Head's Blog | Parent wants | Embley School, Hampshire

Been a busy few weeks – though when isn’t it? I have spent quite a bit of time speaking with other prep school heads. It’s always a delight to share good news of our offers to their pupils and to talk about the current climate. OK, less to do with will it ever stop raining and much more to do with the political landscape and the role of independent education. The conversations then turned to the desire to allow children to be children; the challenge of 11+ or 13+ examination rituals; the discussion over social media and the use (or abuse) of phones amongst some gentle teasing about Six Nations challenges. I will skip quickly and lightly over the last point.It is too much to say (or maybe it isn’t), that the independent schools’ sector is in a critical position. Recent committee meetings at the HMC (The Head’s Conference) association reflect the existential crisis some schools are facing and very sadly some have lost. Amid all the soul searching, it is my firm conviction that we do ourselves an injustice when we compare ourselves with other sectors and take our eyes off the thing that matters most. It is understandable to worry, but the antidote to this is to act, do something. I have written often here reader (and you can flick through previous moments of my ramblings if you doubt it) that we exist for the formation of children, to be the best version of themselves and to go out into the world to make it a better place. 
 
To return to the conversations with Prep Heads. We all reflected on what parents seem to want. It’s a tricky old time for mums and dads - again ’twas ever thus. There was a time when schools were judged by the Oxbridge product. You could tell a good school because on visits children sat quietly; obediently copying from the board and listening to the ‘sage on the stage’. Why did that make it a good school? Was it because this reflected the parents’ experience growing up, it had served the Victorians well and what was good enough for them is good enough? OK, point made I hear you say. 
 
The old-fashioned institution of school did a job, I'm not sure it was ever a good school. Parents are now more enlightened, less likely to follow the herd and take their children to a school because what they hear from friends and neighbours of its reputation. Or worse, this school always sends children to that school, ​loads are going so it must be right for us. Or even worse again, we would look odd if we didn’t choose with the others. Oh dear. 
 
But it is genuinely tricky to choose the right school for your child. In weighing choice ‘yes’, it is I think important that children are children for as long as possible. CS Lewis famously wrote that when he became grown up, he was delighted to give up “childish things” in which he numbered "the desire to be grown up" and "the fear of being thought to be a child”. It is a precious time in and of itself. I do not subscribe to the view that is an apprenticeship for adulthood. The pressure of the modern world and the pressure on parents to either commercialise it or shorten it by rushing to lavish grown up gifts on children is counterproductive. The character traits we work to build on at Embley through our Pupil Profile are a charter for childhood, for formation and by extension for a good school. 
 
Children are naturally open minded. They have not been in the world long enough to inherit or inhabit the prejudices and preoccupations we have learned. They are sometimes too keen to take risks and may need a degree of coaching to become more reflective, but that’s what happens through childhood. 
 
The structure, curriculum and pedagogy they experience here makes them knowledgeable and feeds their thoughtfulness, the collaboration with others builds their natural capacity for kindness and care as well as underpinning their values of integrity, honesty and personal accountability. Engaging in doing difficult things brings creativity, adaptability, problem solving and ultimately confidence. Yes, that’s right, confidence comes from doing difficult things in steps not in modest things in routine. They learn to lead by looking after the interests of others and serving. I said earlier about focusing on ‘the things that matter’. The children are ‘the things that matter’; their formation to be the best version of themselves is the rising tide that lifts the boats of academic excellence and personal development; they remain happy in their own skin, content to be themselves and that seems to me to be what parents want.