When Isobel Walters guides parents through the process of switching a child’s school, she speaks from first-hand experience. In the 1990s she stayed at her first independent senior school for only eight weeks before changing to another. ‘The second school was just as academic, but it focused a lot more on sport,’ she says. ‘I
A near-perfect rendition of Schubert’s ‘Impromptus’ rings out of the music room’s colonial-era windows, the sound carrying all through the school’s pristine grounds. Even in India, a country famed for its sharp inequalities, there are few places where privilege is so obvious. Set in the foothills of the Himalayas, the Doon School, a private boarding
Iam a teacher in a state secondary school in west London where the ethnic diversity of the pupils is remarkable. My current Year 9 class, for example, includes pupils with parents from Trinidad, Ireland, Turkey, French Guina, Algeria, Yemen, Italy, France, Bosnia, Albania, India, Germany, Iceland, Portugal, Zanzibar, Lebanon, America, and Spain. Over the past
The prep school I went to in the 1970s had changed little since the 1940s. Lumpy mattresses, barely edible food, harsh discipline. It’s why we spent our every day there dreaming of escape; and why we nicknamed it Colditz. Not that I’m complaining. Though no mother now would dream of sending her eight-year old boy
Brighton College As a mixed independent school with pupils aged 3–18, Brighton College covers the full spectrum of students. With such a wide remit, you might expect areas where it falls down, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In 2016, every GCSE exam sat (all 2,082 of them), was passed, with A*
The intern stood up from his desk and the button popped off his trousers. He walked over to me and asked what he should do. I suggested he stitch it back on. He said he didn’t know how, so I offered to do it for him – but he declined. Instead, he spent the whole
British education has never been so competitive. Our system, particularly the private sector, is a constant source of fascination and is renowned the world over — even though it educates only 7 per cent of UK children. But the current competition for places has borne a new industry, usually labelled ‘education consultancy.’ Consider education consultants
I still get a hot flush of embarrassment when I recall my first interview. It was for a summer job at Selfridges in London when I was 17. The lady from personnel asked me how my friends would describe me. Maybe it was the heat or nerves but all I could think of was the
Every now and again I ask my daughter, who is a primary school teacher, if she is free for a curry after work. And almost always she replies that she can’t, as she has a ‘parents’ night’. Now, either she has become lazy in her excuses for not wanting to see me, or her school
Of all the reasons for choosing to live in a ground-floor flat rather than a first-floor one, it might not occur to you that your choice could be the game-changing clincher in your child’s educational prospects — but so it is. In the terrifying admissions criteria for Britain’s oversubscribed faith and church primary schools, you
As careers for Oxford Union-debating PPE graduates go, Shaun Fenton’s has not been wholly orthodox. Leaving Keble College in 1992, he took up a job with what is now Deloitte and trained as a chartered accountant. So far, so ordinary. But it was on a trip back to his old school, Haberdashers’ Askes’ in Elstree,
CHINESE SCHOOL IS A FIRST IN EUROPE Europe’s first bilingual English-Chinese school is due to open in London this September. Professor Hugo de Burgh, a leading authority on China, will be the chairman of Kensington Wade School and has been instrumental in its founding. He says the benefits for pupils will be numerous. Yes,
One of the huge benefits of the British education system is the sheer number of alternatives on offer. But when it comes to choosing a school for your child, the choice can be overwhelming. In our cover piece on page 8, Ysenda Maxtone Graham looks at Britain’s faith primary schools, which could be a sensible
