October 2017 10YEARS 20072017 20072017 Chair Head Bursar Registrar Staffroom School Office ...the professional journal for Management & Staff TRADE IN AND TRADE UP TO A NEW SCHOOL MINIBUS TRADE UP TO • Brand New Fully Type Approved 9 - 17 Seat School Minibus • All The Leading Manufacturers Including Peugeot and Ford • D1 and B Licence Driver Options • New Euro Six Engines for Increased Visit redkite-minibuses.com Efficiency, Reduced CO2, Low for our best trade in price today Emission Zone (LEZ) Compliance • Finance Option To Suit all Budgets 01202 827678 • Nationwide Service and Support [email protected] Choose with confidence, our knowledge and support make the FORD PEUGEOT VAUXHALL APPROVED SUPPLIERS difference, call today! Register for your own free e-copy www.independentschoolsmagazine.co.uk Our front page pictures In this issue... Just How Independent are Independent Schools? ~ paradoxes explored 05 Creativity at the Heart of Education ~ what happens in a Creative Learning Centre 07 Teacher Involvement with Exam Papers: Call for Evidence Clouds of colour ~ time to have your say after ‘cheating’ scandal 10 The late September sun was greatly appreciated at Cobham Hall School, Kent, when the girls staged the School’s first ever Colour Run. Social Media Dangers & the FOMO Problem Having been postponed several times due to rain, the bright blue skies were a welcome relief ~ head’s concern about pre-teens 11 and the perfect backdrop to what many Year 7s described as ‘the best school event ever!” Profile Cobham Hall’s Student Leadership Team is ~ in conversation with Deborah Newman 20 ~ 21 encouraged to reflect on events staged by their predecessors, but to make their own stamp on the school calendar. This year’s Team were New Chartered Teacher Programme determined to start the new school year with ~ all the details & how to apply 27 a Colour Run; an event chosen to encourage laughter and happiness. Head Girl Lillie Dunn said, “We feel this event was a great way to Increasing Digital & Political Literacy start off the new academic year, with a bit of colour! It will also be a great opportunity to get ~ helping pupils stay active, informed, & tolerant 36 ~ 37 to know new students.” Using a shortened version of the School’s cross-country course, participants congregated Plus outside the front of the school after lessons on Five heads make it a special occasion 06 Friday, many of them choosing to wear white Professional recognition scheme for boarding staff 08 clothing to show off as much colour as possible. On Lillie’s whistle, the runners streamed down Focus on DofE initiatives 09 Lime Avenue, clouds of colour billowing around Another school chooses ‘diamond model’ 12 them as they shook the coloured powder from their packets Scholarships for ‘drive & personality’ 15 Music, Drama, & Dance Focus Feature 22 ~ 25 Whale of a time Re-branded school going go-ed 26 Lewes Old Grammar School, Sussex, students Sports & Sportswear Focus Feature 28 ~ 33 were enlisted to help four cetacean researchers at the port of Sanremo, Italy, where they School Buildings Focus Feature 34 ~ 35 helped to collect valuable data about whales and dolphins in the Mediterranean region while living on a 72-foot research sailing boat. The Digest; Heads Hunted; Editorial Advisory Board; Key Personnel; Contact Us pages 38 & 39 Story and picture ~ page 14 Is Your School Mentioned? A~Z on page 39 Scholars meet ‘their’ steam loco Young people from Foremarke Hall school, Derbyshire, after the school, which opened in 1947. For most travel behind steam locomotive ‘Foremarke Hall’ on of its life it was based at Old Oak Common near the Gloucestershire & Warwickshire Steam Railway. Paddington in London, handling a variety of train services from the capital to the Midlands, South The engine is one of 330 members of the ‘Hall’ class, Wales and the West Country. designed by the Great Western Railway and built at In another curious quirk of steam locomotive Swindon. Only a handful of the class survive. survival, a locomotive named after Repton College The engine was completed in 1949, just after also survives and operates on the North Yorkshire nationalisation of Britain’s railways and named Moors railway. Register for your own free e-copy www.independentschoolsmagazine.co.uk Independent Schools Magazine 3 Renewed drive for accessibility King Edward’s School, Birmingham has launched its renewed drive for accessibility in a bid to secure permanent need-blind admission to the school. Last year, the school completed a £10m campaign for Assisted Places, which is currently funding 100 boys through the school. At events held in London and Birmingham in September 2017, the school shared its new ambition to maintain the current levels of assistance whilst also building a £30m endowment fund to secure the provision of Assisted Places for generations to come. Dr Mark Fenton, Chief Master of King Edward’s School, said: “An endowment of £30m is an ambitious target, and one which will take many years to secure, Up, up and away but it is fundamental if we are Pupils from Heathfield School, Once back on terra firma, the girls science lessons at Heathfield and to ensure the prosperity of this Berkshire took part in a science conducted further experiments see for themselves the school’s great school and the boys who experiment with a difference in a fun day of science involving innovative, purpose-built STEM come here. when they experienced the marshmallows and water rockets. building, opened by Sir Robert “If we achieve our aim, then principles of flying – propulsion, They were joined by 32 Year 5 Winston, which provides a hub we will have reached a point of thrust, lift and drag – for pupils from Godstowe Preparatory to drive forward the study of key need-blind admission, where themselves by rising 20ft above School in High Wycombe who rigorous academic subjects, science, all boys of academic talent will the ground in a hot air balloon. were keen to get a taste of technology, engineering and maths. be able to take up a place at the school, regardless of their parents’ financial circumstances. Head of Art’s commissions This will not only benefit the Pocklington School, Yorkshire, Both parties are interested in the Warhol Month. Selected artists school and the boys themselves, Head of Art Dan Cimmermann has transformative power of street art were invited to create a piece of but will also have a positive fulfilled artistic commissions in in deprived or neglected urban work inspired by Warhol and these impact on social mobility and, in London, York and Beirut. environments. works were enlarged and exhibited turn, the wider region. on the streets of Croydon with The project in Beirut was Artists from the UK and worldwide “The remarkable generosity of 60 organised tours of the work organised by Rise Gallery, London were invited to take part alongside over 1,600 alumni and other happening during September. in collaboration with a Lebanese Lebanese artists to paint a bridge in supporters has already changed Dan’s painting was inspired by charitable organisation, Ahla Fawda. Aley, in the hills above Beirut and the lives of 100 boys, and I hope Warhol’s series of images of the collaborate on projects organised Stone’s frontman after a trip to that they will continue to support around an arts festival hosted by England in the 1970’s. us as we seek to change the lives Ahla Fawda. The bridge was on the of generations more.” main road from Beirut to Damascus. Prior to his trip to Beirut, Dan also painted a mural of Captain Cook The school launched the next Dan painted three pieces at the at The Lighthorseman pub, York, phase of its fundraising with bridge, a piece of work in a organised by Art Of Protest Gallery, two events hosted by alumni Lebanese prison and his largest ever a new contemporary art space in ambassadors. The first was hosted mural to date, a seven metre tall wall York on Little Stonegate. by the Rt Hon. Lord Willetts at the piece overlooking the city below. Back at Pocklington School, Dan Serpentine Pavilion on Monday, Street artists such as Ben Eine and and his team have started the new 11 September, and the second by Dotmasters were among the list of term teaching in Phase One of the the inaugural Mayor of the West artists involved, infamous for their School’s new £2.5 million Art and Midlands, Andy Street, at King street art in the UK and worldwide. Design Technology Centre. Work Edward’s School on Friday, 22 Also commissioned by Rise Gallery continues on Phase Two, which is September. An additional event for was Dan’s portrait of Mick Jagger, expected to open to students in North American alumni, hosted by which formed part of the Gallery’s the Autumn. Lee Child in New York, takes place Pictured: Dan Cimmermann in Beirut with his seven metre high wall piece. this month (October). Mark Peel – author of The New Meritocracy. A History of UK Independent Schools 1979-2015, Elliott and Thompson, 2015 4 Independent Schools Magazine Register for your own free e-copy www.independentschoolsmagazine.co.uk How independent is the independent sector? ‘It is surely one of education’s great paradoxes that recent proposals by the Blair and Cameron governments to make the state sector more independent should come just at a time when the independent sector has become less autonomous’, suggests Mark Peel... Historically, schools enjoyed During his final year at Rugby, the have found the excess of paperwork ammunition for those who would great autonomy which enabled headmaster Patrick Derham, now to be debilitating, but pastoral care like even stricter quotas to be incompetent teachers to survive headmaster of Westminster, was has now been elevated to a matter applied to university admissions.