‘We will have to look at how we are doing things. Will we even be doing prep?’ So spoke Eve Jardine-Young, principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, this summer, galvanised to speak out by the alarming increase in depression among teenagers. It was brave of her even to question the need for prep: in our age of competitive league tables, it seems heresy to suggest any kind of decrease in daily output from students.
But she is right to question it, and I hope her tentative question will soon be transformed into an untentative statement: prep should not be routinely given, and it should only be given if there’s a compelling reason for doing so. This would get rid of the vast majority of prep that children are set at the moment. The time and agony involved in ploughing through evening prep should never be disproportionate to the educational advantage it brings.
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