An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
First Charterhouse, then Winchester – now Westminster. In the past two years alone, three of Britain’s most famous schools have recently turned, or are planning to turn, fully co-educational. How many more boys’ schools will follow? One popular argument for the change is, as ever, that girls will be a ‘civilising influence’ upon teenage boys
Exams start on Monday. Thousands of A-level and GCSE pupils will be swotting hard for them right now. Some will do well; others won’t. Knowledge and ability are the two obvious keys to success. But there’s another factor that’s often overlooked: exam technique. Having taught thousands of students of all abilities at several leading schools, I
Every so often, one stumbles across some long-forgotten text that could have been written yesterday. It’s a reminder that often the answers to today’s problems lie in the past. I had one of those moments when I read Lord Baden-Powell’s Rovering to Success. Recently I had another such moment reading about Kurt Hahn’s Six Declines
It is one of those ancient mysteries: why has no Labour government been able to abolish private schools? Harold Wilson didn’t spare grammar schools (and nor did Edward Heath’s government, which followed). New Labour, too, for all its reforming zeal, never dared disembowel the independent sector. When the party did promise to do so –
Someone once said that the two greatest moments you enjoy when owning a yacht are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. You could make a similar case for school fees: nothing feels quite as good as the day you finally stop paying them. Much as we are impressed by the
Angela McAuslan-Kelly is a normal sixth-former at Robert Gordon’s College in Aberdeen. Her dad is a bus driver and her mum works in a coffee shop. ‘They are not very wealthy,’ explains Holly Cram, a former captain of the Scottish national women’s hockey team. Angela, though, is off to Princeton in September. ‘I completely get
If the success of a new technology can be measured by the speed of uptake, there is no denying the epochal impact of ChatGPT. Within five days of its launch in late November, the artificial intelligence chatbot, which can provide clear, detailed answers to human questions, was being used by a million people. Now it’s
As half-term approaches, the kids at the school gate visibly slow down. They start dragging their feet and purple smudges appear under their eyes. I feel sorry for them. Then I think of my home country, America. No half-terms. Children in the US went back to school on 3 January and they won’t have a
Destroying private schools isn’t just a preoccupation of left-wing activists. The former education secretary Michael Gove said in 2019 that he wanted state schools to be so good that paying fees would be seen as an ‘eccentric choice’. Labour has explained that if it wins power, the party will scrap charitable status for private schools
Whenever I tell people I used to be a maths teacher the most common response is: ‘I absolutely hated maths at school.’ It is an age-old tale, to loathe maths lessons (or indeed your maths teacher). So, what better way to make children loathe maths even more than to make it compulsory until the age
If you want to master something, you should study the highest achievements in the field. To learn how to paint beautifully, visit the National Gallery. If you want to be a great scientist, spend some time in cutting-edge laboratories. If you want to write, read great literature. But this is not what parents usually think
There was an article in this magazine’s last Schools supplement in September that, just for a moment, made me panic. ‘Why I’ve quit teaching’ was the headline. Not great timing. I’d just resigned from my secure civil service job in the Department for Transport to start a Postgraduate Certificate in Education in secondary level history.
Roundhay School, Leeds ‘While we were taught about racism and sexism, there was too little time spent making sure everyone could read and write,’ said Liz Truss of her alma mater three years ago when she was minister for women and equalities. Roundhay School’s record begs to differ – it has been ranked ‘outstanding’ by
There are moments in a boy’s adolescence when he catches a glimpse of the man he will become. Faced with adversity, is he the brave sort – or the sort who runs away and lets others suffer? Aged 13, on a school trip to Portsmouth, I discovered I was the latter. Tom insisted he’d found
In a newspaper article five years ago, Michael Gove singled out the tax exemptions enjoyed by private schools thanks to their charitable status as one of the ‘burning injustices’ of our time. He took it for granted that scrapping these benefits would raise money and proposed spending it on children in care instead. ‘How can
The end of term is here and parents up and down the country will be awaiting the arrival of their child’s end-of-term report. But I hope they won’t be expecting too many pearls of wisdom from the impersonal emails that will ping into their inboxes shortly. Ten or a dozen years ago (the exact date
As the end of term approaches parents may be wondering what to buy their child’s teacher for Christmas. It’s the season of goodwill, after all. It’s also a golden opportunity to win a way to Sir or Miss’s heart, so they’ll continue to take good care of little Olivia or Oliver in the new year.
A glittering TV career, an MBE, various honorary degrees, tens of thousands of TikTok followers and the only person to win the (now cancelled) Rear of the Year award multiple times. There are many accolades that Carol Vorderman has been afforded during her 40-year career, yet few mean more to her than her claim to
Until recently, football was viewed with suspicion in independent schools – the poor relation to its big-hitting step-brother, rugby. That well known saying about football being ‘a game for gentlemen played by hooligans’ seemed to sum up independent schools’ attitudes perfectly. Well into the new millennium, promising young players would be cajoled into playing rugby
For the past four years I have worked at an academy in Hackney. I was deputy head of maths for three of those years, and head of maths for the final term, managing 16 staff. After nearly a decade teaching in the state sector, I’d finally worked my way up to a well paid and
In the instant I first became aware of the unpleasant nature of the cosmos we all infest, my megalomaniac nature and a desire to marry Rupert Murdoch, I was on a school trip to Gstaad. Now and then the night train stopped at snow-capped stations, which I could see from my lower bunk. My teenage
Trinity School, Croydon Headmaster Alasdair Kennedy says he wants students to leave the school ‘without any sense of entitlement, but with a humility that acknowledges the fact there is always more to learn and others to learn from’. The former grammar school, which accepts boys from the age of ten, now offers a co-educational Sixth
T here’s no need for a mirror at school reunions. Just look all around you to see the cruel effects of anno domini on your old contemporaries – and don’t fool yourself that you alone have miraculously dodged the hair-thinning, waist-expanding horrors of middle age. Is that really the semi-divine girl who scored a modelling contract
Day one of the school holidays this year set the tone for the sprawling six weeks ahead. My teenage son rolled out of bed at a leisurely 1.05 p.m., by which time my daughter had smashed her head repeatedly against the kitchen wall, bitten my leg and trashed our living room. And so began a
Primary school drama has a rule which is a variation on Chekhov’s gun principle: if your child has a part in the school play they won’t get to speak until the end of the final act. And you’ll have to sit through the part of every other child before their moment finally comes. You will
What is the secret to a billionaire’s success? When Warren Buffet was asked how young people could mimic his wealth, he said: ‘Hone your communication skills, both written and verbal… You can have all the brainpower in the world, but you have to be able to transmit it, and the transmission is communication.’ Buffet knows
Matthew Parris My father was an engineer. As a child I enjoyed ‘creative’ writing: stories, poems and so on. Dad said: ‘Try writing something useful. You know how to mend a bicycle puncture. Write for me, on one page, instructions for mending a puncture, to be read by someone who knows what a bike is,
Liz Truss suggests that all students who score straight A*s at A-level should be interviewed by Oxford or Cambridge. They, and their parents, might well wonder why they would not be summoned for an interview if they can achieve such impressive results. But it’s not that simple. Post-A-level candidates are much fewer in number than