School’s out – but let’s still finish well

I visited a school last week with my Governor’s ‘hat’ on and was impressed to see how far the online teaching had progressed. If ever there was an incentive to enable reluctant staff to master computing skills, this crisis has created the prefect storm. As a Head said to me, ‘Every crisis has its uses!’ In fact, despite the unprecedented times, I am pleased to note that humour is continuing to prevail. Another Head mentioned that a parent had just been in to the school and had remarked to the receptionist: ‘The visitors’ car park is rather empty. Is there something I’m missing?’ Missing indeed!

School ‘graduation’ ceremonies

It’s another kind of ‘missing’ that worries me. Many of our pupils who are in the final year of their schooling will now have had their last day in school. Whilst no doubt a cause of rejoicing for the majority, it will before long be a reason for much sadness. I never experienced the modern preference for school ‘graduation’ celebrations when I left school in the mid-1970s, but we did have ways of saying goodbye to our peers. I recall several pranks, one involving removing my Housemaster’s car and replacing it with a ‘dinky toy’ replica. Another involved turning all the chairs around in the speech day marquee. No doubt all very tiresome for the staff who had to rush round putting everything back to where it belonged, but they built shared memories. We enjoyed, too, the official end of year functions, meals, photos and signing of autograph books.

Finishing well

Today the celebrations might be more spectacular – balls, games, dinners and formal speeches together with special T-shirts or sweatshirts – but whatever the goings-on they form part of leaving well and transition. I am, thus, concerned that the present crisis might have already made such leave-taking all but impossible. Is this always going to be known as the ‘crisis generation’ which didn’t do final exams and wasn’t able to leave properly? One Head I spoke to about this remarked wryly, but with real pathos, that he had heard of a fee-paying school which recognised it might struggle to charge school fees for the summer term but was considering charging £4,000 a head to all the leavers wanting to attend the graduation ball! It might appear to be a small matter in view of the unprecedented times in which we find ourselves, but I do hope that schools will give some thought in due course as to how to enable their pupils to leave well.

Closure

I was, therefore, heartened to hear of a rural school in East Anglia which had called the leavers together for a final, open-air, assembly. It was a relatively brief affair but had finished, with all involved the regulation two metres apart, singing Blake’s ‘Jerusalem‘ at such a pitch that it was heard some distance away in the local town centre. Other schools, too, had gathered their final year pupils to listen to speeches from their Head prefects and senior staff and then to close with prayer and an act of collective worship – usually the singing of a well-known hymn. Poignant and emotional, yes, but also occasions which will have enabled ‘closure’ to begin. I trust that all schools, whatever the next few weeks and months contain, will consider how best to enable such endings to be positive beginnings for the next chapter in their leaving pupils’ lives.

For such a time as this

I was privileged this past week to be a guest on United Christian Broadcasters’ UCB1 radio programme, Friday Round Up. This was an opportunity to comment on some of the week’s news items and to relate them, where appropriate, to my experience and also to the work of TISCA, The Independent Schools Christian Alliance (of which I am General Secretary).

Radio broadcast

Vicky Gibbens was the Presenter of the programme and we were able to comment on news items ranging from public exam league tables to Wayne Rooney and gambling’s sponsorship of sport, from the full bursary offered to a young Ugandan boy, Julius, to Greta Thunberg and climate change activism, from re-usable coffee cups to a smartphone app for parents to track their children. I enjoyed the ‘banter’, the opportunity to talk about TCKs (third culture kids) and also the chance to say something of TISCA’s work in reaching out in fellowship to Christian Heads, Chaplains, Teachers and Support Staff. One thing in particular, however, stood out for me.

Word for Today

My wife and I have been supporters of UCB since the 1990s. We have made use of their superb daily devotion, Word for Today, since that time when we were teaching at Glenalmond College in Scotland and then at Dean Close School, Cheltenham. It was in the late 1990s, whilst a Deputy Head at Dean Close and applying for Headships, that a UCB devotion spoke to us as a family, and not for the first time. I had applied for several posts, and been interviewed a number of times, but without being appointed as a Head. A friend of ours (who was to become the General Secretary of TISCA) directed me to an advert for Hebron School, Ooty, in south India. This friend wondered if I’d be interested in teaching and serving overseas. As someone who had been brought up in Africa, I warmed to the idea and was somewhat surprised that my mono-cultural wife was even interested!

I duly applied to be Principal of Hebron School in India but heard nothing for many weeks. On the same day, but separately, my wife (Rosalyn) and eldest daughter (Alix) were struck by the Bible passage for consideration in Word for Today that day: Humble yourselves, then, under God’s mighty hand, so that he will lift you up in his own good time 1 Peter 5:6 GNT. Rosalyn and Alix came to me and said that they believed this was God’s word for me at that time. Very shortly afterwards, Hebron got in touch and the process began for our move to India in 2000.

God’s own good time

I believe that this was indeed God’s ‘own good time’ for us. More than that, however, it was soon to be UCB’s time, too. We traveled to India with a UCB cassette tape which had been produced as part of the radio station’s drive to gain a license to broadcast freely in the UK. The song on the cassette tape spoke to us as well as to UCB (which received its analogue license a little later): ‘For such a time as this‘ (a text from the Book of Esther), sung by Wayne Watson. The chorus in the song runs as follows –

For such a time as this

I was placed upon the earth

To hear the voice of God

And do His will

Whatever it is

Several times in my life I have reflected on this. We can desire something with all of our hearts – we can even pray for it to be God’s will for us – but it’s only in His time that we are equipped, and remaining reliant on His strength, launched into new beginnings of His choosing. What is it you desire at present? Take heart from a concluding verse in the song:

Can’t change what’s happened till now

But we can change what will be

By living in holiness

That the world will see Jesus

A New Year and an Old Story in schools

‘And so this is Christmas, And what have you done? Another year over, And a new one just begun…’ (John Lennon)

It’s time to ‘bash’ the independent schools again: as ever last year we have had the attack on charitable status (again), the criticism of elitism and places at Oxbridge (again and again) and now, as we enter the New Year, too many private schools are apparently offering ‘easier’ IGCSEs rather than the ‘tougher’, newly reformed, GCSEs. Bah! Humbug!

‘Bashing’ independent schools – again and again

It always strikes me as amazing that with fewer than 10% of the UK school population in independent schools, we seem to attract 90% of the Press attention. We are meant to be a Nation which values ‘the little man’, privatisation, democracy and freedoms – individual and collective – and yet somehow when the word ‘education’ or ‘school’ is combined with ‘private’ or ‘independent’ the blood boils, the prejudices rise and ignorance abounds!

We applaud competition on the High Street and online, we allow people to choose between a range of supermarkets for their weekly shopping without comment and, unless you’re the Home Secretary enjoying a hard-earned family holiday overseas, we value being able to choose a whole range of exciting holiday destinations. When it comes to recognising those families who scrimp and save, however, make sacrifices and hard choices in education – even paying twice for the privilege of schooling – all of a sudden we get onto our self-righteous hobby horses.

Choosing where we might be most effective

The arguments are well rehearsed and clearly made but too many people choose to close their ears and trot out the same old invective against those of us who dare to choose an independent school for our children or, what’s almost worse, deign to work in one. The latter criticism is easily refuted, I feel. When as a 17-year-old I spoke to my Housemaster about being a teacher (yes, I went to an independent boarding school – paid for by working class parents who both left school at 14 years and who sacrificed home ownership, fancy cars and expensive holidays), he wisely suggested I consider where I might be most effective. Having only ever been in private schools myself, I told my Housemaster that I felt I should teach in the State sector. He didn’t try and dissuade me but he also knew me well enough to believe I’d be most influential, happiest and fulfilled in a setting I understood best. At the time of our conversation in the 1970s there was much upheaval in the maintained schools and many teachers were no longer offering to help with sport and extra-curricular activities – aspects of holistic schooling which I value highly. Much has changed in State (and private) schools today, of course, but the advice I received remains valid: choose a school setting where you can best use your talents to enhance the lives of the pupils and, indeed, the colleagues around you.

IGCSEs – the easy option?

And so what of the latest attack on schools which choose IGCSEs? The critics forget that some State schools choose them before the Government decided not to include them in annual exam statistics. They also forget that most independent schools chose them not because they were easier but because they were harder and prepared pupils better for the rigours of A level. Many IGCSES, being international in focus, have a broader curriculum to master. Julie Robinson, the independent schools’ council (ISC) general secretary, puts it succinctly: ‘Schools in the independent sector choose the subject qualifications their pupils sit based on the intrinsic educational quality of the course content. They have a responsibility to ensure pupils are fully prepared for their next steps in life, achieving qualifications that are well-respected and valued by universities and employers…Historically, independent schools opted for IGCSEs due to their rigour and reliability compared with GCSEs, before the introduction of recent reforms, which are still being rolled out’.

Contribution to the UK economy

Others, much more eloquent than me, have made the case for independent schools retaining their educational charitable status – the partnership with local State schools, clubs, societies and community projects speak volumes for their real world ethos – but for those who listen only to economics one statistic stands out: the annual saving to the UK tax payer through the education of children and young people in the independent sector is approximately £3.5 billion. (Please note that if independent schools are drummed out of existence then these pupils will need State educating…) Moreover, independent schools contributed £11.6 billion to the UK economy in 2017 and supported 257,000 jobs. (Figures such as these can be confirmed via the ISC website and RSAcademics, a specialist educational consultancy which works across the State and independent sectors.)

I conclude where I started, with some lyrics from John Lennon’s ‘And so this is Christmas’, and the hope that the New Year is indeed a good one in which we find more to unite than to divide ourselves across the whole of education:

And so happy Christmas, For black and for white, For yellow and red ones, Let’s stop all the fight