Editorial

Editor

Tom Wheare

Managing Editor

Jonathan Barnes

Production Editor

Scott James

Advertising Manager

Gerry Cookson Email: gcookson@johncatt.com Conference & Common Room is published three times a year, in January, May and September. ISSN 0265 4458 Subscriptions: £25 for a two-year subscription, post paid; discounts for bulk orders available. Advertising and Subscription enquiries to the publishers: John Catt Educational Ltd, 15 Riduna Park, Melton, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 1QT. Tel: (01394) 389850. Fax: (01394) 386893. Email: enquiries@johncatt.com

Managing Director

Alex Sharratt

Editorial Director

Jonathan Barnes Editorial address: Tom Wheare, 63 Chapel Lane, Zeals, Warminster, Wilts BA12 6NP Email: tom.wheare@gmail.com Opinions expressed in Conference & Common Room are not necessarily those of the publishers; likewise advertisements and editorial are printed in good faith, and their inclusion does not imply endorsement by the publishers. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recorded or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Editor and/or the publishers. Printed in England by Micropress Printers, Suffolk, IP18 6DH

John Catt Educational Ltd is a member of the Independent Publishers Guild.

Summer 2019

This summer, our publishers are celebrating their sixtieth anniversary. The founder, John Catt, had taught at Woodberry Forest School in Virginia from 1948 to 1954 and brought his American experience to bear in the field of fundraising on his return to England. The publishing business he established in 1959 soon became first choice for school fundraising brochures, which made him a natural choice to partner the editorial board of ‘Conference’, described as a ‘trade magazine’ in the first words of the editorial of Volume One, Number One, published in September 1963. Two letters in the correspondence section are revealing. The first, from Harold Birkbeck, Headmaster of Barnard Castle, maintained that the individualism of HMC members made it ‘practically impossible to project’ an image of the Conference, whilst at the same time fearing that ‘if a circulation wider than the schools in membership is contemplated, inevitably outside readers would tend to believe that the articles reflected HMC official policy’. The second letter, from Alan Barker of The Leys, welcomed ‘the birth of this new periodical as an important weapon in destroying the wall of secrecy which surrounds the public school ... The initials HMC appear to stand for High and Mighty Conference to many outsiders. Until our last Annual Meeting the Press had been banned from our gatherings … The time for silence has gone.’ From the second number onwards, John Catt Limited acted as Business Managers and, as John Catt Educational Ltd, they continue to publish the now free-standing magazine.

Maintaining the individuality of schools is one of the great benefits of independence, as are the remaining but significantly reduced areas of freedom from government control. The sector needs to stick together as schools face hostility from both political wings, serious economic challenges in funding pensions and salaries, and threats such as the loss of charitable status and VAT on fees. AGBIS, formed in 2002, is an outstanding example of a prudent willingness to set aside old differences, created by the merging of GBGSA and GBA and now also representing the governing bodies of schools in membership of IAPS, ISA and SHMIS. An independent school’s governors are perhaps the most low profile of all its constituent groups, but they carry the final responsibility. As Heads and Heads’ Associations make the case for their schools individually and collectively, the now much more significant ISC represents the whole sector, David to the governmental Goliath.

But independence is not only under threat in education. Last summer, Georgia Duffy, the owner of the Imagined Things Bookshop in Harrogate, made national headlines when she tweeted that on one day she had taken just £12.34. This exemplified the plight of independent businesses across the country, battling against the threat of online shopping and out of town shopping centres, combined with rising rents and rates and increased parking charges. One immediate response came from Ashville College, which not only decided that in future it would buy its books from Imagined Things, but also launched a loyalty scheme through which other local businesses offer discounts to parents, pupils, staff and alumni.

The Booksellers Association (BA) fulfils a similar function to that of ISC, representing over 95% of specialist booksellers selling new books. Its National Book Tokens encourage people to buy from bookshops and BA promotional campaigns create a higher profile. Its first Academic Book Week, in November 2015, saw over 60 events hosted across the UK and internationally, at libraries, bookshops, universities and academic publishers, with the aim of getting people talking about academic books. Events ranged from questioning the future of the academic book and where it will ‘live’, to the importance of university bookshops. It also asked the question of whether or not we can trust Wikipedia as a reliable source before the current furore over fake news, and nominated Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species as ‘the academic book that changed the world’. This year’s Academic Book Week saw Darwin’s book voted ‘most influential banned book’, ahead of other titles on the shortlist that will be familiar to generations of schoolchildren – Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye and The Grapes of Wrath.