The Value of a Gold Standard

Bryanston was recently delighted and honoured to be awarded Stonewall’s Gold School Champion Award in recognition of the school’s work over the past three years with regard to LGBT+ awareness and inclusion. Ian McClary, the school’s LGBT+ lead, writes…

On 6 September 2018 the Indian Supreme Court unanimously voted to repeal its colonial-era law which criminalised homosexuality - a cause for great celebration, not only for India’s LGBT+ community, but also for countless others who want them to be able to live and love, free from fear and discrimination. There might well be a long way to go before prevailing attitudes catch up with this change, but it is nevertheless an important step forward in the world’s largest democracy.

It wasn’t so very long ago that the UK took a similar, though more tentative step, in 1967, to partially decriminalise homosexuality. Indeed, it wasn’t until the first decade of the 21st Century that we made the more significant strides forward, both in terms of legislation and general attitudes. Many will remember the controversial Section 28 of the Local Government Act, introduced in 1988, which effectively ensured a culture of silence about and discrimination of LGBT+ people and issues in schools until 2003, when it was repealed. The only positive aspect of its legacy (and, I am sure, an unintended one on the part of the government at the time) was that it inspired the formation of Stonewall, which has become the largest LGBT rights charity in Europe.

Their extremely successful School Champions Programme is something that Bryanston has been

involved with since 2015, and has helped us to make our own strides forward with regard to LGBT awareness and inclusion. Each year we have worked towards a range of increasingly ambitious targets relating to school policies, challenging homophobia, biphobia and transphobia (HBT), supporting LGBT+ pupils and embedding awareness in the wider curriculum and the school community. In 2016 we achieved their Bronze award in recognition of our efforts and, in 2017, their Silver award for our continued work in these areas. This year we become one of only a handful of schools in the UK to be granted their Gold award as we demonstrate sustained evidence of our long-term commitment to LGBT+ inclusion and awareness in the school.

So what do these awards say about us as a school? Bryanston has always been a school in which the individual can thrive, but we tended to assume that we were LGBT+ aware and inclusive without doing anything actively about it. These awards demonstrate not only that we have thought a great deal about how we operate and what life is like at Bryanston for LGBT+ people, but also that we have been much more proactive in ‘promot[ing] respect and understanding of LGBT+ people and issues’ (Equality Act 2010). But we haven’t done it as a box ticking exercise simply to comply with this particular piece of legislation. Nor has it been just about getting the award, but rather embedding best practice and ensuring that it continues. Just as in the classroom - it’s not the qualification but rather the journey of learning taken as a whole which is more important. It is wonderful, of course, to know that we have achieved Stonewall’s gold standard, but we are acutely aware that our work does not end here; indeed, once a standard is reached it needs to be maintained - in a community which replenishes itself by almost a quarter each year, we need to continue to encourage and support, and celebrate. 

Where the School Champions awards have been extremely useful is by helping Bryanston to structure its work as we develop and evolve in this area. Take our dress code for example: it was always possible to wear it in a gender-neutral way but its most recent iteration has now evolved to be fully inclusive of trans and non-binary identities. Furthermore, our pupil-led Equality Society is now in its fifth year - the result of sustained interest and effort on the part of the pupils who regularly meet to explore a range of issues relating to equality, diversity and human rights, including sexuality and gender identity. I hope that LGBT+ pupils at Bryanston feel increasingly comfortable being who they are at school and coming out if they feel the time is right for them. I hope they, and all pupils, know that any form of HBT language or behaviour is unacceptable at Bryanston, that LGBT+ pupils (and staff) are valued for who they are, and that they are, in the words of Stonewall’s motto, ‘[accepted] without exception’.

As an OB and recent A2 Current Affairs speaker put it, ‘Returning to Bryanston after 25 years it was inspiring to see the journey of inclusion the school has been on. When I was at the school, Section 28 was still in force, the HIV epidemic prompted scaremongering which demonised gay people and the only time trans people were visible was in freakshow journalism - it wasn’t a good time for me to be a gay teenager struggling with their sexuality and I can’t say those memories are my happiest. To see now how the school is embedding inclusion across policies is great, but what is really inspiring is the way it is manifesting this in the culture and ethos of the school so that every young person in its care can truly find their authentic self in a supportive environment where teachers and pupils are visible allies and stepping up to create a more inclusive future’. (1)

It’s important to ensure that all our pupils thrive, including the 10% of our pupils who do not identify as heterosexual or who are questioning their gender identity (2). Uninformed young people are vulnerable young people, LGBT+ or otherwise, and it is concerning that LGBT+ young people experience higher rates of mental ill health on account of negative stereotypes, prejudice and HBT (3). Although this is, I am glad to say, gradually being reduced in the UK, thanks in no small part to the work of organisations like Stonewall, we need to continue to ensure, for our part, that Bryanston is a welcoming, respectful and supportive community for LGBT+ people. Having been privileged enough to have had the opportunity to celebrate our wedding at school, my husband and I can attest to just how welcoming it is!

(1) Dr Justin Varney OB - National Strategic Advisor, Public Health England.

(2) Bryanston School pupil LGBT survey 2016.

(3) Stonewall School Report 2017.

All you need is character, effort and respect

This week Bryanston's Head of Performance Sport, Alex Chapman, takes a look at the thinking behind our Performance Sport Programme and the key values upon which it is built.

“Sports teaches you character, it teaches you to play by the rules, it teaches you to know what it feels like to win and lose – it teaches you about life.”

Billie Jean King

Sport, particularly in schools, is about more than purely winning. It is about the desire to improve and to build strength and stamina of both mind and body. At Bryanston we launched our Performance Sport Programme (PSP) in September 2016 with the aim of helping pupils achieve their personal sporting aspirations. It isn't only for high-performing sportspeople, but for anyone who wants to improve and get better. At its core, PSP is built on the values of character, effort and respect; these values and the behaviours that underpin them will help pupils in any endeavour they pursue, not just sport.

The environment created within PSP is critical to the development of these values. It is one where pupils are supported through challenges and helped to persevere through failures and adversity, which, in turn, breeds resilience and confidence. This process applies across all three strands of PSP: Senior (years 12 and 13), Junior (years 9 to 11) and Prep, where we invite prep school pupils to participate in the PSP programme and experience the basics of strength and conditioning and looking after their body.

While the resources available to the PSP programme are considerable and Bryanston pupils have access to facilities that would be the envy of most universities and professional sports clubs’ research facilities (dual triaxial force platforms and 10 camera 3D motion analysis suite), it is the people involved who are our biggest and most valuable resource. Our Sports Centre team (Ben Weldon, Drew Beaver, Andrew Jeffrey, Joe Davis and Myles Wheaton-Green) have been instrumental in the setting up and running of the programme since its inception, and sessions would not be available to the 80+ pupils currently engaged without them. Jack Phillips is our newest member of the team and is the first full-time PSP coach specialising in strength and conditioning. Jack has brought with him a new energy and a multitude of ideas which have already made a big impact on the programme. Last but by no means least we have our physio team. We liaise regularly with Clara and Mercedes to keep our pupils playing sport. They provide integrated (S&C and physio) rehabilitation sessions for our injured pupils and input into not only our rehabilitation sessions, but also the content of our CPD sessions. Injury prevention is a key priority of PSP.

The reason we go to these lengths is plain and simple: it is all for our pupils. They never fail to surprise, impress and inspire us every day through their effort and character. Through their hard work, determination and commitment we have celebrated the success of several current pupils who have been selected as junior internationals across multiple sports this year (rugby, equestrian and running) and we are honoured to help them on their journey, wherever that may take them. Of equal importance and merit however are the growing number of pupils who come to train every day just to get better at a sport they love. This takes no less effort and each personal success is important and valued by the programme. It is the development of an affectionate connection with sport which is the ultimate goal for every pupil and the lasting legacy of the programme.

Bryanston PSP affords all who have the necessary desire the chance to be better than they imagined they could be; acting as a catalyst for a lifetime love of sport and physical exercise. All you need is character, effort and respect.

Soft rules

This week we welcome Bryanston's Head of Pastoral, Dr Preetpal Bachra, as he examines the 'soft rules' of social interaction.

The Head recently blogged about the core school rules. I always consider these to be the ‘hard rules’, i.e. those which tell you where you stand. In this blog I want to examine some of what might be termed the ‘soft rules’, especially those relating to social interaction and how these are evolving and changing.

As a general rule of thumb, I try not to forget what it was like to be a teenager and perhaps I should share a few observations from my own teenage years because, as Maya Angelou observed, 'we are more alike than we are unalike.'

At the age of 14, I became attracted to Eastern philosophy, but that may have been because I thought the yin and yang symbol was ‘cool’. John Bellaimy gives a simplistic view of it as the yin being the dark swirl and the yang being the light swirl, and each side has a dot of the opposite colour illustrating the concept that everything contains the seed of its opposite. I used to think the symbol was about balance in life but it is more to do with things not being complete opposites. Rather, things are relative to each other. We can act in certain ways but there is always the seed of the opposite that can extend from it. 

My life and how I saw the world at 14 may not be so different from how pupils see the world today, but there is a difference in how they interact with it. In my teenage years, I had one key aim, one key aspiration, and that was to be Bruce Lee. He starred in one of my favourite films of all time, Enter The Dragon, and there was one particular scene that I wanted to replicate. I would practise with my nunchakus and there were plenty of accidents. In fact, if people had videoed me then my outcomes may have found their way into the litany of ‘YouTube fails’.

The important difference is that my life was private and all those stages that I went through, I explored on my own. There are records of these stages, of course, housed in family photo albums, but none of them are in the public domain. I didn’t, and still don’t, honestly think anyone else would be interested in the goings-on in my life. Banksy, in an interview for Time Out in 2010, summed it up well, “I don't know why people are so keen to put the details of their private life in public; they forget that invisibility is a superpower.”

Today so much more of young people’s lives is on public display, and this isn’t without consequences. For example, in 2015 ChildLine conducted over 11,000 counselling sessions nationally with young people regarding online issues. And in a 2013 study for Northwestern University 29% of Facebook users surveyed reported ‘losing face’ from embarrassing content posted by friends. As a school we alert pupils to the dangers of putting themselves and their friends on public display through PSRE lessons, reminders of the support available, lectures about protecting themselves and so on.

This use of digital communication can lead to embarrassment and humiliation. The distinction between embarrassment and humiliation is that the former we bring on ourselves and the latter is brought on us by others. In 1998 a scandal broke in the US when Monica Lewinsky admitted relations with Bill Clinton, the then president. She did something that embarrassed her, but the response was intense because of how people commented.

From a psychological point of view, the comments Monica Lewinsky endured can be partly understood by the process of disassociation, i.e. the person commenting is separated from the victim and understanding the implications of their comments: they cease to remember that those people have feelings. And here is our soft rule: don’t put yourself out there. If pupils (or any of us) choose to share things that others do not want to be shared then it will humiliate them, and we take a very dim view of that.

Of course there are positives to the use of social media: the messages of support to each other; ensuring people are not left out; sharing happy times with loved ones; contact with family; the sharing of ideas to make us think and broaden our horizons, and we should remember that this is why technology has a place in our lives. It can be an incredible force for good and it should be used as such when appropriate.

However, we should all be careful what we post, be careful with other people’s privacy and not put ourselves in a position where we or our feelings, or those of others, might be abused. It is these soft, unspoken rules, along with the hard rules, that go some way to ensuring we can flourish and thrive within our own communities and the wider society in which we find ourselves.

School rules

“There are two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says: “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes: “What the hell is water?”

“It’s about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

“This is water.”

“This is water.”

David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some thoughts delivered on a significant occasion, about living a compassionate life

Every year I talk to the school at least once about our rules. As a school of 675 adolescents, you might expect pupils to need what the army calls ‘judicious repetition’. The result is that most Bryanstonians can quote these rules off by heart by the time they reach the B year … though that certainly doesn’t mean they’re all angels!

But why do we have rules? Simply put, without them we would find ourselves unable to live together in a number of more than two. And by and large, we human beings like each other’s company. As Aristotle put it over two thousand years ago: “Man is a social animal.”

I have worked in schools with endless volumes of school rules, neatly divided into sections and indeed subsections, which you were required to carry around in your blazer pocket and to produce on request – by the sort of teacher we all remember from our school days – with an appropriate flourish and an ability to quote with accuracy and reverence.

Bryanston’s fundamental rules are, by contrast, ultra simple. There are just four of them.

1. A breach of common sense or courtesy is a breach of school rules.
2. A breach of the law of the land is a serious breach of school rules 
3. We ban sex, drugs, alcohol and smoking and you are liable to be expelled for involvement in either of the first two. 
4. Furthermore, the following are automatic suspension offences: 
• night wandering, 
• being on the roof of the main building, 
• smoking in a building. 

Rules one and two cover pretty much everything that matters regarding anti-social, dangerous and illegal behaviour, whilst rules three and four are more specific, reflecting our own particular location and ethos. These four rules essentially form our constitution; they are the basis of our everyday interaction, helping individuals and the whole school to flourish. They make us Bryanston and not somewhere else.

Given that at Bryanston we more or less really enjoy each other’s company, and given that we therefore need rules for each to be able to do so, I think these rules are about as reasonable as any could be. Each term I make plain to pupils that I hope for no infractions but, should infractions occur, that they will be fairly and firmly dealt with, including the use, if necessary, of the sanction of departure from the school. I also spell out what that generally means for their poor parents, as such events are rarely convenient and very few schools consider admitting pupils who have left another school after breaking such core rules and values.

But there’s a second vital reason for our having rules at school, I think. As well as keeping each and every member of the school safe and well and in an environment in which they can flourish, I have a further duty, which I take seriously: to prepare our pupils for being a success in life.

Teddy Roosevelt used to say “The most important single ingredient in the formula for success is knowing how to get along with other people.” Put like that, it sounds easy. But I don’t think it is achievable without knowing you’re in the right place, recognising the rules of that place and the value of those rules. Pupils here at Bryanston might as well learn this life skill at 13, practise it until they get it spot on in this safe and stretching environment and then, hopefully, full of an enviable (perhaps even unequalled) emotional intelligence, they will be ready to go out and make a success of those next steps.

As adults, we are accustomed to encountering rules wherever we go. I want Bryanstonians to make sure they recognise the fundamental rules wherever they go; to question those rules if they need questioning; never to sign up for a set of rules which are morally bankrupt or with no core value; never to agree to play by rules they know to be wrong, lazy, or corrupting; and never to sell their soul for the sake of personal convenience or an easy life. Because that would make you an unhappy sheep. It’s about recognising and never letting go of what really matters. All of which leads me back, as do so many things that really matter, to the words of This Is Water, the wonderful commencement address by David Foster Wallace.

I want Bryanstonians to work out where they want to be, and how to play by those proper rules, which are an essential part of their environment. Then they can make their own unique contribution to the world, confidently and generously.

British values

This week we welcome Second Master, Peter Hardy, who looks at what British values are and how they are embodied at Bryanston.

Peter Hardy

For many the idea of a boarding school typifies British traditions, values and culture. Bryanston has always taken what it believes to be the best of these traditions and values and combined them with new ideas and thinking – et nova et vetera in action.

All schools in the UK are now required to ‘promote fundamental British values’ rather than simply respecting them, as previous government guidance stipulated. This change in language from respecting British values to actively promoting them is one that has resulted in a close inspection of how we promote these values at Bryanston across the school, whether in the classroom or simply through our daily interactions with each other.

The government outlines the fundamental British values as:

• Democracy 
• The rule of law 
• Individual liberty 
• Mutual respect and tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs.

As far as the rule of law is concerned, this is regularly emphasised. Pupils are taught about rules, regulations and expectations and this is underpinned by our own Rules and Regulations, Behaviour Policy and associated documents. The teaching of this is set in the context of the rule of law in the country as a whole and within the context of living together successfully in a full boarding school.

Pupils are also taught about the importance of making choices in the knowledge that they are living in a safe, secure and supportive environment at Bryanston. Individual liberty and personal freedom are emphasised, as are the risks that may apply. Underpinning this, boundaries and consequences are clearly laid out so that pupils are able to make their own sound judgements and informed decisions, as well as learning from their mistakes.

Respect for and knowledge of other faiths is welcomed, and is delivered regularly through both assemblies and also through the PSRE curriculum. In Chapel each week with D pupils the Chaplain promotes tolerance and a healthy respect for difference.

Underpinning all of this is the central role of democracy, which is also regularly promulgated in school assemblies and explored in various aspects of the curriculum and ECAs, including a Model UN and mock elections.

At Bryanston these values have been central to our ethos since our early days, even if we haven’t always labelled them as specifically “British”. Indeed, one could argue that these values are not unique to our own culture, either as a school or as a country. However one views them, it is clear that Bryanston pupils are exposed to the importance and significance of our shared British values and expected to live by them and be guided by them both in school and beyond.