Spotlight on prep school skills

Martin Barker, Headmaster, answers the question 'What is the point of a prep school education?' by looking at our children and how they benefit from staying at Westbourne House until the move to senior school aged 13. 

A couple of Sundays ago I took a busman’s holiday down to my son’s school for his A level choices evening. Having been to the same meeting a couple of years ago for my daughter, I had the feeling that I might know something about the topic.

One of the great (and at times less great!) aspects of my job is to always expect the unexpected. One of the items of the evening, and perhaps the most important, was to hear from current pupils in the VIth form about their experiences and how to go about choosing your A levels. There is much pressure on children to narrow their choices early and there are many that understandably don’t yet know which career path they want to take. 

Up stepped Old Westbournian Tessa Marley, who proceeded to speak with calm assurance for the next five or ten minutes. She conveyed some very salient points with eloquence and maturity.  It was deeply impressive and it made me proud that her experiences and grounding at Westbourne House have played their part in enabling her to address an audience like that. This will be an increasingly important skill moving forward, but it touches on a broader theme – that children are developing these skills as part of a prep school education.

Almost every speaker from industry that I hear at conferences hammers home the message that broader skills are required beyond academic success: businesses are looking for people with skills that can work for them in their environment, such as being able to work collaboratively, problem solving ability, resilience etc. The breadth of opportunity available at Westbourne House both inside and outside the curriculum contributes to shaping these types of skills each and every day, although at times it is of course difficult to measure. I am relentlessly proud of the children that leave here in Year 8, and I know that their parents are too. I hear positive comments from senior schools about how our children adapt to their new school and how they add enormously to the environment. They have a great range of skills to draw from, both in the classroom and out, which gives them self-assurance and confidence.

Academically the children are challenged at Westbourne House without feeling like they are in some kind of exam factory. Teaching by specialist teachers from a secondary background who convey great passion for their subject, starting in Year 5, adds a richness to the children’s experience. We also provide the ability to take on the inevitable assessments with confident exam technique, as well having a good range of revision techniques at their disposal.

Leadership roles, which traditionally used to be the preserve of the few appointed prefects, are now abundant. Many leadership opportunities exist for children across the school including mentoring younger pupils as a ‘Friend’ and organising team-building activities for younger peers, all of which provide significant learning opportunities for the children and a variety of responsibilities. A large proportion of these involve the older children working with the younger ones which again enables the older ones to step up and be role models.

The majority of prep schools are much smaller than the average senior school, which enables the pastoral care to be a great deal more nurturing in a relatively small community. The children are known and valued for who they are. This also provides lots of stability for pre-teen children, who are already going through significant physical and psychological changes. They benefit hugely from feeling safe and building their sense of self and identity here, without peer pressure and free from the influence of older children.

We are able to ensure that all children have the opportunity to ‘have a go’ at everything the school has to offer, from cooking to climbing, kayaking to public speaking, science experiments to drama productions, and chess to fly fishing. A higher point here is that the children discover a great deal about themselves – do they give up easily? Do they do something only to achieve or just enjoy? Do they appreciate that everyone has things that they are good at, but also things that they are not good at?

I believe that the sheer variety of activity at Westbourne House illustrates clearly to the children that everyone has their strengths as well as things they have to work harder at.  We celebrate success in maths challenges and chess competitions, for example, every bit as much as on the sport pitches and this helps children to see and understand that everyone is equally valuable for who they are.  I believe that it is a great deal easier to steer a successful path in life if you are aware of, and honest about, yourself.

In short, prep school establishes attitudes and builds skills that will set up a child for life, but of course many of these items are developmental and not instantly measurable. I remember my first prep school head saying, ‘It is far more important that we measure what should be valued, rather than value what we measure’. Many years on, those words are never more true.