Stephen Davies, junior boys housemaster explains how Bryanston's junior boys' house system helps ease the transition to senior school...
A long time ago, when I was at a not very distinguished school in
Wales, the Year 9 boys were known as ‘plebs’. While one might admire the
erudition of such a nickname, it was hardly a compliment. Teachers called us
plebs, older pupils called us plebs and both told us how lucky we were because
plebs used to have a much harder time of it in the old days. We should be
grateful for small mercies. There was even a verb: one could ‘pleb’ a junior (i.e.
ask them to do something menial or unpleasant) or the junior could ‘be plebbed’
(carry out such a task). I remember being sent to the not very local shop with
a 1p coin and being told to buy a 1/2p sweet and bring back the change. The
sweet wasn’t the point of the exercise. The point was that I was a pleb, so I
should just grit my teeth and get on with it, and one glorious day I would be
able to carry out the full range of plebbing activities myself.
I’m afraid I never really did, not that I can remember anyway . .
. instead I find myself running a junior boys’ boarding house at Bryanston,
catering exclusively to Year 9 boys. You might say that I have a house full of
plebs and some might argue that my career is now entirely based on plebbing –
telling small boys what to do – but I would say that is to misconceive what we
are up to these days. No modern school worth its salt would or should tolerate
any culture of exploitation. Thankfully, those days are long gone. What is
striking and different, and brilliant about Bryanston’s approach to boys’
boarding, is that over 30 years ago (about the time that I was at school and
getting plebbed) the school established the junior boys’ house system.
To explain – because it is unusual – all of our 13-year-old boys
go into one of our two junior boys’ houses, either Beechwood or Cranborne, for
their first year. In each of these houses the boys have their own space: their
own pool table, their own workrooms and common room. So, on their first night of boarding at
senior school (and for a good number, this is their first night of boarding
ever) they are not likely to be bumped off the pool table by a large and hairy
1st XV prop forward. The boys will have time and space to get to know the
others in their house in an environment that probably feels a bit like a prep
school. If they are used to being a big fish in a small pond, the junior house
acts as a sort of holding pond before they enter the tidal waters of whole
school life. Friendships are forged. Hand-picked prefects from the sixth form (boys
and girls) act as role models and work as mentors in the house, guiding the
boys through their first few weeks and months. There is a lot of laughter and
an awful lot going on. Add in the fact that Year 9 is a time of enormous change
anyway, with adolescence often kicking in, a new sense of independence,
physical, emotional and social growth, it seems desirable that these things can
happen in a protected space.
The system also allows boarding staff to specialise. A junior boys’
housemaster is not distracted by sixth-form goings on, UCAS references, GCSE
choices and so on. We can focus on and keep learning about our boys and their
needs in those crucial months as they find their feet. We can ensure that they
are making the most of the opportunities on offer. We can also offer guidance
to parents – who need to settle in too – as we begin to recognise patterns and
routines. In particular the sudden separation of school and home can throw up
issues on both sides and the junior boys’ house offers the perfect context in
which to discuss and resolve these things.
But as I often find myself saying to parents, the thing that makes
Bryanston unique in its house system for boys is the way we allocate them to a senior
house. We resist the tribalism of more traditional environments and we try to
create a balance of talents and personalities across all houses. We actively
encourage socialising between the two junior houses and then we give the boys a
say in who they are with; they give their junior housemaster a long list of
those friends that they would like to be with in a senior house. Neither the
boys nor the parents get to choose a house (parents don’t have to audition
housemasters, fortunately) and nor do housemasters recruit for their house
(this seems invidious to me). Instead, the groupings for senior houses emerge
in a series of meetings over several weeks in the summer term. The boys don’t
always get what they want, but they do get, we think, what they need, in terms
of their peer group for the next four years. The final piece of the jigsaw is
the tutor; boys will be allocated a tutor by the Head before they arrive at the
school. The tutor will support the boy on an individual basis throughout his
time at Bryanston, so the work of the junior housemaster is always backed up by
those one-to-one conversations that take place weekly in tutorials.
The first year of senior school used to be one that had to be
endured rather than enjoyed. Now, thanks
in a significant part to the real boost in confidence and security that boys
(and parents) get from the junior house system, most older boys will look back
fondly on that time. “Do you remember
when, in Beechwood . . .” is often a
conversation opener from a cheery-looking A2 school prefect. It is a year to be
enjoyed, a year of great change and development, and, we hope, the best start
to a very positive school career.
No comments:
Post a Comment