Fulfilling potential
What does it mean to be academic? Rick Clarke believes the founders of Frensham Heights were ahead of their time When I took over the reins at Frensham Heights school earlier this year, I was aware that I was stepping into a role steeped in tradition. Not a tradition of uniforms, authority and strict rules, but one of progressivism, of doing things differently and being proud of it. Frensham Heights nestles in 100 acres of rolling Surrey Hills, a rare and stunning location which our founders in 1925 knew would allow the youngsters in their care to develop at their own pace and to become the free-thinkers and inquiring minds of the future. They were aiming for a truly rounded academic education, one that acknowledged that there was far more to developing a successful human being than fact-feeding. It is an ethos which has served the school well – generations of successful Frenshamians are testimony to that - and it is an ethos of which I am now the proud custodian. And yet, as I meet prospective parents at the school, I am increasingly struck by the line of questioning taken by many of them. How academic is Frensham Heights? My standard response is to say that all children are stretched to reach their full potential, and since what the parents are essentially asking is how well do the children at your school do in exams, they assume I am referring to exam results. It has somehow become the norm that this is what we now mean by ‘academic’. However, an armful of A*s was not what Frensham’s founders had in mind when they used the word ‘academic’, and I find that I
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am becoming increasingly uneasy with today’s shorthand for perceived success. If this is how a school’s academic credentials are measured, then I have a problem with the way that we define what ‘academic’ means. While there is certainly still a requirement for young people to have good qualifications, not least to open doors to college and university, the skills that lead to career success have changed, and are continuing to change, significantly. Last year, a World Economic Forum report on the future of the job market picked out the key skills that any workforce will need in the future if it is to be successful. With the growth in AI and technology, those skills included creativity, initiative, problem-solving and resilience. Other qualities that the report mentioned were leadership, emotional intelligence, service orientation and negotiation. Not one of these skills could be seen as purely ‘academic’. However, a school such as Frensham Heights with its equal emphasis on the learning which takes place outside the classroom as well as in it, is somewhere these crucial skills are honed in abundance. There is no doubt that an academic curriculum in the 21st century needs to be flexible and mindful of the changing demands of the world of work. To see the curriculum in purely utilitarian terms - as a set of grades to be achieved - is a mistake. When Michael Gove redesigned GCSEs during his tenure as Education Secretary to make them more ‘rigorous’, he
