Speech Day reflections

As another school year comes to an end, Sarah Thomas looks ahead to the future with one foot firmly rooted in the past. Discover why she believes that Bryanston’s motto of “Et Nova et Vetera” – both the new and the old – is more apt than ever.

Back in January, Bryanston turned 90 and through OB Simon Wheeler’s (C ’93) extraordinary series of films, we are able to look back and remind ourselves of why this school is so special. The place, the people, the ideas and the principles that continue to guide us. In June, we were able to look forward, with the announcement of my successor.  I’m delighted that Mark Mortimer will be leading Bryanston onwards and upwards from September 2019 and look forward to having a year in which I can do whatever makes most sense to allow him, his lovely wife Anna and their three children, to get to know this wonderful school. 

Speeches in the Elder Concert Hall

At last year’s Speech Day, the Chairman spoke on the theme of necessary change and evolution within schools. Schools do change.  They must; they would disappear into oblivion if they did not.  But that does not mean that the things that matter must change.  Our guiding principles of creativity, breadth of ambition, individuality, the sense of a loving family, of humanity, and of resilience, have been embedded in our DNA since 1928 and will endure, I am certain, because of Bryanston’s collective good sense, the quality of the governors, and their choice of excellent headmasters. Those guiding principles will ensure that Bryanston continues to evolve boldly and positively, without losing the critical constituents of what makes Bryanston Bryanston.

Peter Tait, former headmaster of Sherborne Prep and a great friend of Bryanston, likes to torment us with this question: ‘What is a proper curriculum?’ Are we still, in effect, teaching what we taught 50 years ago, regardless of new, more relevant subjects, and without reference to what our pupils actually learn from them?  Teaching is not after all learning.  Then there are the real-world issues: funding for state schools and affordability for the independent sector; the fact that more overseas children are now educated in branches of UK independent schools abroad than here in the UK; and above all there’s the looming threat of AI. What kind of world are we actually preparing our young people for? And how do independent schools – how does Bryanston – stay relevant in the face of the fantastically significant changes that are coming our way? 

Duncan Emerson directs the orchestra

Sir Anthony Seldon in his book The Fourth Education Revolution challenges the model which most schools still adhere to – that of The Third Revolution: industrialised learning; schools as factories; chalk and talk, or its 21^st-century equivalent, Powerpoint and talk. Sir Anthony predicts we will meet the challenges of AI by adopting a new model and following a 5-point plan: (i) ending early specialisation in schools; (ii) investing in staff who understand learning and analytics and technology; (iii) emphasising the human in education, to produce competent adults who are better than any algorithm; (iv) personalising learning; (v) challenging and stretching young people, by making school more than about lessons.

Guests relax in the sunshine

This is precisely the model that Bryanston has striven to follow, and with some success, over the past 90 years, often in defiance of the conventional wisdom that academic success is the be all and end all. Ending early specialisation? Embracing personalised learning? Stretching our pupils beyond the classroom? Look at our tutorial system and the Dalton Plan, our correction periods and one-to-one attention to the individual.  Added to that, we have a curriculum that is particularly diverse in the formative D year, an extraordinary range of extra-curricular opportunities and an A level programme which always seeks to ensure there are no impossible subject combinations. And better still, the IB.

Tennis on the grass courts

Bryanston’s model has explicitly set out to help children to develop the human.  It’s why Bryanstonians invariably end up in such a range of careers and don’t necessarily trot off into those professions which, we are told, will soon no longer exist. At Bryanston we have always known that education is not about mere subjects.  It’s about an outlook, an attitude, a lifelong ability to learn and adapt; to work in teams; to influence and persuade; to direct and lead. To laugh at yourself and to put things right when you’ve gone wrong. The future requires real people, with real values and real emotional intelligence. And real education.

Whilst the changes technology have brought have been huge (both for good and bad) I am happy to predict that one of the longer terms effects might be that we refocus upon, and rejoice in, what makes us human, not machine. Because the world changes – we all know that – but what does not change is what it takes to be human.

School lingo

This week the Head, Sarah Thomas, demystifies the language of schools, including the word tutor, which has a particular resonance for Bryanston.

Schools are full of the most remarkable lingo. I’ve worked at a school where prefects were called praepostors (but were generally known as pollies); where lines (the sort you write as punishment for a minor offence) were called solaces; where some senior members of staff were known as Div Heads (you might imagine how one slip of a typing finger could turn that particular title into something much more of an insult). Of course, Bryanston has its own language too: Every day, we use terms such as hsm (pronounced, as one Good School Guide entry some years ago put it, to rhyme with bosom), correction periods (which to me conjures images of medieval torture implements), EMRs and breakers, to name but a few. Hsm, a rather wonderful piece of non-gender-specific language, thankfully all but eliminated one of my own favourite spellcheck-induced typos – housemattress, which computers tend to prefer to the rather unwieldy housemaster/mistress.

EMRs (Early Morning Reports, requiring pupils to report to a prefect early in the morning), breakers (a breaktime run) and the now defunct nooners (an afternoon run) refer to forms of punishment for minor misdemeanours and hark back to Bryanston’s early years. As a new foundation, keen to move on from some of the more questionable public-school traditions, Bryanston was, from very early on, a school that did not believe in corporal punishment, so perhaps we should not be surprised that there exists a canon of pure BrySpeak about the alternative ways of confronting errant behaviour.

As for correction periods, perhaps we should call them You-Won’t-Believe-Your-Luck periods. Rooted firmly in the language of the Dalton Plan and long modified over the decades into, in effect, the Bryanston system, these are the times pupils spend with their individual teachers, one to one, or perhaps in pairs, in the sixth form (and from B upwards in some subjects), which allow them to review last week’s work and build upon it, looking forward and planning improvements. It’s a wonderfully individual method: some pupils can use the correction periods to ensure everything covered thus far has been clearly understood; others can use them to push their work on into new, limitless areas. No one else need know which of the two it is.

And then, of course, there’s the tutor. A word commonly used in schools and universities, at Bryanston it has a unique resonance, which owes more to its Latin derivation: watcher, protector, defender, guardian. I’ve been at Bryanston now for 13 years and am clear that one of the jewels in the crown (and there are several) is our tutoring system.

All tutors at Bryanston are assigned to pupils by me. It is one of my most important tasks as Head. Of course, I can’t do it alone – I have the help of my senior team of Admissions Registrar, Director of Admissions, Deputy Head Academic, and Senior Tutor. I also have a range of information to inform my decisions, from my conversations with the pupils themselves before they arrive at Bryanston and from a series of references supplied by the pupils’ current school.

I know our tutors very well. No one can tutor at Bryanston unless they have taught here for a year and been trained during that first year by the senior tutors. A tutor is assigned to a pupil on the basis of compatibility and interest at 13, and at 16 on the basis of direction too (for example, a 16-year-old entrant might well know they want to study in the USA or become a doctor and I can choose a tutor accordingly). There is nothing accidental or arbitrary about who tutors whom. It is not done on the basis of which house the pupil happens to be in or which members of staff happen to be on that house team. It is done on the basis of the pupil.

A tutorial between tutor and tutorial pupil will always be a one-to-one situation. The basis of the relationship is an academic one, with a focus upon the chart (now electronic, ripe for its update in September, and part of the system in one form or another since the school’s earliest day). But no child conveniently drops into two halves, one academic the other pastoral. And so, no tutor only deals with the academic, but also discusses general pastoral concerns (which will be shared with the hsm as appropriate) as well as, crucially at Bryanston, the extra-curricular life of the pupil in this school full of amazing and diverse extra-curricular opportunities.

I have had two daughters through Bryanston and each of them flourished in no small thanks to their fine tutors, Neil Boulton (Bryanston legend par excellence) and Hannah Fearnley ( a woman of enormous warmth, wit and wisdom). I don’t think there’s another school that does this essential job of looking after pupils as well as we do and that’s because I think our system is the tip top of it all. I am convinced that, whilst I logically might have to concede that my girls might have done as well or better in some respects elsewhere, because they are, when all is said and done, two wonderful girls (I am biased!), they would, simply put, not have enjoyed their universities (and yes, they were multiple in each case) as they did without Bryanston’s tutorial system, nor gained the degrees they did (likewise multiple), nor found the directions they did, nor even the careers they have.

I rarely wear my heart so boldly on my sleeve, because my nature is towards the self-deprecatory but I am passionate about this. Some people have remarked that some of my colleagues, such as Edrys Barkham, are evangelical about our tutorial system. Well, perhaps that’s because, just for once, we know, absolutely know, that we are right.

A face-to-face place

This week we welcome our Deputy Head (Academic), Dr David James, who reflects on the importance of face-to-face relationships.
Evidence seems to grow each week that mobile technology could be playing a significant role in the rise of mental health issues among young people. Of course, being online is not in itself a bad thing: you could be on Google Art Project researching Caravaggio, while listening to Handel’s Messiah on Spotify. There are endless opportunities to be educated and uplifted on an iPad or mobile phone, and it should not be forgotten, in the rush to ban technology from our schools, that, as one teacher puts it, not all screen time is equal. This is complicated enough when one is an adult: we should know when to close the lid of the laptop, or to switch our phones to airplane mode in order to get some rest, or to read a book. Having said that, many parents are as guilty of modern social faux pas, such as phubbing, as their children. How many meals have been ruined because Mum or Dad simply has to reply to that email? But teenagers may be under more pressure to keep Snapstreaks going, or to move to the next mission in GTA without letting their friends down, than adults are to keep email correspondence alive. To adolescents, friendships and being accepted by others have always been of profound importance. And, like much of the world today, a lot of that has moved online, which in turn has made it - and the possible concomitant shaming - more public.

Such things shouldn’t surprise us. But what should alarm all parents and teachers (and indeed anyone with any interest in the wellbeing of young people) is that social media companies have deliberately made their sites as addictive as possible. When Sean Parker, an early investor in Facebook, claims that the company is deliberately “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology” then the laid-back West Coast mask that Mark Zuckerberg wears begins to slip a little; and when Parker admits that Facebook’s effect on children “literally changes your relationship with society, with each other...God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains,” then the reality dawns that these new companies may be just as ruthless at exploiting human frailty, and addictive tendencies, as Marlboro, McDonald’s, and Jack Daniels. As Roger Daltrey once famously sang: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Where do schools fit into this? Well, we could go to one extreme and ban all technology from our site (just as a junior school popular with Palo Alto CEOs has done, which in itself raises some disturbing questions), but we suspect that teenagers, being teenagers, will find a way around that. In addition, parents understandably want to keep in touch with their children when they’re at boarding school, and so even asking pupils to hand over their devices for long periods of time (as is becoming popular in some US schools) presents certain problems as well. Plus, to reiterate what I said before, there is so much wonderful stuff out there that actively aids learning that only the most retrogressive and anti-intellectual educational establishment would contemplate switching it off at source.

But perhaps the solution to the challenges that technology is presenting us with now is, literally, staring us in the face. And what we’re looking at is another human face. An anecdote that might illuminate my point. When I was interviewing a pupil who wanted to join Bryanston from her day school last term, I asked her why she wanted to give up the 4.15pm finishes, and have lessons on a Saturday. Her answer has stayed with me ever since. She said: “I’m a face-to-face person, and I guess this is a face-to-face place.” She went on to say that the many arguments that teenagers have via WhatsApp and Snapchat tend to escalate after school. By the time the pupils return to school the next day, or on Monday, grievances have deepened because correspondence has occurred via text, not voice. We all know that a simple statement like “I hate you” can be spoken with venom and with humour, and how we modulate our tone makes all the difference. But as a flat, written text, it can be destructive. For my interviewee the answer was simple: she wanted to talk to people, and in doing so form bonds and friendships that are robustly independent of Zuckerberg’s nefarious network. For her, Bryanston would provide her with more opportunity to make real and lasting friendships. Through articulating our ideas to others we make sense of our thoughts to them, and to our own self, at the same time. For young people this is an essential part of establishing their own identities. In time, I have no doubt, the miracle that is the human voice will win out over cold digital dialogue. Ideally, both will add richness to our lives. But it is perhaps only in a boarding school that the time and space, and the opportunities, are so varied, and allow for such ongoing interaction, that our young people develop in a more fully human way.

90 years young!

As we approach our 90th anniversary, our Head, Sarah Thomas, looks at why a school that is proud of being young still celebrates getting older.

Bryanston will be 90 years old (or 90 years young, however you look at it) on 24th January. On that day in 1928, the school doors opened to the 23 boys and seven members of staff in the old Portman palace at the top of the two-mile drive from Blandford Forum.

Bryanston really is still a young school, and one that is proud to remember its founding father’s vision, of a school offering exceptional care for, and genuine interest in, each of its pupils (through, amongst other things, the incomparable house and tutoring structure) and where pupils are encouraged to thrive and to find joy in whatever they happen, legitimately, to be excellent at, as well as guided and supported through the other things they might find more difficult or more tedious perhaps as part of their educational endeavours.

So, why should a school proud of being young celebrate being older? I think there are various reasons from my (very ephemeral) point of view. Firstly, Bryanston likes a good party. After all, it’s what the place was built for. Look at those magnificent rooms in the centre of the house, now Dorchester, Grosvenor and Cowley, and feel the sprung dance floor. I was once shown a guest book for the 1900 New Year’s Eve party at Bryanston when it still belonged to the Portman family. It sounds like a spectacular evening: fireworks and dry ice! And what is life if it is not possible to enjoy special occasions? It’s right to mark those significant moments in life. Next, I think it’s worth celebrating the fact that the Bryanston model – somewhat arriviste compared to those venerable schools which date back to the 15th and 16th centuries – is not only thriving, but that other older schools have, we like to think, adopted some of our ideas and methods (more adult interest in pupils; better tutoring; a junior boarding house system). Thirdly, I think it’s always important to remember, and to remember to re-state, the values upon which any school is founded. Schools which do otherwise invariably lose their way in matters of ethos and identity.

As a school, we routinely consider what is important to us, through regular reviews of our mission statement, strategic planning, prospectus and other communications to current and prospective parents and pupils. As part of the planning involved in identifying my successor, we recently put together Bryanston’s Guiding Principles.

None of these should come as a surprise. Although, of course, there is a certain element of Berocca about it all. Some of the headlines took a few tussles between us here and there (and rightly so), but you will, I hope, find these principles running through all we say and do – and all we always have said and done. As Bryanston gets ready to find and then welcome its seventh Head, as we eat cake and watch the 90 films put together by the irrepressible Simon Wheeler (C 1993), and as we raise our metaphorical (in some cases) glass to our 90th birthday, what better or more joyful way to do it than to ‘make a noise’ (as I believe they say) in the arid world of 21st-century education: “We are Bryanston! We know what really matters! We’re going strong and here’s to the next 90 years!”

et nova et vetera!

Join in the celebration of Bryanston's 90th anniversary by following Bry90 on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

Education: a life-long process

This week Bryanston Head, Sarah Thomas, looks at the purpose of school and and why education isn't merely a preparation for life, but a part of life itself. 

The notion that school is a training ground (or worse, a holding pen), where you must hold your breath until you’re allowed to leave 13 years later and only then practise the stuff you’ve been taught therein, ought to be a pretty outmoded concept. Some people, of course, still cling to this idea that school is a place in which you acquire those particular skills and qualifications which will see you gain a particular job when you join the workforce. One is reminded of the sixties poster: “Be alert. Your country needs lerts.”

Many years ago I listened to a headmaster telling a hall full of parents that life is a great journey – and school is the place where you pack your suitcase. An interesting metaphor. There was an implication that stuffing your bag with academic qualifications was the best preparation, and I am reminded of this whenever I interview supremely qualified graduates who can’t find their own way out of my office.

From its beginnings in 1928, Bryanston has taken a different approach. We’re interested in learning as well as teaching, and doing as well as thinking about doing. I can’t honestly think of a more stultifying thing to say to a child at five, 13 or 16 than “Keep being taught; one day you’ll find it useful.” One of the great things about a boarding school education is that you don’t just attend lessons or take part in matches or concerts, rather you really live your life, at school, throughout term time. Your friends are here; your work and play are here; your active life is here.

Living life is a good idea whatever age you are. We none of us know what is just around the corner. Thankfully all attempts to predict the future, whether by astrologers, or economists (and remember the saying ‘Economics is the only field in which two people can win the Nobel Prize for saying exactly the opposite thing’), or even the gloomy Calvinist determinists, are easily debunked by evidence … and if you need cheering up on that final score, just watch the ‘Thank God it’s Doomsday’ episode of The Simpsons (series 16, episode 9) in which Homer predicts the Rapture.

One of my favourite poems is Days by Philip Larkin.

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come and wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

And we encourage our pupils to do just that. At Bryanston, the abundant life (the phrase from the Bible which former Bryanston headmaster Thorold Coade so liked about a life well lived) is about work and friends; it’s about imagination and creativity; it’s about living in a supportive environment where you can try out new things and discover what you’re good at, and what you’re not so good at; who can support you and whom you yourself can and should support. It’s about making friends, learning to get on with people (even those with whom you are not naturally friendly) and the different ways to finding a sense of fulfilment, whether you are 16 or 60. I hope it’s a learning that takes pupils way beyond the lovely gates of Bryanston School.

Education is a life-long process for all of us. I’m still learning: some days more than others. And I’m absolutely convinced that learning is not something that simply happens to you. It is something to be embraced and engaged with. It should be active and lively and difficult and fun. Just like life.

Creating the right environment

One of the most difficult questions I have faced as Head came about ten years ago, during a Blues’ (prefects’) meeting.

“So, what do you do as a head then?”

I think the boy was rather surprised, firstly that the words hadn’t just rolled around inside his mind but had actually come out of his mouth, and secondly by the moment’s profound silence with which all his fellow Blues had met his earnest enquiry.

It seemed to me a perfectly decent question (though somewhat unexpected in the context of the meeting). I muttered something in reply, about welcoming lots of prospective pupils and parents, dealing with lots of current pupils and parents, watching matches every Saturday, the odd bit of Latin teaching, and - my least favourite activity of all time - attending meetings. And, worse still, meetings about meetings. I have often mused subsequently that none of this did justice to Jonathan’s question.

A head’s job is frankly a rather barmy one. You have what one of my governors once described as a large number of different client stakeholders. There are, of course, pupils and prospective pupils, parents and prospective parents, current staff, former staff, former pupils, governors past and present, and other members of the extended Bryanston family. There are also relations to be maintained with other schools, particularly, but not exclusively, prep schools (I and other members of staff govern at a wide range of them) and we may even be involved in an academy school too. But that is still not enough of an answer to Jonathan’s question. It’s just the transactional stuff.

I spend a good deal of my time on the above, it’s true, and my diary looks like a piece of cake some days and a merciless assault course other days. And that despite the careful ministrations of clever and kind PAs. If you’re not careful you can spend too much time in your study and not enough time out and about. I struggle to escape sometimes. And having started my career as an unimpressive articled clerk to a notary public, I’m a bit allergic to being stuck behind a desk.

The truth is that the job of a head is not a job at all. It’s a vocation. And the thing that drives me, and I believe all my colleagues in all schools of different shapes and sizes, is the physical and mental wellbeing and intellectual and spiritual growth of all the pupils in our care. It’s what gets us out of bed every morning. It’s what takes me from D chapel on weekday mornings (not often enough, I’m ashamed to say) to A3 discussion groups on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. It’s what draws me to the touchline, to the theatre, to the art studio and the concert hall. There is a joy and energy, which frankly can only be gained from spending time in the company of talented and interesting pupils and staff. It can’t be found from behind a desk. In fact, it’s hard to imagine it can be found in many other walks of life.

I believe my job is to create the right environment. One in which our pupils and staff can thrive and enjoy teaching and learning. It’s what I aim for. Sometimes that seems a ridiculously ambitious aim. Other times the world spins perfectly on its axis and everything seems to be swept along in this joyful endeavour. The real reward, of course, is in seeing our young people leave school at 18 ready to take on the world with confidence. That’s when you really know you’ve done your job as a head. And that, I hope, at long last, goes at least some way to answering Jonathan’s question.