Spectator schools

Thursday

Ross Clark

Wealthier by degree

It is not a great advert for university when the universities minister says he is not especially bothered whether his own children go or not. ‘The days of degree or bust are long gone,’ Jo Johnson told the Sunday Times recently. ‘There are alternative ways into the workforce these days. Absolutely I would say to my own kids to consider them.’ But hasn’t he got it the wrong way round? Is it not the case that a degree is more essential now than ever? That the chances of getting a good job without one have greatly diminished since a generation ago, when East End barrow boys went straight into the

William Cook

A sorry state of play

The link between a healthy mind and a healthy body was understood by Juvenal — but he didn’t have to raise two kids in our brave new world of social media and fast food. We’ve all seen the stats, so there’s no need to repeat them. But as snacks replace square meals and the virtual world replaces the real one, our children are becoming increasingly sedentary and unhealthy. For parents of school-age children, sport has never been more important. But making sure kids get a good sporting education is no easy matter — and I should know. In my experience as a parent (and briefly as a teacher), sport in

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

How to conquer America

Teenagers, in my experience, divide into the unmotivated and the motivated sort. You can spot the symptoms: given a free day, the unmotivated one will go out to buy a new phone charger, while the motivated one will go on an advanced sailing course. If you’re the unmotivated sort, read no further. This piece is not for you. You have as little chance of getting a place at an American university as my lazy dog does of winning Crufts. And when I say motivated, forget the Oxbridge level of motivation. Doing well in A-levels, filling in a Ucas form, managing to cook up a personal statement claiming to be passionate

Harry Mount

Eat, pray, learn

My greatest spiritual moment this year came in Eton College Chapel. I was there for Evensong with a friend who’s an English master at the school. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the congregation belted out Verdi’s ‘Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’ — in English. Part of the pleasure came from the shock of hearing 1,300 upper-middle-class schoolboys imitating Hebrew slaves singing a lament about their Babylonian captivity in 500 BC. But it was also the sheer joy of the music in Henry VI’s chapel, a triumph of the Perpendicular Gothic. In quieter moments during the service, I examined the 15th century wall paintings, which are splendid, Flemish-style pictures of miracles of the Virgin

Rhiannon Williams

Off days

The modern school is, unsurprisingly, a very different place to even ten years ago — largely thanks to the rise of technology. Where corridors once rang with the sound of laughter, they now buzz with the ping, ping, ping of WhatsApps, Snapchats and texts as students message each other in an ever-revolving cycle of communication. While the leisurely use of smartphones in the classroom is a universal no-no, some schools have taken matters into their own hands to focus pupils’ minds and improve their performance by issuing blanket digital detoxes across the board. But are they right to do so? In January, headmaster Gregg Davies made headlines with his decision

The Spectator

School portraits | 7 September 2017

  Walhampton School   The ethos at this prep school on the edge of Hampshire’s New Forest is very much one of living life to the full; history lessons involve re-enactments of the Battle of Hastings on horseback or the Battle of Trafalgar on a lake. Every year pupils go to ‘camp’ for a week at the end of the summer term; activities include day trips to RNLI stations, visits to local historical sites and a week on the Isle of Mull. Horse riding is also part of the curriculum, with a stable-full of ponies available for lessons. Walhampton describes itself as encompassing the ‘Swallows and Amazons spirit’, and aside

Eleanor Doughty

Living the dream

To enter Wellington College, in Crowthorne, Berkshire, is as if to arrive at a stately home that’s open to the public. There are the smart signposts, the security box, the manicured lawns (with the requisite ‘keep off the grass’ signs). When I visit, it is the summer holidays, so there are no children littering the playing fields. Instead, the mower keeps on mowing, and the buildings enjoy their last bit of peace and quiet before term starts. But that is where the stately similarities end. Wellington’s headmaster, Julian Thomas, is not of that ilk, he is proud to say. Thomas, 50, the former head of Caterham School in Surrey, was

The Spectator

School report | 7 September 2017

New drive to promote ‘British values’ in schools The recently appointed Ofsted chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, has vowed to press ahead with the ‘active promotion of fundamental British values’ in schools. Speaking to an audience at Wellington College, Ms Spielman said that the terror attacks in London and Manchester had brought into ‘stark relief’ the scale of the threat posed by extremism in Britain. It was essential that the country’s children were equipped with the ‘knowledge and resilience’ required to confront the violent rhetoric peddled by those who ‘put hatred in their hearts and poison in their minds’, she said. In 2014, the Department for Education published guidelines on promoting

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Learning? It’s a walk in the park

A hot, still day in Middlesbrough in early July 1970, the junior school summer term running down like an unplugged fan. Coming up soon would be the 11-plus, although we didn’t know it then and wouldn’t know it until the morning before the exam. All we knew or cared that fragrant, baking month was that soon we’d be free for six weeks. I think the teachers felt the same way. They were dilatory and listless, indulgent of our misbehaviour, the usual insistence upon discipline melting away in the heat. Why bother? That’s what the teachers must have thought. Why cram anything more into them with the holidays coming up? That

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Editor’s Letter | 7 September 2017

We live in an age where technology surrounds us almost all of the time. In the Western world, smartphones are omnipresent, and information is available at the press of a button. But how is this affecting schoolchildren — and how can schools deal with both the problems and the benefits that modern technology brings? In our cover piece, Rhiannon Williams takes a look at how various schools are handling technology, and reports that a ban on smartphones may not always be the answer. While technology is playing an increasingly large part in pupils’ lives, sport is still important. William Cook says that it shouldn’t all be about elite athletes. But

Thursday

David Turner

Does it always pay to switch?

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 started on the sport, and I was away — the move worked well.’ Walters, who runs IW Schooling Consultants, has used her own life lesson to advise clients. She quotes a recent example of a girl who came from abroad to study at a girls’ boarding school in a London suburb, only to find that,

Will Brown

Put him down for Doon

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 school for boys aged 12 to 18, is probably India’s most elite institution. A short walk away from the school’s main gate, children live in slums plagued by dengue fever. But here you’ll find a campus which last year won a Unesco award for cultural heritage conservation, one equipped with its very own hospital. Although

Robert Peal

Our island story is for everyone

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 few decades, this ethnic diversity has been used as an argument against the teaching of national history. ‘What relevance do Boudicca and Benjamin Disraeli have to multi-ethnic pupils in modern Britain?’ it is asked. Well, quite a lot, I answer. So far this year, those Year 9 pupils have learnt about the birth of the

James Delingpole James Delingpole

A slashed seat? How terribly oiky

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 to such an establishment, I feel quite privileged to have been there. It was horrible but it was endurable and it was very, very memorable. Experience with a capital ‘E’. One thing you notice under such conditions is how incredibly appreciative you become of every creature comfort. On the rare occasions when they accidentally gave

The Spectator

School portraits | 16 March 2017

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 most common grade. The school says it is living proof that ‘co-education works’. Brighton girls do better in their exams than those at local single-sex schools. Sports are a big draw, too: Brighton is one of Britain’s top six schools for rugby with a rugby scholarship and, more surprisingly, a girls’ cricket scholarship. The

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Needle time

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 day walking round the office with a paperclip holding his trousers up. The next day he came in and told us he had bought a new pair. Had nobody taught this young man to sew on a button? It’s the sort of simple task that everyone should know how to do. It takes 20 minutes

Constance Watson

Pssst… wanna get your kid into Eton?

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 the Robin to the private sector’s Batman. The Yoko to Eton’s John or the Sonny to Cheltenham Ladies’ Cher. Are you keen for your son or daughter to get into one of the best prep schools in the land? Do you toss and turn in torment each night at the infinite options? If so, you

Henry Jeffreys

Flunking the interview

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 funeral oration by John Hannah’s character in Four Weddings and a Funeral where he describes his deceased partner, played by Simon Callow, as ‘so very fat and very rude’. So I did something you should never ever do in an interview: I tried to be funny. ‘Rude — my friends would describe me as rude,’

Mark Palmer

They can’t handle the truth

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 organises a great number of parents’ nights. Hoping it might be the latter, I consulted a friend called Lucy, a teacher at a primary near Guildford in Surrey. She said it was quite normal to have at least one parents’ night per term, plus two or even three ‘parents’ workshops’. These workshops are dedicated to

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

You’ve got to have faith

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 will often find these words: ‘If applicants share the same address point (for example, if they live in the same block of flats), priority will be given to those who live closest to the ground floor and then by ascending flat-number order.’ That detail gives a hint of the desperation of these schools to seem