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The best of the best

Top boys’ boarding schools by A-level results Rank % A/B School Day fees Board fees No. pupils 1 99.4 St Paul’s School, London £17,928 £26,562 1,291 2 98 Westminster School £20,364 £29,406 747 3 96.2 Eton College – £29,862 1,314 4 96.2 Tonbridge School, Kent £22,335 £29,913 764 5 93.3 Harrow School – £29,670 810 6 91.5 Abingdon School £13,905 £28,515 1,119 7 90 Dulwich College £14,184 £28,971 1,743 8 88.4 Warwick School £10,107 £21,567 1,141 9 86.6 Loughborough Grammar School £9,960 £17,994 1,031 10 82 Monmouth School £12,345 £21,498 589 11= 81 Shrewsbury School £19,125 £27,300 722 11= 81 Charterhouse School, Godalming £24,330 £29,430 742 Top girls’ boarding schools

William Hazlitt

William Hazlitt on fives

It may be said that there are things of more importance than striking a ball against a wall — there are things indeed which make more noise and do as little good, such as making war and peace, making speeches, and answering them, making verses, and blotting them; making money and throwing it away. It may be said that there are things of more importance than striking a ball against a wall — there are things indeed which make more noise and do as little good, such as making war and peace, making speeches, and answering them, making verses, and blotting them; making money and throwing it away. But the

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Fab fives

It may not be widely played, but this is a great sport for everyone, says Freddy Gray   Fives is not a popular sport. In fact, if the internet is to be believed, no more than 4,000 people play it in Britain, with a scattering of die-hard enthusiasts abroad. But then very few people have ever had the opportunity to play. Fives, which is similar to squash — save that it is played with a hard ball, which is hit with gloved hands instead of a racquet — is played almost entirely in British public schools. Some state schools do have courts, but not many. If it is thought of at

Claire Gascoigne

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE: Hard lessons

Claire Gasgoine asks Brewin Dolphin’s Simon Blowey how parents and grandparents can meet the frightening cost of education Education maketh man, according to the philosopher John Locke. But these days, education can also maketh the man’s parents very poor indeed. With large school fees increases and the removal of the cap on university tuition fees, it’s never been harder to ensure your child has the education they deserve. Much foresight and planning is needed to mitigate the costs when playing this particular game. Recent years have seen fee rises, in some cases considerably ahead of inflation; over a generation, fees have risen fivefold from an annual £3,000-6,000 in 1986, according

Stanley Johnson

An Old Shirburnian remembers

 I went to Sherborne in January 1954. The first view I had of my housemaster was at the TC ­inspection parade held on the first day of every term. TC stood for tinea cruris or ‘crotch-worm’, an ­infection which boys were thought to be prone to during the holidays. Col H.F.W. ‘Hughie’ Holmes moved down the line of boys, inspecting for tell-tale pustules, as they cupped their hands over their private parts. When he reached me, he straightened up. ‘Ah, you must be Johnson!’ he barked. ‘Welcome to Lyon House!’ I was lucky enough to win a £150 scholarship to ­Sherborne. £150 was a great deal of money in those days. It represented half

Ed Howker

Different class | 26 March 2011

 I’ve always found Britain’s education system ­bewildering. Our public schools are private; our church schools take the children of committed ­atheists; and ‘distance learning’ happens at home. My old school, Bradford Grammar School (BGS), is not a ‘grammar school’ in the way most ­people would imagine. It is a member of the Headmasters’ Conference and it charges fees. That a school’s name tells you next to nothing about what it does reflects decades of bizarre and often contradictory political reform. Almost every piece of school legislation after Rab Butler’s 1944 Education Act, which created grammars, has meant trouble for my old school. At the time of its creation — 1548 — the school was intended

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The revision thing

 The first time I heard of a crammer school I assumed it was a 16th-century foundation by Thomas Cranmer, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, where boys walked about the cloisters in long cloaks with copies of the Book of Common Prayer stuffed under their arms. I guess we didn’t take revision quite so seriously in my day. In fact I know we didn’t. Revision was something you did in the week before your exams, and if you had to do it in public you tended to hide your book of calculus inside a copy of Smash Hits. It was brought home to me just how much things have changed since

Ed Smith

Swards of honour

Our independent schools have a proud tradition of cricket — and cricket grounds.Former England batsman (and Old Tonbridgian) Ed Smith picks his favourites   The excellence of the cricket grounds of England’s independent schools is a double-edged privilege. On the one hand, they are some of the most beautiful grounds on which to play and watch cricket anywhere in the country. On the other, the public schools contribute an increasingly high proportion of England’s professional cricketers. That’s great for the public schools; not so great for everyone else. In recent decades English sport has improved in many respects, but it’s hard to argue that meritocracy is one of them. My dad

Hilaire Gomer

Open secrets

Any parent would want to see a school before sending their child there, says Hilaire Gomer – but not everyone makes the most of their visits  Prospective parents have to visit the schools to which they’re interested in sending their offspring. Now this is fine if it’s just one or two and they’re not too far away, but more is a chore. A tip is to kick off with school web sites: you won’t need a satnav. When it comes to open days, there are three types of prospective parents. The first group are those who know the school already, having gone there themselves 25 years earlier. These go round

Ben Davies

AFL DIARY

The greatest game in the world returns this weekend for Season 2011, and too much football will never be enough. Season 2010 will be remembered for the most controversial defection since Anakin Skywalker went over to the Dark Side, as Gary Ablett Junior abandoned Geelong to play for the new Gold Coast team. But if you thought Skywalker Senior’s defection had some far-reaching consequences for an entire galaxy, it was nothing compared with the impact of Ablett Junior’s defection on the Geelong universe. For 22 of the past 27 years, Geelong has had a genius named Gary Ablett performing miracles on a regular basis and arousing the passions of fans

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Epigrammatic

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s Competition In Competition No. 2690 you were invited to invited to submit quatrains reflecting on current events in the Middle East in the style of Edward FitzGerald/Omar Khayyam. FitzGerald is, of course, master of the beautifully turned aphoristic phrase. And, as Cedric Watts points out in his introduction to the Wordsworth Classics edition of the Rubaiyat, though he makes it looks effortless the rhyme scheme he uses in his translation — mostly AABA, though occasionally AAAA— is difficult to maintain; especially, as he does so fluently, for stanza after stanza. So the bar was set high. Frank McDonald triumphs this week and bags the bonus

Paul Kennedy

Hot shots with cold feet

When the United Nations sanctioned the use of force against Colonel Gaddafi, it could not quite bring itself to use the word force. The word force is, well, forceful. It suggests ruthlessness. Force is something that gets things done, and those in its way tend to get swept aside. The German word is Macht, and we have all heard about that. A powerful waterfall close to where I grew up in the north of England is called ‘High Force’; you only have to go there in springtime to witness the literalness of that name. The West has never had more force at its disposal, while being oddly squeamish about deploying

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man: Making a hash of things

According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, every alien race in the universe has independently invented an intoxicating drink called ‘jinantonix’ or at least something that sounds very similar. According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, every alien race in the universe has independently invented an intoxicating drink called ‘jinantonix’ or at least something that sounds very similar. It’s an idea which probably arose from the fact that, phonetically, ‘Gin & Tonic’ (or more often ‘Gin-Tonic’) is on a par with ‘OK’ or ‘Coca-Cola’ in being understood in every country on earth. Even languages which use a word for beer that sounds nothing like ‘beer’ generally refer to

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Don’t expect us to keep cheering on this vague and bizarre adventure

Actually, it’s a good question. How long is a piece of string? I’ve often wondered, and I’ve seen some string in my time. The problem is, they were all of different lengths, these bits of string, some long, some shorter. I suppose the mean length of string I’ve come across would be about nine inches, disregarding whole balls of string, obviously. Having worked this out perhaps I could be co-opted into whatever government department is running the war against Libya, as they do not know how long a piece of string is. Actually, it’s a good question. How long is a piece of string? I’ve often wondered, and I’ve seen

Pavel Stroilov

The Gorbachev files

The international stage is dominated by two men this March: Muammar Gaddafi, fighting like mad for the survival of his regime, and Mikhail Gorbachev, celebrated around the world on his 80th birthday for not being a Gaddafi. Nobody knows what will now happen in Libya; but the Gorbachev celebrations will culminate next week in a splendid gala at Royal Albert Hall, with a crowd of celebrities and tickets on sale for up to £100,000. Some 20 years ago the communist dictators faced the same choice as the Arab dictators today: to surrender their regimes or to massacre their people. Some chose massacre, like the Chinese comrades, who slaughtered thousands of

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern: The two Libyas

The Foreign Office is contemplating the possibility that — as in Iraq, where the 1992 no-fly zone allowed the Kurds to take control in the north — the current intervention may split Libya. It would revert to what it had always been up till 1911: two entirely separate administrations, one eastern and one western. A very sensible idea, too. In the 7th century bc, Greeks colonised Cyrene on the north African coast. Herodotus tells the story. A deputation from Thera (modern Santorini) had gone to Delphi to consult the oracle on various matters and was told to found a city among the Libyans. By Libyans, Greeks meant the people who

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

What does Sarah Palin see in Israel that makes her think of Alaska?

In the world of sectarian Scottish football, as you may know, they have adopted the Israeli-Palestinian fight as their own. Celtic fans wave Palestinian Authority flags, in an attempt to draw parallels between the Middle East and the troubles they wish people were still having in Ireland. Rangers fans wave Stars of David in response. I always thought this was the crassest, stupidest, most historically illiterate appropriation of a conflict imaginable. But then this week Sarah Palin went to Israel. What a chump. What a cloth-eared, small-minded, blinkered idiot. She turned up wearing a Star of David T-shirt, and went on to tell some Israel politician that she has the

Ed Smith

Amateur hour

Thrilling as the race was, last week’s Cheltenham Gold Cup will leave an even more remarkable legacy: the winning jockey, Sam Waley-Cohen, did it as an amateur. Being a jockey isn’t his day job — he is the CEO of a dental business — and he races for love, not money. It’s not supposed to happen these days. According to the logic of professionalism, it is impossible to compete at the highest level, let alone win, unless you sacrifice all else. The word amateur has gone from being an accolade to a term of abuse. When coaches get seriously angry they call you ‘amateurish’, meaning sloppy and inept. When they

Jeff Randall

Abu Dhabi Notebook

With oil trading at more than $100 a barrel, Abu Dhabi holds a jackpot-winning ticket in the lottery of life. The emirate sits on reserves of nearly 100 billion barrels, about 9 per cent of the world’s proven supply. At today’s pumped-up price, its subterranean treasure is worth at least $10 trillion. That’s $10,000,000,000,000.Abu Dhabi finds almost nothing unaffordable. Were Croesus reborn tomorrow, he would discover that the Al Nahyan royal family could match his outlay. In recent years, hospitals, universities, hotels, museums, racetracks, golf courses, marinas, airports and a five-star airline have sprung up ex nihilo. When its naughty neighbour Dubai, which has very little oil, ran out of