Greenhouse not hothouse

There’s been more still in the media in recent weeks about what teachers must do to satisfy the grinding requirements of some moved goalpost or other, with several of my HMC colleagues rightly cross about league tables. At Bryanston, we decided to come out of as many league tables as we could some years ago, partly because of the utter nonsense of comparing apples and eggs, but more systemically because we think they are of such questionable value in terms of choosing the right school for your child. It’s perfectly clear that some very famous London all girls’ schools will always do very much better than Bryanston in a certain sort of measurement and, given that we never set out to compete in that particular race, it seems meretricious even to put your running shorts on.

I write a lot about education in terms of metaphors and have, I think, told before of how when I first began at Bryanston parents of prospective pupils would occasionally ask me how I mould the pupils. I’m not into the plasticine metaphor, as I don’t believe you should treat children like that. Plenty of people do, and they can soon tell that Bryanston is not for them. And they take their children off to a character-building sort of place instead of here. And both parties are entirely relieved and delighted.

My metaphor has always been about riotous gladioli and shy daisies and about nurturing and allowing these wonderful flowers to thrive in proper measure by providing a safe and nourishing environment in which to grow. The Director of Admissions, who has been at Bryanston for 23 years and has had her three boys (to my two girls) thrive here, adds another metaphorical layer. She tells me Bryanston is a greenhouse not a hothouse, and I am now enjoying playing around with that new idea.

We believe strongly that you learn best in an environment with plenty of feeding for active young brains. That we, the adults, are not the only ones to determine how fast the learning process happens, though we shall train and gently support their tender stems throughout the amusing bumps of adolescence. And we will love each of them, and what they contribute to this special garden, regardless of their genus. I used to say of my own girls, when they were very much younger, that I wanted them to be strong and flourish like weeds. It’s perhaps why other, more determined, mothers looked askance at my dress sense when Ellie (now 23) would re-dress herself (I promise I dressed her nicely to start with!) as a makeshift pirate from some discarded clothes and the dressing up box. She looked remarkable and weird. But I was, and remain, strongly of the opinion that her character is hers, not mine to mould, and if she wants to dress as a pirate aged three, well go for it, girl! The only effect it appears to have had on her twenty years later is, besides a first class degree from a pretty decent university, an enviably balanced disposition and a love of the unorthodox.

Let’s not fall for any ‘weighing the pig’ arguments. Let’s instead encourage our children to be themselves in all their glorious technicolour and to be the best that they themselves can be. And love them for all they do to enrich our lives.

“Men maketh the city, not the walls”

Living and working in a boarding school one inevitably slices up time according to terms and holidays. I think teachers must be some of the worst offenders in the crime of wishing your life away to the next holiday. And yet when a holiday arrives, whilst the first days, for me at least, are a relief as I don’t need to wear a suit and can wear antique jeans and sweaters, I soon find I miss the busy-ness of the school full of pupils and I start measuring the time until they return. The place seems empty without all that youthful vim.

A school needs to be full and active. There should be noise and energy and activity. This term we returned to find the new music school inhabited and ready to go in its teaching and learning functions. And what a joy it has been! Richard Baker, our remarkable percussion teacher, has had a smile as broad as the Mersey Tunnel (as they say where I was brought up). Duncan Emerson is patiently adding to his roles of maestro conductor and Director of Music that of tour guide around this new box of delights. Pupils are eager to get into the practice rooms, classical and pop. The place is, as I suppose befits a music school, humming.

But this is not about the fact that we have a very expensive, very beautiful, very exciting, very well-equipped building. This is all about what can be done therein. And what it will allow our – and I very much hope other – pupils to achieve musically because of the facilities and the opportunities to learn which the building allows.

Preetpal Bachra, Hsm of Connaught and old boy of Bradford Grammar School (a fine nurse of men), and I were talking of school mottos recently. He told me that his school motto was ‘hoc age’, which might be translated as “Get on with it!” A fine motto, not just for ambitious young Yorkshire men, but for us all; and not least with the opportunities we have afforded to us here at Bryanston. But it’s the Bradford Grammar School Speech Day creed which I think really hits the spot. It is, gratifyingly, a piece of Thucydides: “Men maketh the city, not the walls”. A memorable creed and not just because of the classical root. A school is indeed about its pupils and what they can achieve, and categorically not about bricks and mortar. At Bryanston we strive to give our pupils the ability to achieve remarkable things and it is this aim that is at the centre of all we plan. hoc age!