Schools Archives

Has Boris Johnson given up on free schools?

For the founders of the West London Free School, of which I was one, last Thursday should have been a moment of great pride. We gathered in the assembly hall, surrounded by the politicians and officials who’d helped us, to celebrate the school’s tenth anniversary and reflect on what we’d achieved. Not only has the school thrived — it is now part of a growing academy chain — but where we led, others followed. As the first school of its type to be approved by Michael Gove, WLFS showed what a determined group of volunteers could achieve, and there are now more than 600 free schools. Contrary to the predictions of the critics — too many to mention — this is one education policy that seems to have worked.

2 September 2021

Benenden School

Embrace a change to higher education

The pandemic has sparked an entrepreneurial revolution as the business sector has adapted to consumers’ rapidly changing needs, with nearly half a million businesses launched in the UK between March and December last year. This national surge of entrepreneurs — enabled by ongoing technological development, together with a national shortage in practical skills — begs one to question whether the traditional university route will best prepare our young people for their future careers. There will undoubtedly always be an important place for traditional university degrees but a blinkered focus on this as the only viable option for further education will, I believe, disadvantage career and earning potential in the future. Recent statistics are already showing this.

Plum Innovations

Building an Ark of Remote and in-classroom learning

Although there is little scientific proof of the story of Noah’s Ark or the accompanying flood, we are told that building the Ark was no small task and Noah was working to a deadline. When UK schools were told to close classrooms and switch to remote learning back in March last year, many were caught by surprise by being forced to change teaching practices and administrative processes overnight. However many schools thrived under the extraordinary circumstances, continuing to offer the highest standard of teaching to their pupils. Staff and pupils at those schools who excelled during the pandemic were often already familiar with cloud platforms or had been employing remote learning platforms for hybrid learning or blended learning long before the lockdowns.

Fraser Nelson

Books railing against private schools are actually the best marketing for them

When Michael Gove was selling his school reforms a decade ago he was asked to define success. ‘I hope that thanks to the reforms we’ve introduced the next Guardian editor but three will be a comprehensive school boy or girl.’ It was his little joke: that the loudest critics of private schools, the people who rail against the injustice of the whole system, tend to be people who went to these schools. There is a long tradition of books by public schoolboys decrying public schools. The latest is Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England whose author, Richard Beard, went first to Pinewood, a prep school on the Wiltshire/Oxfordshire border, and then the £41,700-a-year Radley College.

Nic Rackow

Zoom schooling sounded like fun – until reality kicked in

I never realised how much I enjoyed the sweaty, overcrowded journey into school until it was replaced with a half-asleep crawl from my bed to my desk, 30 seconds before my first lesson was supposed to start. It’s a routine which most of us students have had to get used to since March last year and it was a massive change. When we were first sent home from school, it wasn’t with a fanfare, but with a bleak mass email and assurances from our teachers that we’d be back after Easter. Our group chats on social media erupted in celebration. It took less than half a day for the excitement to die down as we each realised what the prospect of being locked inside indefinitely actually meant.

Melanie McDonagh

Our school trip: how we sang for our supper

There were a few things that my school — St Mary’s Convent, Arklow — had going for it but as far as I was concerned, the choir trumped most other activities. That was on account of the nun in charge, Sister Agnes, who had been, we had heard, a professional singer before she entered the convent. She was brisk, upright, her habit immaculate, with beady blue eyes and the kind of focus that set her apart even in the convent. Her choir was legendary, at least in our circle. We won every competition we entered, and we entered lots: Dublin, provincial music festivals, Llandudno in Wales. Not winning would have been a source of collective shame, letting down past generations of choristers. But this time we went further, to Belgium, for a European schools competition.

Cristina Koppel

Our Sputnik moment: it’s time to revolutionise old teaching methods

Teaching methods today are no longer appropriate. The reasons are twofold. First, schools do not teach children how to think, they teach them how to parrot back the right answers. Second, exams define children’s futures. They tell them who they are, what jobs they can get and what their prospects in life will be. With such a narrow path to success, and deprived of cultivated reasoning skills, it’s little wonder that so many pupils are anxious and depressed. How did we end up here? The chemist and Nobel laureate (and inventor of the PCR test for Covid) Kary Mullis believed that schools today are a consequence of the space race. ‘In 1957 the Russians launched the space race by putting Sputnik into orbit around the Earth,’ he wrote.

Michael Spitzer

Top notes: why does music make you cleverer?

Music is far older than language. The FOXP2 gene associated with speech has been recovered from Neanderthal fossils, yet rhythm and melody have been around for millions of years before that, as attested by the fossils of chirping crickets and singing birds. Sapiens evolved on the ape line, and our songs evolved from the vocalisations of non-human primates. One of the traits, however, which sets us apart from our chimp cousins (with whom we share 98 per cent of our genetic material) is that we continue to learn, develop and mature far beyond infancy. Humans may well be born with a musical instinct, yet music training changes the structure of our brains. A baby, as well as an adult with no musical training, processes music through the right side of the brain, which deals with emotion.

Dorothy MacGinty

I banned mobiles. Should other heads?

In September 2018, I made the decision to ban mobile phones during the academic day at the school where I am head teacher in Scotland. I’m pretty sure we were the first British school to make this leap of faith. It made headlines across the country. How would everyone react? I knew that I needed to explain the thinking behind the decision to convince doubters and encourage support. It wouldn’t be a popular decision, so it was with a churning stomach that I rose to address the assembled pupils, having just pressed ‘send’ on a parent-body email. Fast-forward to August 2021 and the banning of mobile phones is now part of the national narrative. The Department for Education is spearheading a proposal that every school might be forced to adopt.

Kat Pierce

Love letters: why has the alphabet fallen out of fashion?

Last term I invigilated a reading examination at a fee-paying prep school where I work as a supply teacher. About five minutes in, a little girl called Maisie raised her hand. She looked downcast. ‘Yes Maisie?’ She pointed, unspeaking, at the first question. ‘Shall I read it to you?’ She nodded. I read it. ‘Does that make sense?’ She shook her head. ‘Well,’ I began, stalling, as I tried to work out which bit was confusing for her, ‘why don’t you have another look at the text? The answers will be there in the story.’ She mumbled something. ‘What’s that?’ She mumbled again, and this time I heard her: ‘I can’t read.’ Maisie is nine. She has been at this school since she was five.

The Spectator

The Oxbridge Files. Which schools get the most pupils in?

Oxford and Cambridge have released figures showing how many offers they gave to pupils from schools in the 2020 UCAS application cycle. We have combined the figures in this table. It shows how well state grammars and sixth-form colleges compete with independent schools. Over the years, both universities have roughly doubled the proportion of pupils from state schools: 67 per cent, up from 52 per cent in 2000. Of the 80 schools, 35 are independent, 22 grammar, 15 sixth-form colleges, seven comprehensives or academies, and one is a further education college. (Schools are ranked by offers received, then by offer-to-application ratio. If schools received fewer than three offers from one university, this number has been discounted due to UCAS’s disclosure control.

Miranda Morrison

How to win the Maths Challenge

Simon Singh, founder of the Good Thinking Society and author of The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, believes that parents should ferociously ‘lobby their children’s schools’ if they still don’t run the annual Maths Challenge. For those not familiar with it, the Maths Challenge is a phenomenally well-organised competition run by the United Kingdom Mathematics Trust (UKMT). It doesn’t cost much to enter — £13 for ten papers (for ten pupils) — and is a massive opportunity for children from all backgrounds. UKMT, a charity founded in 1996, aims to ‘advance the education of young people in mathematics’. It works with schools and volunteers to arrange junior, intermediate and senior challenges.

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

How Harris Westminster conquered Oxbridge

Westminster School is being kept on its toes by its partner sixth-form college round the corner, Harris Westminster. There’s no imminent threat yet, in the ‘How many did you get into Oxbridge?’ stakes: last year, Westminster (private, £10,497 per term for day sixth-formers) got 71 of its pupils into Oxbridge, and Harris Westminster (state, £0 per term) got 36 in from a cohort about twice the size. But watch those Oxbridge statistics draw closer to each other in the next few years, as Harris Westminster’s highly motivated and excellently taught students continue to soar, and Oxbridge colleges become ever more nervous of offering places to the (as they see it) over-entitled and over-advantaged privately educated middle classes.

William Cook

The secrets to brilliant teaching

‘Why not be a teacher?’ asks Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s great play A Man for All Seasons. ‘You’d be a fine teacher, perhaps a great one.’ ‘If I was, who would know it?’ says Richard Rich, the young man who betrays him. ‘You, your pupils, your friends — God,’ says More. ‘Not a bad public, that.’ I’ve been thinking about those lines a lot since the finest teacher I ever knew, Audrey Judge, died. Audrey was 93. The last time I saw her was before Covid. She died of cancer during lockdown. She taught art at Haberdashers’ Aske’s in New Cross — formerly a state grammar school, now a state academy. She could have been a great artist. Instead she became a great teacher.

Anthony Seldon

Have we let exams become too important in shaping schools?

I was working in my study at Brighton College one summer term afternoon when my PA banged on the door: someone at The Spectator wanted to speak to me urgently. An animated editor burst on the line, audibly back from a very good lunch, barking: ‘What’s all this you’re saying about exams and tests squeezing scholarship and rounded learning out of schools?’ ‘Sitting exams in rows in sports halls has little bearing on what school pupils will ever do later in life,’ I spluttered, my fumbled response sufficient for him to commission an article ‘by tomorrow’.

The Spectator

School portraits: a snapshot of four notable schools | September 2021

Brampton manor academy This co-educational state school in Newham, east London, is setting the standard for the academies programme. With hundreds of high-achieving pupils, its selective sixth-form, which opened in 2012, has attracted attention for its stand-out Oxbridge achievements. This summer, 55 pupils secured Oxbridge places, beating Eton for the first time. The sixth-form receives around 3,000 applications for about 300 places per year, while some two out of three pupils are eligible for free school meals. One pupil puts its high achievement rates down to discipline, highlighting the rules around punctuality (there’s detention if you’re late) and a strict uniform code.

Peter Hitchens

The golden age of the grammar schools

Some lucky parents have already solved their school and university problems. They have managed to insert their young into state grammar schools. If all goes according to plan, they will need to pay no gigantic fees, their sons and daughters will be educated to what at least looks like a high standard, in orderly classrooms — and an increasingly anti-middle-class Oxbridge will not be prejudiced against them when they apply. I envy them, having myself spent the GDP of a small Latin American country on private education over the past three decades, with variable results. But I also increasingly wish it were not so.

22 June 2021

Katy Balls

Who’s being hurt by ‘white privilege’?

14 min listen

While Labour are shuffling people round yet again.. 'There needs to be a change in messaging from the leader's office, because otherwise it just looks like he's rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.' - Isabel HardmanAnd the DUP are getting ready to welcome in their third leader in less than a month... 'Donaldson is actually in a much stronger position this time round, than if he had won by one vote last time round.' - James Forsyth A new report seems to show that in education, the group seemingly most negatively affected by the idea of 'white privilege' are white, working class children. 'I've been involved in the social mobility foundation for quite some time and there's no doubt that the demographic most missing in these programs is white, working class.

4 June 2021

James Forsyth

Have we hit peak graduate?

The Tory party has turned sharply against the idea of ever larger numbers going to university. The reasons for this are both economic and political, I say in the Times today. On the economic front, the taxpayer is bearing more of the cost of the expansion of higher education than expected — the government estimates that it will have to write off 53 per cent of the value of student loans issued last year — and there is a belief that the lack of funding for technical education is contributing to the UK’s skills and productivity problems. Politically, the issue is that graduates tend not to vote Tory Politically, the issue is that graduates tend not to vote Tory. At the last election, the Tories beat Labour by 44 per cent to 32 per cent.

4 May 2021

Alexa Rendell

Why I picked an apprenticeship over a politics degree

I’d always wanted to work in the media but had no idea how to get there. I would spend hours during sixth form trawling the pages of impressive journalists on Wikipedia, desperately trying to get some sense of what was required. My conclusion? An Oxbridge education tied most of them together. Inspired, I applied to various top universities. After getting a handful of offers, I picked a politics course at a leading institution, the University of Warwick. In the meantime, I started getting as much work experience as possible. The more I did, however, the more I realised that there were actually alternative paths into the industry. So many of the young journos I met weren’t graduates. Their route had been the government’s apprenticeship scheme.

14 March 2021

Eleanor Doughty

The misunderstood motto of Rishi Sunak’s old school

The first thing that Dr Tim Hands, headmaster of Winchester College, would like to clear up is his school’s world-famous motto, ‘Manners maketh man’. Whenever a Wykehamist makes the papers, this ancient phrase is wheeled out, referring to his (in)decent manners. But this isn’t quite right, says Hands. Two pieces of stained glass — one formerly in Bradford Peverell church near Dorchester, and another in the Warden’s Lodgings at New College Oxford (founded by Winchester’s founder Bishop William of Wykeham) — read ‘Manner maketh man’. This, says Hands, is the origin for the school’s motto. ‘“Manner” means what you are and what you do — not how you fold your handkerchief.

11 March 2021

Alicia Munckton

I never considered sending my daughter to boarding school – until the pandemic hit

Last summer, we joined the sharp-elbowed ‘exodus’ that saw demand for places at independent schools increase by up to 30 per cent. We were guilty, according to the Observer, of creating ‘an even larger divide between affluent and disadvantaged pupils’. Not to be out (middle) classed, we went one better, enrolling our 15-year-old daughter as a boarder. Home for the holidays, she so animatedly regaled us with her experiences that we might have smugly congratulated ourselves on our selfless financial sacrifice were it not for one qualification: ‘But I’d rather be here, with you.’ We’d never countenanced boarding.

The Spectator

The Oxbridge files: which schools get the most offers?

Oxford and Cambridge have released figures showing how many offers they gave to pupils from various schools last year. We have combined the figures in this table below. It shows how well state grammars and sixth-form colleges now compete with Britain’s finest independent schools. Over the years, both universities have roughly doubled the proportion of pupils from state schools: it now stands at 60 per cent, up from 50 per cent in 2000. This is reflective of which schools get the best A-level results. Of the 100 schools below, 48 are independent, 23 are grammar, 19 are sixth-form colleges, 7 are comprehensives or academies and 3 are further education colleges.

Samuel Elliott

What my misspent youth taught me about handling ‘problem’ children

I’m teaching a boy named Drayton. He’s from a typical Coventry family. I should know. I went to school in ‘Cov’. It seems like only the day before yesterday I was hopping the fence with Drayton’s older brother to go to KFC. But that was ten years ago. These days, Drayton orders an Uber Eats to be delivered through the palisade bars of the steel fence. And I’m the one in authority who is supposed to be reining him in. ‘Easy, Bossman. What we doing today?’ is how he addresses me as he enters my classroom. ‘Now, now, Drayton. It’s Sir, to you,’ I say. ‘Yeah, dat’s calm, innit.’ Which means that’s OK with him. He asks me for a pen, then a pencil and finally a ruler as he does his work.

The Spectator

What did Spectator writers really get up to at school?

Rod Liddle If you leave a Bunsen burner on for about ten minutes, then quickly put the rubber pipe over a water tap and turn it on full, you get a small explosion and a scalding stream of water to be directed at a boy called Harris. Similarly, if you attach crocodile clips to Harris’s jacket and then wire it up to a power source, it makes him jump about a lot. I loved physics lessons. Jeremy Clarke Snow in the playground. The tall caped figure of the headmaster appeared on a short outside staircase — a rare balcony appearance of a benign, reclusive demigod. One long-distance snowball among the flying hundreds, arcing higher than the rest, travelling through the air in slow time, apparently laser guided, is fixed in the memory of all who saw it.

Cindy Yu

A tiger mum’s recipe for academic success

You might have seen ‘Asian dad’ memes on the internet, poking fun at the famously high expectations of fathers from my part of the world. ‘You Asian, not B-sian,’ he says in one version. Or: ‘After homework, you can play… the piano.’ My personal favourite is a picture of a crying Chinese girl saying: ‘I only got 99 per cent in test. What do I tell my parents?’ Her father’s reply: ‘What parents?’ Much of Asian parenting is laser-targeted at getting into a top-tier university: Peking or Tsinghua would do in China; Ivy League or Oxbridge abroad.

Harry Mount

Six rules for picking the wokest school

One of the great advantages private schools offer is an ability to change with the times. While some hold on to traditional notions, many are adapting nimbly to the new woke world — expunging their problematic historical figures and educating pupils in the new equivalent of U and Non-U. But how do parents ensure their little treasures aren’t triggered and are always confined to the safest of spaces? Here, then, is our guide to the wokest schools. Rule one: lots of schools were woke decades ago At my alma mater, Westminster, the history curriculum was pretty much decolonialised in the 1970s by left-wing teachers.

Clarissa Farr

Mixed blessing: do single-sex schools have a future?

If you were starting with a blank screen to design an education system today, it seems unlikely that you would think of creating single-sex schools, any more than you would single-sex professions or single-sex restaurants. Education for life is something we do together, like working or eating. Their existence is explained by the fact that when the first were established, most girls didn’t go to school. William of Wykeham founded Winchester in 1382 for ‘poore scholars’ who would be boys — that was obvious. Dean John Colet founded St Paul’s School in 1509, taking advice from Erasmus of Rotterdam and putting the management of the 153 scholars ‘from all nacions and all countres indifferently’ into the hands of the Mercers’ Company.

The Spectator

Which instrument should I play?

Thinking about taking up a musical instrument, but unsure where to start? Whether you have amazing musical abilities or not one iota, try our handy quiz to find out what’s right for you, from tissue paper and comb to saxophone.