Spectator Life

It is no surprise that a speechwriter and a barrister-turned-politician would think the art of speech-making should be taught in schools. It’s like pig farmers at a barbecue eulogising the nutritional value and superior flavour of pork.  The speechwriter in question is Peter Hyman and the former barrister is Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s presumptive next PM. In serious fields of scholarly inquiry, the goal is to make the complex appear simple. Unfortunately, the field of education sits under the social sciences, which try to make the commonplace sound complicated. This is why making speeches and discussing ideas are dubbed ‘oracy’ and are the Labour party’s new big education idea.

‘D’you know what the acronym MBA stands for?’ The 27 -year-old who asked me this had a deep tan and fluorescent teeth. He may have winked, but the eye twitch was more likely a nervous tic from looking at himself in the mirror so much. I responded with a look of indifference tinged with fear. ‘Married’ – he paused for dramatic effect and demonstratively looked at my wedding ring – ‘but available.’ I felt nauseated.

First Charterhouse, then Winchester – now Westminster. In the past two years alone, three of Britain’s most famous schools have recently turned, or are planning to turn, fully co-educational. How many more boys’ schools will follow?  One popular argument for the change is, as ever, that girls will be a ‘civilising influence’ upon teenage boys – especially in the light of the sexism exposed by the ‘Everyone’s Invited’ scandals. The more that teenage boys learn to study with girls and respect them, the less likely it is such scandals will be repeated. I taught at two traditional schools which turned co-educational in the 1990s, Uppingham and Cranleigh. Then, it was usually a shortage of numbers which triggered the move to take girls.

Exams start on Monday. Thousands of A-level and GCSE pupils will be swotting hard for them right now. Some will do well; others won’t. Knowledge and ability are the two obvious keys to success. But there’s another factor that’s often overlooked: exam technique. Having taught thousands of students of all abilities at several leading schools, I know this is a vital reason why some teenagers are more successful than others: they use the right exam techniques under pressure. So what are these techniques?  First and foremost, arrive early. Exams need a clear head and turning up at the last minute is certain to be stressful.

Every so often, one stumbles across some long-forgotten text that could have been written yesterday. It’s a reminder that often the answers to today’s problems lie in the past. I had one of those moments when I read Lord Baden-Powell’s Rovering to Success. Recently I had another such moment reading about Kurt Hahn’s Six Declines of Modern Youth. He wrote of a widespread decline of self-discipline, a dislocation from the world and a weakened tradition of craftsmanship. All this, and more, rings true. And, God knows, we need to find solutions. Kurt Hahn is not exactly unknown: the German-born educator who later settled in Scotland was the late Duke of Edinburgh’s headmaster at Gordonstoun which Hahn founded together with Lawrence Holt.

The end of term is here and parents up and down the country will be awaiting the arrival of their child's end-of-term report. But I hope they won’t be expecting too many pearls of wisdom from the impersonal emails that will ping into their inboxes shortly.   Ten or a dozen years ago (the exact date varied, school by school), in an act of educational vandalism, handwritten school reports were abolished. Edicts were issued by school ‘senior management teams’ and grudgingly, reluctantly, teachers put their fountain pens and little bottles of Quink back into their desks, never to be taken out again.   The personal touch in the reporting process disappeared with them.

As the end of term approaches parents may be wondering what to buy their child’s teacher for Christmas. It’s the season of goodwill, after all. It’s also a golden opportunity to win a way to Sir or Miss’s heart, so they’ll continue to take good care of little Olivia or Oliver in the new year. The days of apples left on desks are long gone, so what to give teacher might cause some confusion. Money is tight this year, an added complication – although at some of the independent schools where I’ve taught gifts seem to become more extravagant each December. So what kind of presents do we teachers really want? The short answer, especially at the end of a long, tiring term is: ‘Something alcoholic, of course – preferably wine or designer gin.

A glittering TV career, an MBE, various honorary degrees, tens of thousands of TikTok followers and the only person to win the (now cancelled) Rear of the Year award multiple times. There are many accolades that Carol Vorderman has been afforded during her 40-year career, yet few mean more to her than her claim to having possibly taught more people alive in Britain than anyone else. Through books, tapes and online classes, the former Countdown star has – according, at least, to my remedial fag-pack maths – educated more than a million people since the late 1980s. She started when the national curriculum was introduced in 1988 with instructional classes on VHS, and she’s subsequently taught generations of adults and children.