Teachers
Resilient, nimble and numerous
Christopher King celebrates the enduring strength of Prep Schools
Let’s be clear from the start, prep schools are not dying. They are thriving, innovating and full of drive to be vibrant places of learning with a curriculum that is relevant for the future. Yes, of course, there are challenges which are well documented and mostly sector-wide in their impact. Is the typical prep school keeling over and accepting defeat? No, not at all, it is fighting hard and coming out ahead. It is infuriating then to read yet another article from a selfpublicising senior school head, pontificating from their desk in a school which has a termly fee equivalent to a prep school’s annual charge and, in doing so, rubbishing the independent sector and undermining prep schools in the process. The
12
Summer 2019
staggering level of casually applied ignorance ends up biting the feeder schools the senior heads have relied on for many decades. It is beyond me why there is not more public respect for all the great preparatory work which goes on in the prep schools. In falling over themselves to praise the achievements of the state schools with whom they have partnership agreements, they forget to acknowledge the prep schools that send them so many well prepared pupils. IAPS, an association of prep school heads, is also in rude health. All the top prep schools in the UK are in membership which, as I write, is at 627 schools, more than double that of HMC, and there are more pupils in our schools than any other
