A friend recently told me she spent four years of her childhood living as a boy. ‘I hated dresses, cut my hair, gelled it and spiked it,’ she says. ‘From aged eight, I thought I was meant to be a boy. I remember going into a swimming pool changing room in board shorts and the
Spend a night at Woldingham School in Surrey — with its wellness room, indoor tennis dome and a menu offering cod steak with prawns and tarragon, all just an hour’s drive from London — and you may feel like you’re on an upmarket mini-break. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that the number of ‘flexi-boarders’ —
The left is once again turning its guns on private schools ahead of a possible forthcoming election. Scotland’s SNP government has already announced, in its December budget, that it will charge Scottish private schools business rates, while the Labour-affiliated group Labour Against Private Schools (its Twitter handle is @AbolishEton) is seeking to carry a motion
My school owned a boat. And not some dinghy or fibreglass pleasure craft either: Jolie Brise — the name was always, of course, pronounced ‘Jolly Breeze’ — is one of the best-known tall ships in the world, three times winner of the Fastnet race, a pilot cutter so famous that she has a pub named
Stoke Newington school This Hackney school — lovingly known as Stokey School — has a strong reputation for both the creative arts and academia. In 2006, it unveiled its new sixth form, and this year students received record-breaking A-level results, with 83 per cent achieving A*–C grades. In 2002 the school
‘Come on Burghley! That’s it Porter, you can do it!’ It was sports day 2008, and we were winning. Of course we were winning — weeks of tactical diagrams had gone into making sure of it. The runners crossed over the line and a cheer went up from the blue side. ‘YESSSSSSSSSS!’ screamed a gaggle
After all these years its pages smell distinctly fusty and its rusting staples are hanging on by a thread. But there is something about flicking through an old school magazine that jolts the past back into the present in a way nothing else quite can. More than four decades on, there they still are: those
I didn’t know Chris Todd had died until I saw his photo in the newspaper. I hadn’t seen his face for nearly 40 years but he still looked much the same. It was a kind face, decent and dutiful — everything you want from a teacher. I wish I’d known as a schoolboy what I
How is Britain seen by outsiders? What marks us out? Humour, self-deprecation, our changing weather, frequent cups of tea. But there’s something else that foreigners say after a spell here: the UK is a place where couples without children worry about where their unconceived children will go to school. As a Scot, I used to
It’s hard to open a newspaper without spotting a headline about Roedean. One week it’s lessons in Brexit etiquette; the next, phone-free retreats. Days after I meet 51-year-old headmaster Oliver Blond, the Times trumpets: ‘Let homeless eat steak, says Roedean.’ It’s a blustery walk up the drive to the 134-year-old girls’ boarding school, perched on
Unconditional Offers In the last Spectator Schools, Ross Clark wrote about the dangers of ‘unconditional offers’, whereby a university offers a student a place irrespective of their exam results. The topic has come back into the news following this year’s A-level results, with headmasters bemoaning the apathy among students that unconditional
For some, having to put together an article for the school magazine is a chore; another piece of homework to do. For others, it’s an opportunity to write about things that matter to them, and a source of real enjoyment. School magazines certainly carry their own air of nostalgia, as you flick through the pages
