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Thursday

14 Mar 2024

The remarkable example of the JCB Academy

If you’re into diggers, the JCB world headquarters must look a bit like paradise. The factory sits in the rolling green hills of the Staffordshire countryside, bordered by three lakes and its own golf course. As you drive there you pass a giant spider-like sculpture made entirely out of digger claws, and inside the building, stuffed with bright-yellow tractors, there is a JCB museum featuring the first cab to have an in-built kettle. At the end of the tour you can buy JCB scented candles, JCB cut-glass crystal and JCB jumpers from the JCB gift shop. The most interesting thing JCB stamps its name on, though, is actually round the

Lizzie Hacking

The extraordinary results of one school’s ban on smartphones

Last autumn the principal of the John Wallis Church of England Academy, where I work as the head of external relations, summoned me to his office and presented me with a Yondr phone pouch – ‘You know, like the ones you get at concerts?’ I blinked at him, hoping this would disguise how uncool I am. He handed me a pocket-sized fabric pouch with a magnetic latch that was opened using a special unlocking base. He had ordered one for every pupil in the school. His idea was that they would all put their phone inside their pouch first thing in the morning and it would not be released until

William Cook

The elite coach taking school football to a new level

On a wet and windy afternoon at Repton School, technical director of football Luke Webb is putting his first team through their paces. At first glance this training session looks much the same as any other, but I soon start to spot some subtle yet significant differences in his approach. Webb keeps his distance, there’s no shouting from the touchline, yet all his players seem to know exactly what to do. They start off with close passing drills, then move into small-sided games, and finish with an exercise designed to hone the low driven cross – a delivery all defenders dread. Webb teaches players to play with freedom, to be

Lara Prendergast

The day my self-defence classes paid off

Marlborough College has developed something of a reputation for churning out wives for the great and the good. It is wrong, though, to assume the place operates like a ‘girls in pearls’ finishing school, where everyone practises their deportment or learns how to arrange flowers, while waiting for their prince to arrive. Instead, Marlborough girls leave school knowing how to build a fire, camp on a hillside and fire a gun. CCF is popular. I have happy memories of mock exercises on Salisbury Plain. Equally happy are memories of our self-defence lesson, which was given to girls in Upper Sixth. We learned how to deliver a blow to the nose

Madeleine Silver

What is the secret of Millfield’s sporting excellence?

There’s one safe bet at any Olympic Games: there will always be a generous handful of Millfield alumni on Team GB. At Tokyo there were 13 Old Millfieldians (OMs); in the previous Games in Rio there were eight; four years before that, on home turf, there were nine (two of whom won gold). In 2016 the tally of OMs at the Games was higher than Pakistan’s entire delegation. In 2012 they won the same number of gold medals as Canada. What is Millfield’s secret? How did this independent boarding and day school, tucked away in an unfashionable corner of Somerset, far from the Notting Hill brigade, become a sporting powerhouse?

Matthew Dennison

Why are all female teachers called Miss?

You could be forgiven for thinking you’d inadvertently turned back the clock. Cross the threshold into the majority of British schools and what appears to confront you is a workforce of unmarried women. Surely it’s 1904 not 2024, and teaching is still a spinster’s business? For, in the average 21st-century school, each and every woman teacher – married, unmarried, divorced, celibate, cat-loving, asexual or simply overworked – is addressed by her pupils as ‘Miss’. The problem comes when ‘Miss’ is more than linguistic laziness. Could it in fact imply contempt? I’m not talking about ‘Miss’ as a regrettable replacement for a name, as in ‘I asked Miss for some lined

Jim Lawley

How to make the new natural history GCSE worthwhile

Teaching for a new GCSE in natural history looks likely to begin next year. It’s part of the Department for Education’s ‘flagship sustainability and climate change strategy’. Apparently this subject is intended to teach pupils ‘how to keep the world safe’. Baroness Floella Benjamin, for instance, suggests it will show them how they can ‘save the world from catastrophe’. Paying attention to non-human life might cure some teenagers of their unhealthy obsession with selfies However well-meant such declarations may be, natural history is in fact about identifying and studying plants and animals, not fretting about ‘the plight of our planet’ and ‘how to rescue it’. Worried about what teenagers would

Alec Marsh

Are school reunions really that bad?

Outside a visit to the dentist, there are few things in life as unappealing as a school reunion. That’s particularly the case when it marks an anniversary with a big number attached. In our case, 30 years. On the face of it, it’s a micro-disaster in the making. The plan is to take a hundred or so men and women – many of whom are deep in the grip, knowingly or otherwise, of a mid-life crisis – wrench them away from their daily lives and transport them back to the boarding school where they were all teenagers together. You then throw in a free bar and disco – and let

Hannah Moore

Let children learn our best verse

My daughter is in Year 1 at our local C of E school and my son will start Reception this autumn. I grew up in America, so my children’s introduction to the British primary education system is mine too. I was pleased to learn that my daughter spent her first term studying the Battle of Hastings, which was taught with fitting seriousness and detail. It is local history to us – Battle is just 15 minutes down the road – and the children were encouraged to imagine our local scenery and surrounding villages as they would have been a thousand years ago. I am baffled that the same rigour does

The Spectator

School portraits: snapshots of four notable schools

Queen Ethelburga’s, York Set in 220 acres of beautiful countryside between Harrogate and York, Queen Ethelburga’s College is an award-winning day and boarding school that welcomes girls and boys aged from three months to 19 years and boarders from Year 3. It is known for its high-ranking academic performance. College, one of its two senior schools, placed second nationally last year for A-levels and 18th for all-round academic performance. The other senior school, Faculty, which offers more ‘creative and vocational subjects’, climbed several places to third in the north for A-levels and seventh for overall performance. The college places emphasis on growing pupils into resilient, caring and confident adults. It

Sam Leith

Russia lives on in my mind

My kids, at our local comprehensive, go on school trips to Leigh-on-Sea. I went to a much fancier school, so I went on school trips to Leningrad and Moscow. The first time must have been in 1990. We were all going through dramatic changes; and so was Russia – not that as cossetted, self-absorbed 16-year-olds we were able to take much serious notice. We joked, nervously, gauchely, ahead of our departure about the likelihood that an Aeroflot flight could be relied upon to get us there in one piece. We practised our rudimentary GCSE Russian: ‘Chto eto? Eto GUM!’ (What’s that? That’s [the department store] – GUM.’) ‘Gdye Dom Knigi?’