The Secret of Change

Martin Barker addressed parents and pupils at the 2019 Prize Giving. He looks with humour at some of his experiences so far in prep schools, before focusing on the future including the changes that are happening in the independent education sector, the skills required by industry and the opportunities change is creating at Westbourne House School.

Inventor Charles Kettering said, ‘the world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress’. We live in changing times. Not just in the world around but also here at Westbourne House.  Changes are understandably worrying but they are also exciting and necessary, which got me thinking about how things were in Helen and my early days in the Prep School world.
 
One of our first teaching jobs was in a boarding school, and back then of course, particularly in boarding schools, much of the food was genuinely inedible.  Friday fish was particularly memorable – one week it was fish in a white sauce, the next in a red sauce – both were equally offensive to the taste buds. But in those days, parents seemed largely indifferent to this, so children’s term-time diets were supplemented through the provision of crammed tuck boxes after every holiday and exeat, topped up in between with the regular dispatch of additional food parcels from a concerned mum and dad.
 
I remember one youngster who, practically every time I saw him, would produce a bag full of beautiful, fresh, de-shelled brazil nuts and offer it to me, ‘Brazil nut Sir?’ he’d say.  Now as a resident member of staff I too had to survive on the fodder that came out of the school kitchens and so, driven by hunger, I would overcome my misgivings about taking advantage of his generosity, and I’d accept his offer.  ‘M-m-m, thanks very much.’  I’d say.  ‘Not at all Sir, you’re most welcome.’  Such a polite boy. Anyway, this went on for a while, ‘Brazil nut Sir?’  ‘M-m-m, don’t mind if I do, thanks very much’  ‘Not at all Sir, you’re most welcome’.  Until one day it suddenly dawned on me to ask him. ‘It’s very kind of you, but why are you giving all these brazil nuts away? Your mum takes the trouble to send them to you, I’m sure she’d prefer to think you were eating them yourself rather than dishing them out to members of staff.’  ‘Well to be honest Sir,’ he replied, ‘I don’t really like them.  But I don’t want to hurt my mum’s feelings.  And anyway, he added, ‘I do enjoy the chocolate coating.’
 
I couldn’t be more excited about the future and the changes that are happening here at Westbourne House. We have spent enormous amounts of time planning how we can best make use of the opportunities available to us over the next few years, both in and out of the classroom.
 
So to the first: The changing scene in Senior School admissions. This has increasingly meant that reasoning tests, in addition to Maths and English have become the most important selection criteria. Indeed, earlier in the year we wrote to approximately fifty schools about our plans to use the Common Entrance exam format in Maths, English and Science only and it was telling that just one school replied saying they wanted anything more.
 
We wanted to use the opportunity that this presented to do something more beneficial for the children: a little more joined up thinking with the requirements of GCSE, an additional foreign language, and more time for pastoral support dealing with many of the issues of the modern era.
 
I should say at this point that there will be absolutely no dumbing down on the academic side – the children will still be assessed across the full range of subjects, but by means other than the Common Entrance exam. With another bumper year of 36 scholarships you won’t be surprised to hear that we are keen to be ambitious for all of our children here. Incidentally – I find these scholarship results are not matched consistently by any non-selective school of a similar size nationally.  We are all about trying to find the talents of each and every child in this school, and I believe the results bear testament to that.
 
This brings me neatly on to the second big change: the introduction of High Performance Learning, a philosophy and framework that will underpin our teaching from September. It is indeed a very exciting step, which will embrace all that is forward looking in current educational thinking.
 
In a nutshell, research shows increasingly that the types of skills possessed by gifted learners are in fact accessible to the vast majority of children, but they do need to be taught these skills in a systematic way.
 
Thinking flexibly, creativity, being able to apply different strategies to problems, realising connections to past work, big picture thinking – these are some of the qualities that we will be looking to imbue in the children here as part of the High Performance Learning philosophy. 
 
Of course none of these qualities would be useful without the correct attitudes and values when approaching work. To this end, the philosophy also focuses on the need for hard work, perseverance, resilience, working with others and being able to take intellectual risks. The jewel in the crown here is the development of the holy grail of intellectual confidence, something which can tap into every child’s potential. This is not a quick fix by any stretch of the imagination, and will take us two to three years to implement fully. We have planned carefully, and I have no doubt that it will significantly enhance our children’s learning journey and ultimately better equip them for success and happiness in life…not just to be good at passing exams.
 
To give some context, every business leader that I hear talking about education and the types of skills that they want to see in young graduates say the same thing. The latest of these was Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, CEO of Virgin Money, who I saw speak at Wellington College in January. She likened many modern graduates that she sees to being ‘lighthouses in the desert’, brilliant looking, but quite useless.
 
Our exam-based system has undoubtedly placed too much emphasis on the ability to be able to recall facts. Skills such as creativity, adaptability, resilience, perseverance and critical thinking have taken second place in education, and yet there is plenty of evidence to show that people with those skills tend to be the most successful in life.
 
The CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai said recently, ‘We rarely employ straight A students. What we’ve discovered over the years is that their field of knowledge is too narrow and they haven’t developed as people. We find that they just can’t cope with life, and they cause endless problems and frictions. We like to choose students who are bright, but broad, with character.’
 
Further to this, the World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of Jobs Report’ of a couple of years ago, stated that the top 10 skills for the 2020 job market were as follows:
 
1.   Problem solving
2.   Critical thinking
3.   Creativity
4.   People management
5.   Coordinating with others
6.   Emotional intelligence
7.   Judgement and decision making
8.   Service orientation
9.   Negotiation
10.  Ability to think flexibly
 
On the back of this we are starting to see large companies changing the way that they recruit employees, using ‘education blind’ assessments and ‘try before you buy’ internships, in other words focusing much more towards thinking and people skills.
 
So, whilst we need to continue to provide high academic standards and the ability to pass exams to reach the next stage of education, there is clearly a need for a child’s schooling to be able to address these themes to set them up for the future.
 
As we well know, education has become test crazy. The beauty of the independent education sector is that we do have the flexibility to be able to adapt to these changes and build on some of the excellent work already taking place. At Westbourne House we have been ahead of the game. The ability of our children here to be able to collaborate through sport, music, art and drama as well as academic lessons; to communicate through debating, public speaking opportunities and the numerous inter-year group initiatives are becoming every bit as important as grades in my view. It was wonderful to see our boarding houses full this summer, providing the children with a further opportunity to enhance their social skills and deepen friendships.
 
Finally, on to the change that is Saturday lessons. Plenty has been written and said already about this change, and it is not at all surprising that opinions differ on the subject.  It is however absolutely clear that an increasing number of prep schools are moving away from formal lessons on a Saturday, and this is a trend I can only see heading in one direction. Only this year we have seen some of the biggest and most well established prep schools in the country, namely The Dragon School in Oxford, Beaudesert Park in Gloucestershire, Cumnor House in Haywards Heath and Holmewood House in Colchester remove Saturday lessons, in addition to ourselves. Many of this type of school were of course full boarding until 20 or so years ago, and yet very few now remain. Schools have continued to evolve and will of course reflect societal norms and educational thinking.
 
Westbourne House is not immune to these trends and we have to continue to adapt to the needs of those that want to send their children here.
 
Helen and I have worked in schools with Saturday lessons for the past 25 years, and I can assure you that it was not a decision taken lightly, but having worked through the detail over the last few terms, I couldn’t be more excited about what lies ahead. Saturday sports fixtures will continue in at least as great a number as they do now, some in the morning, some in the afternoon, surrounded by all the things that the children know and love – more sport, more music, more art, more drama in among one or two other favourites.
 
We asked the children what they wanted to see on a Saturday by way of activities, and they came up with a great many of the things that we would have expected, that they already enjoy at school. The great thing is that we will now have the opportunity to provide more of what the children really like on a Saturday, and with plenty of time to do it in.
 
It wouldn’t have escaped your notice that the whole week between 8.30am Monday and 5.30pm on a Saturday has, until now, been timetabled, with little room for flexibility.  But now we will have the freedom to take full advantage of our wonderful facilities with all the same staff who have always worked on a Saturday. Change is never an easy thing as there is a sense of the unknown, but I firmly believe that the different rhythm to the week will provide an all round better experience for the children.
 
As the Greek Philosopher Socrates said, ‘The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.’
 
In much broader terms, we are living through a very uncertain period, and independent education is very much in the thick of that uncertainty. Threats abound from all sides, some of which you may have read in the press. VAT on school fees, the loss of business rate relief and a 43% increase in teacher pension payments, to name but a few, may well be putting even greater pressure on finances in the independent sector over the coming months and years. There is a ready realisation that fees cannot rise significantly to offset these pressures indefinitely, but a sensible way forward will have to be found.
 
For your information, independent education provides a £3.5 billion subsidy to the state from children whose parents pay for state education, but do not access it, and the irony is that the sorts of financial measures being considered will put most pressure on the smaller schools who provide lower cost alternatives and diversity in the sector, while the big names - apparently most despised by some politicians and commentators - will become even more exclusive and inaccessible to the majority.
 
So to end this section, I must make clear that the philosophy underpinning our offering will not change one jot. We will continue to provide a broad experience that is aspirational and inspirational for every child, preparing them as well as any child could be prepared for what lies ahead in a rapidly changing world.