Talking heads: Roedean’s Oliver Blond on etiquette lessons and luxury boarding houses

It’s hard to open a newspaper without spotting a headline about Roedean. One week it’s lessons in Brexit etiquette; the next, phone-free retreats. Days after I meet 51-year-old headmaster Oliver Blond, the Times trumpets: ‘Let homeless eat steak, says Roedean.’

It’s a blustery walk up the drive to the 134-year-old girls’ boarding school, perched on the South Downs overlooking Brighton Marina. Girls stream through the corridors excitedly. There’s a whoop here, a cheer there — not long to go until the end of term.

In his office I find Blond in an armchair. He took up teaching following a degree in English and philosophy from the University of Essex, having been educated at a grammar school in the north-west. After graduating, he had two options: ‘A PGCE at Cambridge or an MPhil at Oxford. At that point I said, I love the academia but I want to have a practical impact as well.’ Cambridge it was, and then a succession of schools in Essex and in London, where he was deputy head at North London Collegiate School. In 2006 he became headmaster of Henrietta Barnett School, a grammar in Hampstead Garden Suburb which is the top-performing state school in the country. Seven years later, Roedean called.

His last three schools have been girls’ schools. ‘They are incredibly empowering places,’ he says. ‘They tend to have few rules because they’re peopled by self-motivated, dynamic children, and it creates an atmosphere which is inspiring… It seemed to me a profoundly positive educational model.’

The three schools were all founded by pioneering Victorian women. North London Collegiate, established in 1850 as one of the first girls’ day schools, ‘set the model — it was one of the schools doing battle for women to be recognised for their academia’.