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school should be assigned to a national
bursary scheme for children who might
benefit from boarding. The scheme was
implemented by Ellen Wilkinson in the
early years of the Attlee Government,
but when the Conservatives returned to
power in 1951, they did not expand the
scheme but allowed it to linger on in a
desultory form. The failures stemmed
from a lack of political will, reinforced by
a shortage of public finance, inconsistent
support from boarding schools and LEAs,
and problems over the selection of pupils.
The general trend of thinking, however,
was clear. In December 1940, Churchill
told the pupils of Harrow that ‘when this
war is won, it must be one of our aims to
work to establish a state of society where
the advantages and privileges which
hitherto have been enjoyed by only the
few shall be far more widely shared by
the many, and by the youth of the nation
as a whole.’ Leeson himself reported in
The Public Schools Question (London:
Longmans, 1948) that ‘great numbers of
people came to see that the admission of
boys from Public Elementary Schools (if
there was a demand for it) would not only
fill vacant places, but was right in itself.’
Desmond Lee (Headmaster 1954-68)
Desmond Lee was perhaps the driest if
also most courteous of the Winchester
Chairmen. At the annual meeting at
Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1967 he
argued that HMC must ‘accept change
and have an eye on the outside world’. He
told the Conference that ‘the processes
of change are inescapable’. Quality
and excellence in education were his
overall theme. He had no hesitation
in declaring himself a meritocrat, and
he pleaded guilty to ‘overemphasising
the intellectual’. At the same time, he
acknowledged that education must
concern itself with the whole man: ‘this,
I believe, is a characteristic belief of all
English education’. If there had been a
deficiency inside English public schools,
it was to do with the artistic offer, which
was now much improved. In addition, the
curriculum in the Sixth Form should be
broader.
John Thorn (Headmaster 1968-85)
As Chairman of the Conference held
T he T rusty S ervant
at Christ Church in 1981, on the
characteristic theme ‘Arts, Science and
Society’, John Thorn dipped heavily
into Wiccamical contacts – Peter Jay
and Mary Warnock were key speakers.
He craved indulgence for saying the
usual things, but distinguished himself,
virtuosically, by saying them in an unusual
style. Independence was his first theme:
‘Weary of the struggle we may all be,
but the enemy guns keep thundering,
and to many of us their thunder seems
louder now, its note more menacing. I
would not want the gunners to think
that our own weapons were in mothballs
…’ Effortlessly, Thorn justified his views
via reference to Edmund Burke and J S
Mill. Burke argued that the destruction
of ancient or well established institutions
is fraught with unpredictable peril. Mill
argued that power can only rightfully be
exercised over any member of a civilised
community against his will if this is in
order to prevent harm to others. In
swashbuckling style, Thorn argued that
‘the existence of some educational activity
which is not subject to ultimate Treasury
control must mean that in some places
lights which governments cannot afford
to fuel are kept burning. The lights may
give little illumination to some blinkered
eyes. They may appear, just at the time, to
be nationally unimportant. But once out,
they may never be lit again.’
Thorn’s second theme is an enlightened
curriculum: ‘We want from our
curriculum, not merely certain sorts of
knowledge, certain special intellectual
techniques, the use of certain sorts
of language – not merely that, but
certain qualities of mind and spirit.’
Thorn argues for what he calls ‘an
educated sensibility’. The speech is
full of literary illusions, none longer
than the quotation of the complete
text of Hardy’s poem ‘Afterwards’, on
which Thorn comments, ‘If the decline
of religious faith is accompanied by a
decline in the sensibility which art can
nurture in us, then we shall have a double
tragedy on our hands’. Thorn is scathing
about the maintained sector. ‘We have
alongside ourselves not what I would
call a properly “maintained sector”, but
a “partly maintained sector”. …the
3
education of 94% of the nation’s children
is being allowed to languish and decay.’
Thorn ends, ‘I find the message is this:
education is far too important to be left to
governments, central or local.’
James Sabben-Clare
(Headmaster 1985-2000)
In Bristol in 1999, James Sabben-Clare’s
theme was ‘High Expectations’. This
was more Leeson than Thorn – a civil
servant’s summary of the mechanics
necessary to improve education within
independent schools, with perhaps less
of a general national theme. Consistent
with Thorn and Leeson, however, is
the emphasis on a broad education:
‘I worry that the notion of success is
being interpreted in too narrow a way
(in football speak, a matter of “getting a
result”).’ The speech is highly practical –
concerns about modular exams and about
AS Levels, concerns about UCAS and
concerns about PQA. Explicit in Sabben-
Clare, and implicit in Thorn, if not on
the horizon for Ridding, is the plea ‘surely,
we are not going to allow our educational
policy to be dictated by the publication of
results.’
One paragraph is singularly reminiscent
of Dickens: ‘When I was thirteen I knew
a great deal of Latin and Greek. I was
pretty hot on grammatical exceptions in
French, but would hardly have been able
to understand a word spoken to me, if I
had visited that country.’ Sabben-Clare
majors on ‘the inestimable benefit of
freedom, to choose our pupils and our
staff, to determine our priorities, to modify
our curriculum’. He is an enemy of league
tables, judgment by results and failure to
recognise the benefits of scholarship and
extra-curricular activity. He ends with a
fairly impossible dream that Government
should contribute to independent school
costs.
In summary, key themes are:
• Breadth.
• Scholarship.
• Standards.
• Extra-curricular activity.
• Independence from Government.
• Attempts (ever decreasingly
successful) to cooperate with
Government.