ‘specifications’ will be brought in over the next four years, key subjects first, with teaching starting in September 2015, and first new-style A-level exams in June 2017.

• The revisions keep the same A*–E pass marks, but exams will include a wider range of question types, and coursework will be examined only if it is essential to assessing the subject.

• A-levels not deemed to be ‘key subjects’ will undergo a ratification process over the next

year or so which will see most of them survive, albeit often in a ‘tougher’ form. Some such as Environmental Science and Human Biology will probably be dropped, though Film Studies and Media Studies are not on the endangered list. Full details at specc.ie/ examchangedetails • GCSE exams have already gone linear, and further changes lie ahead, with overhauled and often harder content and exams, and a new 9 (best) to 1 grading system. In particular, coursework will be cut back (GCSE Maths won’t involve any) and fewer subjects will offer ‘tiered’ exams — different exam papers aimed at higher or lower achievers. The timescale for changes is close to that for A-levels, and there’s a similar review of minority subjects.

Paul Redhead

Council for Independent Education (CIFE)

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ago in Stratford, is sponsored by eight independent schools including Eton, Brighton College and Highgate. As well as borrowing some teachers from the sponsoring schools, the academy runs a buddy system in which its pupils are teamed up with private school pupils.

They even go on visits to see how the other half lives. ‘I got to visit Eton College boys, who wear tailcoats. That was a bit of an experience,’ one pupil at the academy enthused, as if he had just been on a safari.

Independent schools have scored a victory in their long battle with the Charities Commission. In 2006, the commission demanded that private schools with a charitable foundation must do more to demonstrate that they were providing a public benefit, pressing in particular for more bursaries for children from poor families. In 2011, a tribunal at the High Court ruled that yes, schools with charitable status did need to show they were providing public benefit beyond educating their feepaying pupils, but it did not necessarily Probably not coming to Holyport College: the Eton Wall Game have to be in the form of bursaries. The ruling thus opened the way for schools to justify their charitable status through off-site initiatives, such as sponsoring academies.

But is it just a ruse for public schools to show they are good guys, reaching out to the poor but without actually having By sponsoring academies, public schools can not only justify their to contaminate their ancient corridors with the proletariat? charitable status but can extend their influence, says Ross Clark Barnaby Lenon, former ­headmaster of Harrow and now chairman of the Independent Schools’ Council, insists ant your sprog to be toughened up on it is not. ‘The amount of bursaries at schools involved the playing fields of Eton but can’t in academies has continued to grow,’ he says. It is hard afford the fees? From September there not to wonder, however, whether sponsoring an acadis an intriguing alternative. You can emy allows public schools to extend their influence over send him instead to Holyport College, social groups to which they might balk at offering large a free school which is opening in the shell of an old spe- numbers of bursaries. Holyport College, for example, cial school six miles away. Though the chairman of gov- has an admissions policy which gives first priority to chilernors, Simon Dudley, insists his new school is not ‘Eton dren in care or previously looked-after children. Second Lite’, the website offers more than a hint that here is an in line are children with exceptional medical or social opportunity to obtain an Eton-standard education for needs. Only after that does anyone else get a look-in, a third of the price, if your child boards, or nothing at starting with children of the founders. It is hard to imagall if he doesn’t. ine St Cakes having an admissions policy where even the ‘Eton College is our sole educational sponsor,’ reads son of an aristocrat had to wait in a queue behind a line the blurb, ‘and therefore brings its educational and pas- of battered children from the local housing estates. toral expertise to Holyport College.’ Pupils are promFrom a strictly utilitarian point of view, sponsoring an ised the use of sports facilities, evening speaker meetings, academy is a superior way of proving charitable status and the chance to rub shoulders with Etonians. to offering bursaries: it offers a large number of children Eton is not the first public school to dabble in educa- some of the benefits of a private education instead of tional provision for the great unwashed. Wellington Col- offering a small number of children all the benefits. It lege has sponsored an eponymous academy since 2009. also comes at a surprisingly low cost to the school. I have The London Academy of Excellence, opened two years to admit that when I heard that Eton was sponsoring an

A new way over the wall

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academy my first thought was how were Eton’s parents going to take it — shelling out £34,434 a year for their Fauntleroys to go to a proper school and then finding out that £5,000 or £10,000 of that was going to help educate a bunch of oiks down the road?

I needn’t have worried on their behalf. Simon Dudley let me in on the extent of Eton’s involvement with Holyport College. ‘The Old Etonian Association provided ÂŁ140,000 for an all-weather sports pitch,’ he says. ‘Eton College also provided accommodation for the newly appointed headmaster of Holyport and provided financial support for the bursar. All in all, Eton has provided approximately ÂŁ200,000 of financial help.’ Eton will also be providing some help on pastoral care and help with university admissions, which is harder to value, yet still it seems a remarkably small amount of sponsorship money for a school which carries its links with Eton so prominently and which is costing ÂŁ15 million to set up. Take away the money given by the old boys, and the funds provided so far are the equivalent of less than two full Eton bursaries. All of which raises the question: why don’t all independent schools freeze their bursaries, or even chop them, and instead sponsor an academy, promoting their charitable brand without having to hand out free places?

There is good reason to suspect that Holyport College and the like will only be spawned by the larger public schools. Eton could sponsor ten highly successful academies and it is hard to imagine applications to its

own school drying up. But what about an independent school in a small provincial town that is already struggling to fill its places? The very last thing it needs is a decent state school on its doorstep, still less one that promotes the same ethos and bears its own brand name.

As Barnaby Lenon says, ‘No independent school would want to set up an academy in their area which was going to take their pupils.’ Indeed not. All the more reason for sponsoring an academy in another area.

This has the potential to get rather nasty. If you are an independent school in X-town, you might sponsor an academy in Y-town, but then what if the headmaster of the ‘I got to visit Eton boys, who local private school in Y-town wear tailcoats,’ said one pupil, retaliates by sponsoring an acadas though he’d been on a safari emy in X-town?

Then again, things might not get that far. More likely, I suspect, is that independent schools will develop an unspoken agreement not to open academies which poach each other’s pupils, and that their involvement in academies will be limited to inner cities and other private school deserts. I am sure that Holyport College, which itself is in a well-heeled area of Berkshire — only a couple of miles from the Fat Duck, if you want to spend your money there rather on your kids’ school fees — will offer an excellent education to children who might not otherwise get it. But don’t expect a free-at-the-point-of-delivery mini-Eton in every neighbourhood.

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Early editions Contributing to a homegrown school magazine can inspire a passion for writing that endures into adulthood, says Emily Rhodes

‘T

he bath is still stained pink,’ said Anna, laughing as we reminisced about those halcyon days, now over a decade ago, when she started a school magazine.

Anna and I went to Westminster School for sixth form. We’d both come from St Paul’s Girls’ School, where magazines proliferated, and were surprised to discover that Westminster had none except for a rather grand annual put together by the development office, aimed more at Old Westminsters than current pupils. Anna was keen to set something up. It would be called Pink, she decided, after the school colour.

This brings us to the bath. A launch party was deemed of paramount importance, so we duly assembled in the basement of Anna’s parents’ house, where she had turned everything pink. Including pink tequila jelly… which led to pink vomit… which stained the bath pink.

Let no more be said on the matter.

However successful the launch was, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Pink continues to exist 13 years later. So I made an appointment at the school archive, where I was presented with three neat box-files containing every issue. Evidently this collection was deemed precious, as I was allowed to take notes only in pencil. Anna’s lead article in the first issue proclaimed: ‘expelled!’ (the graphic design forbade capital letters). In it she argued that expulsion was a tool to create scapegoats rather than to help troubled students. There followed an intriguing piece about the ‘Greaze’, a bizarre school tradition of fighting over a pancake. Then came an interview with the actress Harriet Walter, a selection of student photo­graphy, a round-up of recent news stories and some film and music reviews, including my own painful critique of a chemistry teacher’s solo guitar album. I should also mention the column entitled ‘Sex in the Sixth Form’, by a girl who these days is penning a book about sex and youth in China.

It would seem that even at the tender age of 17, the magazine appealed to something in many of its contributors which would go on to influence our careers. Looking back at those who were involved with the first issue of Pink, I’m struck by quite how many of us went on to pursue a long love affair with writing. Anna is now a novelist and travel writer; Hattie worked for years at the Times and now writes a successful blog; Rory was an editor and is now a literary agent; Julia works for English

PEN; another Emily has become a translator; and I am riddled with the writing bug, for sure.

I happily read on, tickled pink to uncover a Wham bar, which had been given out with issue four. Leafing through the years, I noticed a shift in the magazine’s focus. While elements of self-involved schooliness were present from the beginning, these had been balanced by more sophisticated articles, which engaged with subjects such as surveillance, anti-Americanism and positive discrimination. Over time, these all but vanished; instead Pink became increasingly full of lingo and injokes, snipes at teachers and photos from parties. Maybe, as the success of Facebook would suggest, such self-involved self-expression is what people — perhaps teenagers in particular — really enjoy. Maybe this is what gained Pink enough popularity to keep going for so many years.

The archivist informed me that the headmaster had begun to censor the magazine. Though surprised, I could certainly understand why he had wanted to try to exert some form of control. A few marked-up photocopies were included in the files; his comments included: ‘This insult sounds too rude and personal.’

Perhaps it was the censorship that snuffed Pink out in 2008. Or perhaps pupils preferred to turn to the online delights of Facebook for their selfies and gossip. In 2013, however, I saw with glee an energetic new publication proclaiming ‘Pink’s back!’ and urging readers to tweet @Westminsterpink. Sadly, when I looked up the Twitter account, the activity seemed to have lasted for only a few months, gaining a mere 48 followers. Two issues were published last year, but the second was tellingly slim. I left the archive unsure whether Pink will garner a sufficient following to continue.

Gaining enough contributions seems to be the toughest hurdle for Over the years, the magazine a school magazine. At St Paul’s, this filled with in-jokes, snipes is what stalled the creative-writing at teachers, and party photos magazine I founded, which lasted just one issue. Though a kind English teacher pointed me in the direction of a few talented young writers, I struggled to gain submissions, so rather glumly decided once was enough. Anna coyly admitted that when she started Pink, she’d resorted to asking various students if she could write articles under their names so it didn’t look like she’d done quite so much of it.

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I spoke to Georgia, who recently left St Mary’s Calne.

Her magazine, The Fortnight, was only eight pages long but appeared with startling frequency — every other Monday. She said that she and the other two editors had needed to write almost all the copy to begin with, but submissions had flooded in before long. What spurred such a rush of contributions? Ucas forms, she said.

While some contributors may be motivated by no more than the cynical reality of looming university entrance, Georgia’s passion for the magazine was real.

She told me how much she’d enjoyed working on it, especially when the pressure from schoolwork mounted.

She found it to be a welcome means of keeping herself informed with current affairs instead of disappearing under piles of books for exams.

Evidently, her experience with the magazine helped foster a love of the written word, for she has gone on to

Cambridge to read English, and tells me she would like to work in publishing. I think of how many of us involved with Pink have since made our homes in the literary world, and wonder if there is something un­expectedly powerful, perhaps even life-changing, about working on a school magazine.

An enthusiastic Haileybury English teacher, who recently helped students set up a creative-writing ­magazine, told me that he hoped some of those involved might go on to contribute to an undergraduate magazine and maybe even eventually start something up themselves. ‘I guess the majority of these start-ups are short-lived,’ he admitted, ‘but, perhaps more so than the big publishing houses, they are vital to the health of literature — they are its grass roots.’ Certainly, school magazines can inspire a passion for writing that, for some of us poor hacks, lasts a lifetime.

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I recently attended a Bermotech summer camp, where children and teenagers between nine and 15 were learning how to develop their own iPhone apps, and was struck by how quickly these bright young things picked up commands. Until the camp, their programming was largely self-taught. They’d watched YouTube tutorials and downloaded free programs in an effort to learn the basics, and they were clearly thrilled to have some proper instruction at last.

Providing coding lessons in school has a real purpose. There’s little point denying that an in-depth knowledge of computing would serve young people well when they enter the job market. Britain will need 750,000 skilled digital workers by 2017, according to research, and failing to bridge the skills gap could cost us up to £2 billion annually. Steve Beswick, director of education at Microsoft UK, The changes being introduced in teaching computer science are estimates that between 80 and 90 per cent of jobs require some computing long overdue, says Rhiannon Williams knowledge, and that is set to rise. ‘We need to get to the point where people coming out of education can fill those jobs,’ he says. ‘Across the IT industry, y first memory of a computer is of a hulk- it’s our responsibility to help to close that gap.’ ing Acorn PC that dominated a corner of Countrywide, schools are already making changes my primary school classroom. I remem- ahead of September’s new syllabus. Barrow Hills School ber crafting a story about ghosts on the in Surrey recently equipped pupils and teachers with beige keyboard before saving it to a flop- Samsung tablets in place of exercise books, journals, textpy disk, which was filed away by the teacher for safe- books and calculators, and London’s Henwick Primary keeping. That was in 1995, and washing machines now School already instructs its pupils how to create their own easily outpower that Acorn. Yet it’s not only the gadgets computer games, quizzes and short animations. in our schools and colleges that have advanced as tablets, It’s not just about the pupils. Some teachers are underinteractive whiteboards and internal mail systems make standably nervous about teaching skills which they have relics of blackboards and personal planners. From Sep- not fully mastered. Yet this isn’t such a barrier as it may tember, Information and Communications Technology appear, according to Henwick’s ICT co-ordinator Claire classes (ICT) will be replaced with Computing as part Lotriet. ‘Most of us have never been taught computer sciof an initiative to teach children how to create their own ence,’ she says. ‘If a teacher is worried the children are programs, instead of just learning to use other people’s. more confident in using technology, it’s worth rememberTeaching pupils from the age of five to write simple ing they may be more familiar, but they may not always algorithms and helping older pupils to learn program- know how to channel that into something useful.’ ming languages is part of what Michael Gove, in OctoAh yes. Parents may question whether fiddling around ber 2012, claimed was what Britain needs in order to creating a computer game can be viewed as ‘useful’, but ‘produce the next Sir Tim Berners-Lee — creator of the Gove wasn’t wrong when he said that the way ICT had internet’. The former secretary of state for education may been taught was ‘harmful, boring and irrelevant’. Encourhave been left red-faced (Berners-Lee invented the world aging children to think logically by experimenting with wide web, not the internet) but the dramatic amendments new tools and processes must be better than boring them to the curriculum have been hailed by many as essential to tears with lessons in how to create a spreadsheet. A to turning around the country’s technological fortunes. renewed focus on internet safety and online behaviour In a speech in 2011, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt criti- is another crucial element in equipping them to navigate cised the British education system’s lack of focus on com- lives that will be documented and mapped online. puter science, saying we were throwing away our ‘great Of course, showing a five-year-old how to make apps computing heritage’. We may have invented photography, and websites step by step won’t necessarily turn them into TV and computers, but Britons fail to dominate in those the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. But given the extent to fields of technology now. What’s needed is to reignite which technology has changed, it’s high time that the way children’s passion for science, maths and engineering. we taught it caught up.

Pushing the right buttons

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Girls sitting South Korea’s famously competitive university entrance test. North London Collegiate offers IBs instead

Escape from the hothouse

set up in Jeju, because they were worried about a brain drain. More and more children were being sent away; in 2007 more than 20,000 Korean children Molly Guinness visits the British school that’s giving Korean children were at school abroad. The nation’s extraordinary proficiency in maths and a more rounded alternative to their country’s fearsome exam culture science comes at a price: teenagers regularly spend 13 or 14 hours a day studying, dutifully going off every day to outh Korea’s education system puts us to after-school classes, known as hagwons. They’re all comshame. Last year the BBC tested a group of peting to get into three universities and it leaves a lot 15- and 16-year-olds with some questions of teenagers stressed and sleep-deprived. The national from a GCSE maths paper; they all finished exam fever has been linked to Korea’s high suicide rate in half the time allowed, four scored 100 per among young people. cent and the other two dropped one mark. It’s the kind The drudgery and the pressure of Korean students’ of performance most British teachers and parents can life is a far cry from the sunny, end-of-term atmosphere only dream of, so at first it’s surprising that a London I find when I visit the North London Collegiate in Stangirls’ school has opened up a branch in South Korea. more in Middlesex. Lawns dotted with rose bushes and The North London Collegiate (NLCS) is one of Brit- shaded by cedar trees stretch into tennis courts with a ain’s top schools, but it still looked like they were going folly beyond. Three or four teenagers are sprawled on to have a lot of competition on their hands when they the grass, one of them wearing fairy wings. They’ve just chose South Korea for their first international franchise. had their end-of-term sketch show where some of them Three years ago they opened up a co-educational school have been doing impressions of the deputy headmason Jeju island off the south coast of Korea, and they’ve ter, Daniel Lewis, who I’m here to meet. As I wait in an just had their first sixth-formers’ exam results. elegant, airy hall, a 17-year-old bounds in and announces It was the Korean government who invited NLCS to to her father: ‘She’s making me read Mill on the Floss or

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Great Expectations!’ She’s pretending to complain but she’s evidently delighted with the commission. There’s a relaxed feeling here at the moment, but there’s ambition everywhere. ‘Go for Mill on the Floss,’ the girl’s father says. ‘This lady’s from The Spectator and you want to be a journalist; introduce yourself, send her your CV, maybe set up some work experience.’ On the walls are framed biographies and pictures of successful alumni, like Anna Wintour, Rachel Weisz and Stevie Smith.

It’s this kind of cachet that helps to persuade South Korean parents that they can afford to take their children out of the rat race. ‘South Korea is very strong in maths and science, but they’ve only ever had one Nobel laureate,’ says Daniel Lewis. ‘A lot of parents are looking for a different kind of education for their children.’

He remembers one mother coming to look round and she asked how her child would have time to go to the hagwon. When staff explained that he wouldn’t be going to a hagwon, she started crying with relief. In a recent application to become a prefect, one pupil reflected on the differences between NLCS Jeju and his previous school: ‘I still remember Mr Schofield’s bright smile greeting us at the front gate,’ he wrote. ‘In this school, understanding things is much more important than memorising. What is really important is whether you really enjoy learning.’

Of course, all this jolliness means the pupils wouldn’t stand a chance in the national exam, so instead they take the International Baccalaureate and then mostly apply

for British or American universities. There may still be a brain drain, says Lewis, but at least they’re staying longer; some of the pupils he has interviewed are nine years old and already at boarding schools in Europe. At the Jeju school, pupils don’t lose touch with Korean culture; lessons are mostly in English, but there are Korean lessons in language, literature, history and sociology.

There’s also as much extracurricular activity laid on as possible, which is a novelty for most students. ‘They’re all really up for it,’ says Lewis. ‘They don’t know what they can’t do, and they develop confidence by trying things.’ But in a culture where exam results are everything, parents sometimes find it hard to Told her son wouldn’t need see why the school is taking their extra lessons after school, children on a sailing trip or giving one mother wept with relief them a part in a musical. ‘It’s a big leap of faith for parents to send their children to us,’ says Lewis. ‘They’re used to numbers all the time and there’s a constant pressure for more data.’ In this year’s exams, the school did well, scoring an average 36 points, which is equivalent to Singapore, the highest performing jurisdiction for the IB. Lewis is confident that the results will persuade more parents to send their children to Jeju, but more than anything, he’s proud of the atmosphere they have created there.

‘There’s already a groundswell of support and understanding about what we’re trying to do,’ he says. ‘They just see that the children are happy.’

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Great masters It only takes one excellent teacher to transform someone’s entire school career, says Mark Palmer

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rankly, I wasn’t a great success at school — although I like to think it was more a case of peaking at prep school, where I was captain of football, a prefect and even managed to pass Common Entrance, thank you very much. And then it all went downhill.

No excuses (plenty actually), but one reason for failing to dazzle at Eton was because my classical tutor cast such a long, dark shadow over me that by the age of 16 all my energies went into disliking him as much as he clearly disliked me.

His name was Fred How and he was a bachelor so set in his creaking ways that even the swots and goodie-goodies struggled to find anything pleasant to say about him.

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We dreaded our weekly sessions in his pokey groundfloor flat in the cloisters not far from the Head Man’s plush quarters. It seemed that he went out of his way to say nasty things in his reports (‘Palmer displays jaunty incompetence’ was one of his kinder comments) but thankfully my father — who never had a bad word to say about anyone — did not take it too seriously because How had taught him 30 or so years earlier.

‘Not my favourite beak,’ my father admitted. In other words, he couldn’t stand the fellow.

After three long years, Fred How and I parted company. I still have all my reports. This was his final salvo: ‘I cannot pretend to be sorry that this is my last half as his tutor … I hope that a change will be as good for him as for me.’

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And it was. Night and day. A revelation, in fact. I approached a young man called Jeremy Nichols to be my tutor in the senior school and I remember how pleased I was that he agreed to take me on, given my abysmal academic record and, well, jaunty incompetence. I still am grateful — and would venture that it only takes one schoolmaster to make the whole education process worthwhile — and that if you can keep up with that person 40 or so years later then you’re mighty fortunate.

I say ‘young’, and I realise now that Jeremy really was young. He was only 27 when we met in 1970. More important, he was courting his future wife, Annie, at the time, which meant that on several occasions he would leave us a note saying he was in London and that we should listen to Dylan Thomas on his gramophone — for discussion a week later.

We duly did listen to the Welsh rabble-rouser and, appropriately, helped ourselves to Jeremy’s whisky and even got away with a few ciggies because Jeremy used to smoke a pipe (still does), so there was no chance of detection.

Another great bonus was that he took the First XI football (and was not a bad player himself) so that, while I wasn’t brilliant at discussing Chaucer, we could have a meeting of minds over whether to play a sweeper at the back or pack the midfield when playing away to Charterhouse.

He was funny, mischievous, articulate, loved words, a listener as well as a talker, good at tennis. And he treat-

ed us as reasonably responsible young men. No wonder, then, that he became a housemaster and later was appointed headmaster of Stowe.

As it happened, many years later, my daughter went to Stowe, but sadly she just missed Jeremy. More fortuitous was discovering that my old school friend James Dallas was living in the same Wiltshire village where we had bought a tiny bolthole — and James had also had Jeremy as his tutor.

‘Let’s invite him up for the weekend,’ said James one evening. And that’s what we did.

Jeremy is 70 now and living in Cornwall. His wife Annie sadly I remember how pleased died far too young from cancer, I was that he agreed to but he has since remarried — to a charming woman called Kath- take me on, despite my erine Lambert, who is editor of abysmal academic record the Good Gardens Guide. James asked a couple of other former pupils of Jeremy for dinner on that Saturday night and it was one of those evenings when the past and present merged effortlessly in a bond of trust and good humour.

We even touched on Dylan Thomas.

Next day, Jeremy and I attended Matins in the village church, after which he and Katherine came for brunch and I was able to introduce them to my stepsons and their girlfriends.

On leaving, Jeremy gave me a hug. I don’t think Fred How would have done that.

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Decline and rise again Grammar has been disappearing from Latin lessons in schools, says Ysenda Maxtone Graham – until now…

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erb says to noun, ‘Would you like to conjugate?’ Noun replies, ‘No, I decline.’ A nice witticism for Latin-lovers brought up on L.A. Wilding’s Latin Course for Schools; but do today’s prep-school Latin pupils have any idea what a conjugation or a declension is?

Some do and some don’t, is the answer, and it all depends on which textbook your teacher uses and how much he or she believes in the importance of grammar over the importance of enjoying a story. The story of Latin teaching in this country over the last 130 years has been one of reaction and counter-reaction; and there are signs of a counter-counter-reaction on the way.

First, there was Kennedy’s Latin Primer (1888). Benjamin Hall Kennedy, clergyman and headmaster of Shrewsbury, was the man who decided that noun cases should be in ‘nom, voc, acc, gen, dat, abl’ order. His Latin Primer (still in print in a revised edition — revised in 1930) is almost all lists and tables. It’s a terrifying book for anyone who loathes rules; and it brought into being the non-sequitur poem which I remember finding scribbled in the margin of my dog-eared textbook: ‘Latin is a dead language, as dead as dead can be. First it killed the Romans, and now it’s killing me.’ (The more I think about it, the more hopeless that ‘I can’t remember a textbook poem is.) It also made clever schoolboys very, very good at Latin. that was made better by a Then came L.A. Wilding, Latin picture of a pot,’ says Clarke master at the Dragon School in Oxford, who wrote his Latin Course for Schools in 1949. ‘In the beginning, God created “amo, amas, amat”’ is its basic message; ‘and on the second day He created “mensa, mensa, mensam”.’ The language is explained in flawlessly logical order. In his introduction, Wilding has a shot at explaining to reluctant schoolchildren why learning Latin is important. ‘The Romans both thought and expressed themselves with the utmost clearness. One of the chief objects of education is to learn how to express ourselves clearly, and there is no better way of reaching this goal than by studying Latin.’ No pretence at all that this was about learning How the Romans Lived.

In Wilding’s world you never use a Latin word without knowing exactly what case or tense it is in. Gradually Wilding builds you up from translating ‘The sailor walks,’ via ‘The sailors arrive on the island with roses’, to ‘The Romans fought well by land; they did not always show the same skill by sea.’ Among the thousands of boys’ efforts to translate sentences such as these from books of this ilk, two mistranslations from Latin are treasured: ‘Scipio ordered the women to display their booty in the forum’, and ‘Only the king may take the horse from the rear.’

Enough of these disconnected, grammar-obsessed sen18

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tences, said the Cambridge Latin Course (1970). With hippy-like daring, it landed pupils straight in the deep end with two sentences introducing its chief character: ‘Caecilius est in horto. Caecilius in horto sedet.’ What? An ablative in line one? And a second-conjugation verb? This is surely running before you can walk.

But who cares? said the Cambridge Latin Course, and many contemporary teachers agree. The point is that pupils should enjoy Latin from day one, and the way to make them do that is to tell them a story about a family in Pompeii: Caecilius, his wife Metella, the cook Grumio, the slave Clemens and the dog Cerberus. By Lesson 2 the family is tasting peacock in the dining room. The vocabulary just lists words like ‘tradit, capit, currit’, without fitting them into a conjugation system. The book is beautifully illustrated, and a huge commercial success — as is a similar book for younger children, called Minimus, by Barbara Bell. Minimus is ‘the mouse that made Latin fun’. It has sold 145,000 copies and is about to be translated into Slovenian and Portuguese. Barbara Bell is a huge fan of ‘fun’, history-based Latin learning. ‘I love the Cambridge Latin Course,’ she tells me. ‘I wouldn’t teach anything else at senior school. It’s a bit like the Suzuki method. You learn to play the violin and then, much later, you learn that the note you’re playing is called Middle C.’ And now we come to the latest counter-reaction. The way has been paved by the Independent Schools Examination Board’s ‘Practice Exercises’ books, which hark back to the grammar-based system to prepare pupils for Common Entrance. Now a brilliant young Latin master at Highfield School in Liphook, Hampshire, Edward Clarke, has written Variatio: A Scholarship Latin Course, which is being piloted at Highfield prior to wider publication. Clarke can’t bear the wishy-washy methods of the Cambridge Latin Course and feels that ‘Caecilius est in horto’ is a completely useless piece of information for anyone who needs to learn how Latin actually works. ‘It doesn’t give you the tools you require to translate anything.’ His book is illustration-free and he’s proud of it: ‘I can’t remember a textbook that was really made better by a picture of a pot.’ In four years, his book and his entertaining but rigorous teaching method will take pupils all the way from ‘amo, amas, amat’ to the near-GCSE level required for a scholarship to a top public school.

If Latin is learned in this way, Clarke believes, pupils will reach a level at which they can really understand and relish the syntax of Virgil, and then the fun can really start.

‘Then we can start reading Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis,’ and I’m working on some Doctor Who translations – mainly because “Tardis” and “Metebelis 3” decline. But you’ve got to get there first.’

The vital element that seems to have been lost from Latin teaching, Clarke feels, is ‘prose composition’, or translating from English into Latin. For some reason, teachers seem to believe that this is ‘too difficult’ for pupils; whereas, in Clarke’s experience, if pupils start translating from English into Latin from day one, it is one of the most enjoyable aspects, ‘like doing a good sudoku’.

Even at scholarship level, prose composition is optional.

But ‘If you want your son to get a scholarship to Eton,’ Clarke says, ‘my advice is, do the prose composition. Very few take that option, and you can excel.’

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Private passion Lara Prendergast says it’s a shame that the study of history of art fails to flourish in state schools

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hen I think back to history lessons at school, the predominant focus was always on war. From the Battle of Hastings to the Battle of Agincourt, the Crusades to Nazi Germany, the curriculum seemed jammed full of stories about aggressive military affairs. Fascinating, but it was a relief to reach sixth form and discover another way to study the past — through a cultural lens, via the history of art.

History of art is often viewed derisively in the UK. It’s almost ignored by the state system, yet is offered by many independent schools. Because of this, it’s seen as a ‘posh’ choice, in much the same way classics is. A-­level history of art is available at only 17 state secondary schools out of more than 3,000, plus a further 15 sixthform colleges. By contrast, more than 90 independent schools offer it.

There’s no particular reason why history of art should be confined to independent schools — but for a long while it has been, and as a result, pupils from the private sector dominate university courses in the subject.

Things aren’t helped by Kate Middleton (who studied history of art at Marlborough College and then at St Andrew’s) standing in front of Paul Emsley’s hopeless

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portrait of her in the National Portrait Gallery, saying it’s ‘brilliant… Amazing … Absolutely brilliant.’ Nice girls saying nice things about paintings that aren’t nice shouldn’t be the point of the subject. It’s a meaty one, when it’s allowed to be.

This is something which many of Britain’s independent schools recognise. Offering history of art allows them to include topics on the curriculum that traditional history lessons scoot round — the Belle Epoch, say, seen through the work of the Impressionists, or the Reform­ ation, as examined through the Dutch Golden Age. At Wellington College, pupils are trained to understand both their visual cultural heritage and the images generated by the modern world around them. They focus on ensuring that students are visually literate, and are set up for life in an increasingly image-centred world.

Even students who don’t take history of art for A Level are aware of the discipline, thanks to art-focused assemblies built into the termly schedule.

At Westminster School, where they offer a Pre-U course, pupils are introduced to key artistic and historical moments from ancient Egypt to the present day.

This includes an examination of both western and nonwestern artefacts. This holistic attitude is quite differ-

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ent to the more piecemeal approach of many standard history courses. Benjamin Walton, head of history of art at Westminster, explains that this broad overview is combined with a far more focused second part — an examination of three historical periods: medieval, Italian Renaissance and late 19th/early 20th western European art. Study visits and a 3,000-word thesis tie all this together, creating a rigorous academic syllabus that is a particularly valuable experience for university.

Study visits are one of the most rewarding aspects of taking history of art. The halcyon days of the Grand Tour may be behind us, but many of Britain’s independent schools keep the flame alive. At places like Eton, Winchester and Godolphin & Latymer, students are invited to go on foreign trips that complement the course. Key hubs like Venice, Florence, Paris and Rome are popular, although more far-flung places like Istanbul and New York are sometimes included. There is much to be said for trips that allow pupils to get up close to objects. One girl from Marlborough fondly remembers an afternoon spent in the San Marco convent in Florence: ‘It wasn’t till you saw Fra Angelico’s frescoes in their original location that you began to understand how these contemplative paintings fitted into a simple monastic lifestyle.’

Foreign visits can be particularly helpful with architecture and ‘Baroque architecture would sculpture. ‘Baroque have been tricky to get my head architecture would around without visiting Rome’ have been tricky to get my head around without having visited Rome,’ says a pupil who studied history of art at Westminster. That said, for many, fond memories aren’t solely about the art; after a long day traipsing through a city, a glass of wine with fellow pupils and teachers can be just as memorable.

The best history of art courses will not only rely on this kind of extravagant trip, though. Britain is stuffed with all sorts of intriguing artefacts, and a course that only focuses on foreign collections is a dubious one.

Visits to British museums and galleries can be just as enlightening. ‘The small-scale outings in London and elsewhere were actually far more important educationally than the big New York trip we went on,’ says a pupil who studied at Latymer Upper. ‘They allowed us to focus on individual works better, and were much more useful than charging around big foreign galleries, trying to make sure we saw everything.’

Take the National Gallery, home to one of the finest collections of art in the world. A good teacher can use it to introduce students to a broad range of artistic movements — from 14th-century early-Renaissance works to the flamboyance of the Rococo.

It is a shame that there’s so little recognition of this in the state sector — it does a disservice to students. Teachers could focus on art housed in Britain and still give an exceptional understanding of the subject. The legacy of centuries of British collecting, building and philanthropy has endowed this country with a mighty hoard of art.

The study of this is an advantage that the independent sector continues to retain over the state system.

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INVESTING FOR YOUR CHILD’S ADULT LIFE?

There is no better way of teaching your children the discipline of saving and investing throughout life than by opening a pension. Put a small amount of money in every month and they can watch it grow, hopefully adding to it themselves or through their employer when they reach adulthood. As with an adult pension there is no need to worry about paying tax. Not only that, pension contributions to the child’s pension attract tax relief similar to the adult equivalent, meaning that for every £100 you put in the taxman will add another £25.

Higher rate relief is unlikely to be available. There are, however, a couple of caveats with saving in a pension: there is a maximum of £3,600 gross per annum that can be paid in to a children’s pension and your child will not be able to access the money until he or she reaches the minimum pension age, which will be linked to 10 years below the state pension age.

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SAVING FOR YOUR CHILDREN’S SCHOOL FEES?

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their own ISA allowance, which has just been raised to £15,000 a year. Alternatively, you can invest in stocks and shares outside an ISA. Children’s savings accounts provide another option. Children, like adults, enjoy a tax-free personal allowance of £10,000 this tax year, although funds gifted by parents where the income exceeds £100 gross per annum will be taxed on the parent (this does not apply to grandparents).

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Going green remains a pressing obligation that schools cannot afford to ignore

It is easy being green

with low-energy light bulbs. The school would reduce its carbon footprint a trifle, while also saving a bit of money (or vice versa). I remember thinking at Johnnie Kerr on how one school’s efforts to overhaul its ancient the time that this was less an initiative than a gesture — a head-fake towards heating system will end up saving both energy and money social responsibility to soothe their conscience.

The fact remains, though, that going green, really green, is still a pressing obligation that institutions can ill-afford to ignore.

What can be said, then, of a small he problem with going green, I’m told, is boarding school attempting, at one stroke, to reduce its that it often means spending a great deal of annual carbon emissions by nearly 70 per cent, and all money on lots of equipment that could at without spending a penny? I speak of St Mary’s Shaftes­ any moment be rendered obsolete. When bury, a Catholic girls’ school in 55 acres of Wiltshire it comes to renewable energy, scepticism which this summer set in motion the most thorough abounds. But the outcome of this cynicism is that our green initiative ever attempted by an independent Britefforts to be greener have been incremental at best, and ish school.

Its transformation will be extreme, to say the least. symbolic at worst. Just before I left school seven years ago we were told that all bedrooms were to be fitted The main building and estate of St Mary’s date back to

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the 1880s, and since that time very few of its energy facilities have undergone what you might call ‘diligent modernisation’. Off the grid for gas, the school has had to rely instead on oil and LPG (liquid petroleum gas) for decades. Many of its boilers were installed in the 1960s.

All this is about to change. When the girls of St Mary’s return for the Christmas term, they’ll find themselves in one of the greenest schools in the country, its roofs replete with solar panelling and its buildings heated by a vast biomass boiler.

The solution of switching to alternative fuel to save on costs originated, naturally enough, with the school’s bursar, Louis Tuson, who, on his arrival three years ago was faced with a decision of what to do about the school’s alarmingly antiquated energy set-up. ‘There were 19 boilers on site, some of them over 40 years old,’ he explains, ‘all of various ages and requiring quite a lot of maintenance, with the replacements’ significant capital cost always on the horizon.’ To the man charged with making all this cost-efficient, it must have seemed an almost insoluble problem.

Small wonder, then, that the solution Tuson hit upon was so far-reaching. ‘Looking at the place with a fresh pair of eyes,’ he recalls, ‘carrying on as we were — we would have had to spend a lot of money buying new oilfired boilers — you had to ask, is that logical in the current climate? And it seemed to me that we ought to be doing something radically different.’ He had no idea at the time just how radical this overhaul would become, or how easily he would hit on the answer. Almost immediately, as he began looking into the murky, often maligned world of biomass boilers, he was put in touch with a company which promised to exceed his requirements extravagantly, and all at no cost whatsoever.

Anesco, whose website proclaims to be ‘the UK’s leading energy efficiency services company’, is not a charitable group. Its profits are recouped from the savings it provides its clients. It offers a model which, as the company’s founder Adrian Pike explains, ‘enables organisations to reduce their energy expenditure while improving the efficiency of their buildings … without the need for capital outlay. It’s perfect for schools like St Mary’s which have high energy demands across multiple buildings.’ What’s more, the scheme had been well proven. ‘We have helped many schools to improve their energy efficiency,’ Pike tells me. St Mary’s, though, is the first independent school to submit to this model, and the ‘tailored upgrades’ currently being installed, entirely at the cost of Anesco’s investors, are impressive.

They include a gigantic 995kW biomass boiler (the largest to be installed in the country this year) that will reduce the school’s gas and oil costs by up to 70 per cent. Solar PV panelling is being laid extensively over the school’s rooftops, as well as an unused field in the grounds, and the lights will be switched to LED lamps, all of which will provide 20 per cent of the school’s future electricity requirements.

Even considering the outmoded conditions St Mary’s is emerging from, the projected figures are staggering.

The school expects to achieve a reduction in carbon emissions of 69 per cent (a reduction of 847 tonnes) annually,

which should cut its energy bill by up to 55 per cent in the first year. ‘[Anesco] say the levels of CO2 reductions are the best they’ve achieved, and they’ve done a lot of this,’ says Tuson, ‘and I know they’re quite keen now to expand further and do it elsewhere.’ In fact, the school is hosting an Industry Day on 31 October where Anesco intend to show off their achievements to investors and potential customers.

But in exhibiting its newfound efficiency, St Mary’s is keen to promote more than just the economic benefits of its upheaval. The expectation is that its success will serve as an example of what can be achieved. Nor are its measures purely practical. Their most Green fever at St Mary’s enduring consequence, it’s hoped, is quickly becoming a will be to illustrate the extraordimajor feature of school life nary possibilities of green energy both to the local community and, crucially, to its pupils.

‘That’s equally important,’ says Tuson. ‘It’s about trying to encourage behavioural changes, as well as just trying to solve the issue with technology. It’s working already. Since we’ve started this and started talking about it, a number of girls have come out of the woodwork and said, “We’re interested in this, it’s the world we’re going to grow up in.” It’s very relevant.’

Green fever at St Mary’s is quickly becoming a major feature of school life. Awareness of the initiative has already been stepped up in science and geography lessons. ‘Smart metering’ screens are being installed to illustrate to the girls exactly how energy is distributed, encouraging the boarding houses to compete to be the most efficient. A radical recycling initiative was introduced last term, with the enviable appointment of ‘Waste Monitors’ in every house, which has already brought the total waste recycled by the school to an estimated 95 per cent.

If all this seems too good to be true, I must admit that as my interview with Tuson drew to a close, I couldn’t help being a little doubtful. Surely there must be some sort of flipside? ‘Not at all,’ he tells me, with insouciance.

‘There are some practical risks. The truck that delivers the woodchip is particularly large. We’re not used to that size of truck coming onto the estate and we’ll have to trim some trees to make it possible, but that’s all pretty trivial really. Nothing that can’t be managed.’

And there, I suppose, you have it. Astonishing as it may seem, St Mary’s Shaftesbury has solved in three years an energy problem that has dogged it for decades.

If all goes as expected, in 19 years the savings the school will have made with its new equipment will have rewarded the investors of Anesco for installing and maintaining that equipment; and, if there’s any justice, St Mary’s will have been hailed as a pioneer of green ingenuity.

The most impressive thing about the school’s strategy, however, is not the extent of its accomplishments, but the courageous vision of its governors in undertaking it in the first place. It can’t have been an easy decision, but its effect has been extraordinary. Their school appears to have leapt from the 19th to the 21st century in one mighty bound.

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More than just paying the bills Mark Milling on the role of a modern school bursar

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arlier this year I attended my first Independent Schools Bursars Association conference.

Perhaps it was because it was in Harrogate, Herriot Country — but I couldn’t help noticing a severe case of ‘All Creatures Great and Small’. Bursars certainly come in a bewildering variety of breeds — some are preened, some are plumped and some are rather more unkempt; some are starting to creak a little around the edges and some are spring chickens, while sizes vary from Chihuahua to Saint Bernard (complete with flask of brandy). I even spotted one fellow who was the spitting image of Mrs Pumphrey’s pampered Pekinese, Tricki-Woo. Yet, despite the enormous diversity, we most definitely have one thing in common: we are all passionate about our schools and the education that they provide.

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The bursar’s role, with the help of our teams, is to provide a safe and well maintained campus, financial acumen and good planning. As Sir John Jones, the keynote speaker in Harrogate, wisely noted, what a parent wants above all else is a school where their children can be safe, make friends and be happy. It is the duty of each and every member of a school’s staff to ensure that they make this happen.

We, as bursars, are very aware of the immense financial sacrifices parents make in order to send their children to an independent school. Fees have increased at a faster rate than wage inflation for many years, which is due to many factors, including an increase in consumer expectations. As a pupil at Radley College in the 1980s I lived cheerfully in pretty basic circumstances. There was a thriving black market economy for secondhand desks, posters, lamps and drapes. One year I even had to provide my own carpet. Quite rightly, nobody would put up with this today (and I am sure that subsequent bursars at Radley have changed things).

Our customers also desire smaller class sizes and more educational support staff. Furthermore, the costs of meeting regulatory requirements, fuel bills, staff pension contributions, IT provision and maintaining grand old estates have all rocketed. This has priced many of

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our traditional customers out of the market for private education. This is a great shame, and is also a risk to the future of the independent sector.

So what can we do to reduce this affordability gap?

Well, a bursar obviously needs to ensure that money received in fees is spent in the most efficient manner possible. Schools also have to make the most of the commercial opportunities that their estates can provide in terms of lettings, summer schools, Easter revision courses and so on. At the same time we must not forget our charitable status and our obligations and desires to provide public benefit. This is a difficult balancing act.

We should also try to become more American in our approach to raising funds from alumni and other stakeholders. These are vital in financing both capital projects and bursaries to maintain our support to hard-pressed parents and to give top-class pupils from deprived backgrounds access to a transformational education. At Lancing College we are lucky enough to have over an acre of land per pupil. Our incredible chapel and Oxbridgestyle quads provide inspiration and awe to pupils from all walks of life and from around the globe. Our Foundation Office is working hard to ensure that this glorious estate is around for another 150 years. More and more independent schools are starting to realise the value of relationship-building with alumni, but the results can take many years to come to fruition.

We must also make the most of advances in technology to drive efficiency. The use of smart devices, innova-

tive software and the internet in education is accelerating at a phenomenal rate, and we must focus on how we can use these to best effect.

When it comes to the fabric of the estate, most schools are not blessed with significant endowments.

These establishments will have to be brave, and not get too carried away with the facilities arms-race. Of course we need to provide opportunities and quality activities to our pupils, but a £1 million sports hall is as much fun to run around in as a £10 million one. Sometimes schools focus too much on appealing to parents when it is the children who spend time there — and they often have very difAs a pupil at Radley in the ferent wants and wishes.

Furthermore, I am convinced 1980s, I lived cheerfully in that parents are starting to pretty basic circumstances admire schools which are brave enough to lay prestige projects aside and focus on their core product — a top-class education in a pleasant environment with plenty of extracurricular opportunities, while ensuring their pupils are safe and happy.

After all, what is it that we remember from our school days? It is our inspirational teachers, our mad experiences, our friends, our access to space and support and intelligent adult guidance. Of course there need to be clear rules and boundaries, but the pupil needs to be trusted, treated with respect, kept safe, smiled at and listened to.

That way each child will succeed and flourish.

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Hard times Why are the greatest schools in literature so steeped in Gothic severity? By Harry Mount

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hen the late, great Ronald Searle and Geoffrey Willans conspired to create St Trinian’s and Nigel Molesworth, the archetypal English prep school boy, they wanted to evoke an air of ­austere,

post-war gloom.

Molesworth’s school, St Custard’s, was, in his own words, ‘built by a madman in 1836’. For both St Custard’s and St Trinian’s, Searle plumped for a grim, early Gothic Revival style, all inky, glowering crockets and pinnacles. His choice of Gothic was inspired by his wartime service when he was stationed in Kirkcudbright in 1940.

There he met two schoolgirls, evacuated from a school called St Trinnean’s, Edinburgh, an OTT exercise in high Scottish Gothic. ‘I prefer Renaissance architecture, but the gloom of Gothic suited my work better,’ said Searle, ‘I misspelt it by accident — St Trinnean was an ancient saint — and it stuck.’

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Austere gloom was certainly still the prevailing mood in my school days in the 1970s and 1980s. Westminster School may have been expensive — although a lot less expensive in real terms than it is today, at £10,830 a term for boarders. But it also retained an echo of St Custard’s — not just in the crockets and pinnacles of neighbouring Westminster Abbey, but also in a threadbare echo of that post-war austerity.

Living standards were appropriately monastic in the shadow of the Abbey. We stuck milk bottles out on the ledge of our day room to keep them cool. What would have been the point of a fridge? Thirteen-yearold boys don’t need fancy, new-tangled devices to satisfy their plain, brutish tastes.

Lunch wasn’t much better. We lived off buttered toast to compensate for the sub-optimal school food. At one particularly uninspiring meal, a friend of mine complained to the school chef that his roast lamb was sweating. ‘You’d sweat if you were put in an oven for three hours,’ barked the chef.

Yes, the surroundings were impossibly grand — not in terms of opulence, but when it came to history. That day room was in one of the first Palladian buildings in the country, designed by Lord Burlington in the early 18th century. The gym was in a medieval corner of the abbey cloister.

But those surroundings were agreeably run down. The vaulting horse in the gym was almost as ancient as the cloister. The school’s second-hand bookshop — which I ran out of a broom cupboard by the bogs — was full of dog-eared novels encrusted with generations of unfunny schoolboy graffiti.

The austere days of the great British public school are gone now. Russian oligarchs and American hedgefunders want today’s Nigel Molesworths to have their own centrally heated studies and artificially cooled milk.

That’s one of the reasons private education has moved beyond the reach of the children of middle-class professionals. But, also, something more than affordable school fees has been lost along the way.

I’m not arguing for a return to sepia-tinted schooldays, where you were grateful to be beaten within an inch of your life by frustrated, unhappy men in mortarboards and gowns. And I can’t claim that Westminster made me more resilient, like the Marlborough-educated subject of one second world war anecdote. This man, like

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Ronald Searle, was imprisoned by the Japanese during the war. When he turned up at the gruesome jail, he was greeted by an old schoolfriend.

‘What’s it like here?’ said the worried new arrival.

‘Oh, not too bad. Much better than Marlborough, anyway.’

But that combination of a brilliant education in beautiful surroundings and material discomfort did produce a useful lesson in life’s priorities — that medieval buildings and Ancient Greek verbs are more important than Louis Vuitton pencil cases and Versace underpants. And, these days, I would still prefer to stay in a windowless dive in a pension by Termini Railway Station in Rome than in the Hotel Schloss Uberluxy on some remote, sun-blasted, cultureless beach.

It’s not that I actively prefer discomfort in some wacko hairshirt way, more that I don’t mind it that much.

And that’s the best lesson of childhood deprivation in exalted, cultured surroundings: you like looking at palIndependent Day School for Girls from 4-18 years aces; you don’t expect to live in one — even if you find Queen’s Gate School offers girls a friendly, supportive environment, that that’s precisely where some of your more exalted where individuality is nurtured, academic standards are high and where school friends end up living. a broad based curriculum ensures a well rounded education.

The funny thing is that public schools in literature For a prospectus, or to make a private visit to the School, remain unremittingly bleak today, as if the comfort revplease contact the Registrar Miss Janette Micklewright, on olution had never taken 020 7594 4982 or email, registrar@queensgate.org.uk place. Harry Potter’s It is funny that public schools Queen’s Gate Junior School Queen’s Gate Senior School Hogwarts might just as 125-126 Queen’s Gate London SW7 5LJ 131-133 Queen’s Gate London SW7 5LE in literature are still bleak. well be St Trinian’s or www.queensgate.org.uk St Custard’s, for all its Take Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Gothic chill. In fact, a rival school called Hogwarts does actually appear in the 1954 Molesworth volume, How to be Topp. St CusQG_spec_2.indd 1 18/8/14 tard’s is regularly beaten at football by Hogwarts and their other deadly rivals, Porridge Court. And, in his wise words on Latin lessons, Molesworth writes,

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Sometimes they think they will trick you into liking lat. by having a latin pla. Latin plas are like this: THE HOGWARTS by MARCUS PLAUTUS MOLESWORTHUS

Hogwarts could hardly be gloomier, with its bristling thickets of crenellated towers, the Black Lake and the Forbidden Forest. How richly Gothic to have a school owlery, where pupils keep their own owls.

Today, no real public school comes close to matching the medieval gloom of Hogwarts. J.K. Rowling, born in 1965, must have been feeding off the boarding school literature of her childhood — from St Custard’s to Billy Bunter’s Greyfriars School, from Jennings’s Linbury Court to Winker Watson’s Greytowers Boarding School.

It is from the austerity and bleakness of these places — sometimes exaggerated, sometimes not — that the humour and the mischief of those school stories was born. Somehow I think today’s ultra-comfortable public schools won’t produce the same literary gold dust. As the great Nigel Molesworth is prone to say, ‘It is all an uter chiz.’

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

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he two great regrets of middle age are: ‘I never learnt a language’ and ‘I never learnt an instrument’. One of my regrets is that, because I was a happy-go-lucky sort of chap at school, my music teachers kept giving me heavier and heavier cases to carry.

They started me on the trumpet. That was fine; I could hide away in the brass section and camouflage my errors among the better players. But then they moved me to the euphonium. ‘We need one of those, Newton. Get practising.’ I could just about cope with the euphonium. But then came the final call. Your school needs you. The orchestra expects. ‘We need a tuba, and you’re the man!’

I was suddenly armed and dangerous. As the only tuba

player in the wind band, any error I committed was both prominent and unmissable. Eyes would turn to the scruffy boy at the back as he knocked out a sharp instead of a flat and — on one memorable occasion — added an extra note to a bar. That would have been fine, except that it was the last bar. The conductor’s hand had stopped. The flutes were practically packing away. The violins were planning their night out, and I was rewriting a Gershwin classic.

Embarrassed? You betcha.

So when offered the chance to fade away and hand over this most toxic of briefs, I grabbed the chance to stop.

And that was it. I had proudly won an undistinguished pass at Grade Three. I had ruined modern music for 200 spectators, and had endured a thoroughly lonely and miserable time. Job done.

Then, middle age struck. One summer’s day, in my present job as headmaster of Taunton School, I was visiting the prep school music building and noticed the music store had been left open. At the back was a very large instrument case. Flashback. My palms moistened. There was my nemesis.

But then another thought came to me: why not have another go? This time, I would do it my way. I might even enjoy it. I would buy some music and play to my heart’s content. So what if my kids complained and the masonry crumbled? The time had come to right a wrong, and to prove that I could do it.

Next thing I knew, ambition began to grow. Grade Three in 1979. Why not Grade Four, or even Five, in 2013?

Let’s buy the music and find out. And what did I find? I loved it. Simply adored it. At certain moments, I was an insult to tuba players everywhere, but when it was good, it was great. I was Hendrix with valve oil.

I am lucky enough to be married to a very accomplished musician. My wife plays every Sunday in church, to pieces arranged by our very talented music director. I quavered — because that is about as fast as I could play — and finally asked him to arrange some music so that we could see whether I could add lustre and depth to the worshipful music making.

Mistakes? I have certainly made a few, but I have been disturbing the prayerful silences and wrecking the godly intonations of St James’s church for 18 months now. Each week is a trial because the instrument, rather like my iPad, seems to have a mind of its own. Shifting several cubic metres of air through brass pipes is not the easiest of things and I still do squeak from time to time. But the sense of satisfaction from playing something right is still a thrill, and the sense of being part of a very different kind of team is moving.

As for Grade Five? I got a distinction — by the skin of my teeth. But not before facing a lone examiner in a cavernous music room for 20 minutes. My word, our pupils are brave to do that.

As for the future: I sit by the phone hoping for the call from the Brighouse and Rastrick Band, or even the prep-school wind band. Maybe one day it will come. In the meantime, I busked for charity with two fellow headmasters in Taunton High Street at Christmastime two years ago. We raised £300 in an hour for the homeless, so the tuneless helped the homeless. Not bad for a middle-aged man with, now, a little less regret than before.

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Pipe dreams The tuba defeated John Newton as a schoolboy.

Now, as a headmaster, he’s taking it on again

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Tough luck, old boys Contrary to public perception, there are ever fewer Old Etonians in Parliament, says Tim Wigmore

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or a centre-right political party, the Conservatives are oddly obsessed with where people went to school. Michael Gove and Lady Warsi both lamented the number of Old Etonians in influential positions earlier this year. It may not have been coincidence that, within five months, both had moved posts: there remains a potent undercurrent of class tension in today’s Conservative party.

The charge sheet is simple. David Cameron has

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stacked the corridors of power with those who share his black-and-turquoise old school tie. How can it be that British politics has regressed into the chumocracy days of Harold Macmillan? Yet the prominence of Old Etonians today is not a throwback to an era that we thought we’d left behind — it’s a last hurrah.

Here are some facts to mollify those who despair at David Cameron and his ruling clique. When Winston Churchill returned to power in 1951, he led a party with 76 Old Etonian MPs. There are only 19 in David Cameron’s Conservative party today, and the number will be further depleted when Sir George Young and James Arbuthnot both step down as MPs at the next election.

Rather than being stronger than ever, as the conventional wisdom assumes, the role of Old Etonians in British politics may be in inexorable decline.

The fall in the number of Old Etonian MPs reflects a wider trend. Despite all the calls to bring back the bluecollar conservatism of John Major, in fact 60 per cent of Tories in 1992 were independently educated, compared with 54 per cent today. The number is even lower for the 2010 Conservative intake and parliamentary candidates for 2015. In 1951, 78 per cent of Tories had attended private schools; 72 per cent of the 1979 intake also did so.

This is one of the forgotten stories of the modern Conservative party: the dramatic reduction in the power of the old school tie.

That may seem incongruous given the lack of diversity in today’s cabinet. It is highly awkward for the Conservatives that their front bench can be caricatured as an all-white, privately educated men-only zone. And yet there have never been so few Old Etonian MPs. Tony Little, the soon-to-retire headmaster of Eton, is aware of the trend. He suggests that the most fundamental explanation is that ‘party politics is less attractive than once it was as a career option’: professional politics now wants for prestige and glamour. Students who are interested in politics ‘don’t necessarily focus on traditional party politics’ any more, and look to Old Etonians like Justin Welby and Jonathon Porritt, the former director of Friends of the Earth, for examples of how to make a difference in public life in other ways.

Little also says that ‘the pummelling public figures receive in party political life’ has put the school’s old boys off the idea of trying to become MPs. He reckons that it could well be the case that a prestigious private education is now an impediment for would-be parliamentary candidates. And indeed Conservative constituency associations in marginal seats might be sensible to discriminate in this way.

In Somerton and Frome, one of the Conservatives’ main target seats at the last election, the Tories recorded a swing well below national trends. That the candidate’s name was Annunziata Rees-Mogg (defying Mr Cameron’s orders to adopt the plainer ‘Nancy Mogg’) may not have helped. CCHQ will also have anxiously noted Ukip’s success at pitching itself as the antidote to the out-of-touch Tories.

Labour has followed a similar line of attack, something made easier by the fact that it no longer has any Old Etonians in its parliamentary ranks. There is a rich

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tradition of Old Etonian socialism — George Orwell; Huge Dalton (chancellor in Clement Attlee’s government); and Tom Dalyell, the former Father of the House.

Ever since Frederick Pethick-Lawrence was elected as Labour’s first Old Etonian MP in 1923, they have been popping up. No longer. In 2010, for the first time since 1923, not a single Old Etonian was returned as a Labour MP. None have so far been chosen as candidates for the 2015 general election either.

The start of the financial crisis in 2008 brought class back to the centre of British politics. In the Crewe and Nantwich by-election in 2008, Labour attacked the privately educated Conservative candidate Edward Timpson as ‘the Tarporley Toff’ and ‘Lord Snooty’. Although he was voted in nevertheless, it was a taste of things to come. Only 12 per cent of Labour’s MPs today are privately educated, and the party believes that it’s on strong ground when it attacks the privileged backgrounds of leading Conservatives. It may be right. Polling evidence suggests that two thirds of voters think the Conservatives ‘care more about the rich and affluent than ordinary people’.

George Osborne knows how effective such attacks can be. With delicious irony, it was the Chancellor who devised Michael Howard’s jibe to Tony Blair: ‘This grammar school boy will take no lessons from that public school boy.’ When Conservatives use similar language today, it is reserved for blue-on-blue attacks. David Davis last year pleaded for ‘no more Old Etonian advisers’ at

No. 10, while Sarah Wollaston has also railed against an excess of Old Etonian school ties.

David Cameron is the only OE in the cabinet today, and no Conservative (or Conservative-dominated) administration has ever had a lower proportion of privately educated people in ministerial posts. But the critics do seem to have a point: Cameron seems disposed to favour those who come from a similar background when it comes to advisers. So it is that four of those involved in drafting the manifesto alongside the PM also went to his old school: Jo Johnson, brother of Boris and chair of the No. 10 policy board; Oliver Letwin, the minister for government policy; Ed Llewellyn, Cam- While the Tory party is eron’s chief of staff; and Rupert moving away from the old Harrison, George Osborne’s school tie, Mr Cameron is chief of staff. Old Etonians may be a dying breed at Westmin- much less willing to do so ster, but under Mr Cameron’s rule they are stubbornly retaining their influence. So the paradox is that while the Conservative party is very definitely moving away from the old school tie, Mr Cameron is much less willing to do so.

It will make the Old Etonians particularly easy to blame if the Tories lose the next election.

Ultimately, the real story is not that the Conservative party is in thrall to Etonians, but the strange phasing out of Old Etonians from power. Defying this trend may be a task beyond even Boris Johnson.

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An independent Catholic boarding and day school for girls aged 11 to 18

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Keeping the flame alive A religious ethos still makes a real difference in education, says Abbot Aidan Bellenger

M

ost of our independent schools in Great Britain have a religious origin and the campuses of many are dominated by school chapels. The earliest surviving foundations, including Eton and Winchester, contain vestiges of their religious inspiration in their statutes and constitutions. Some of the older grammar schools began life as training places for developing Protestantism, while the older Catholic schools were staffed by the religious orders notably Jesuits and Benedictines.

Many of today’s schools have, however, lost their overtly religious The kindly authority of character and followed Oxford and St Benedict’s rule remains Cambridge into a world where academic success and ‘excellence’ are the potent in today’s world dominant ideals. Religious elements remain in music and drama, but a strong ethical foundation based on shared values seems to have largely disappeared. So has the marginalisation of the ‘faith’ element in education been a mistake?

This has become an important question for the independent sector as the debate on the subject becomes a national issue. The Prime Minister has made it clear that he believes England remains a Christian country, and Michael Gove has tried to single out those British values which make civil society possible. Such values are notoriously difficult to pinpoint. The sometimes acrimonious debate on the nature of the curriculum for the teaching of 34

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history has shown that the delicate balance of life in this country is more easily disturbed than described. What I am sure of is that British values would be pretty vacuous without their Christian background. Tolerance and fair play may make sense on the cricket field, but they only carry true authority when inspired by Gospel values.

Such questions have been much in mind over the last few months here at Downside, where as abbot of the monastic community of Benedictine monks and chairman of governors, I have been presiding over the bicentenary celebrations of our school. We were originally founded at Douai in Flanders 400 ago as an English monastery and school unable to practise its Catholicism in England. We were forced out of France in the 1790s precisely because we were English and returned to start anew. After a twodecade sojourn at Acton Burnell in Shropshire, the property at Downside was acquired and the modest farmhouse which was our first home is now engulfed in a massive array of buildings dominated by our abbey church. The church has been the focus of our celebrations this year reflecting its centrality in the life of Downside.

Among all of the networking and renewing of contacts that the celebrations have brought, something more important has emerged: the need to focus on why we are here, and what we are doing. The question of the school’s ethos has become more urgent not because of the religious composition of the school (which remains predominantly Catholic) but because of the appointment of Downside’s first lay headmaster, Dr James Whitehead. Can a Benedictine school remain a Benedictine school without a Benedictine headmaster?

The answer to this seems to be a firm ‘yes’, as the school has always maintained a firm commitment to the Catholic faith and its Benedictine identity. A Benedictine identity is not wishy-washy sales talk, but a golden thread which runs through all our activities. A humane, practical Christianity, a strong force for good in the world and the value of each individual in the school community is a clear expression of the Benedictine Rule.

St Benedict’s Rule was written in the sixth century AD by an Italian monk and abbot, but its kindly authority remains potent in today’s world. The Rule sees, in a deeply incarnated way, the reality of God’s loving intervention in all things. Within the encompassing Benedictine ideas of humility, listening and compassion, the true ethos of the school remains: our vocation to show kindness and love for all, our ultimate ambition to achieve eternal life, and our selfless love for others. All these practical values find their principal focus in our worship in the abbey church.

When the English Catholic independent schools were founded during the Reformation period, the debate on ‘English’ values was very strong, and it led at times to death and persecution. The English Catholics were the pariahs of their time and their values seemed to threaten the established order. Identities are never easy to define, but it is obvious that we need to articulate clearly what ‘traditional values’ are in today’s multicultural society. If the Christian voice is not heard, or not heard clearly, then others will ensure that their voices dominate. I am glad that I have come to a clearer understanding of the values and inspirations that make our school what it is — and I hope they will endure.

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