WIDENING OUR PERSPECTIVE
The Vision for Winchester College may have been a well-balanced and sophisticated document when it was published in 2021 , but there was no doubt what the top-line was for journalists writing up the story . The College would for the first time in its history admit girls as full members of the school in two new purpose-built boarding houses . It seemed a change as seismic as the Epsom Derby becoming a jump race .
Nick Ferguson has a refreshingly honest summary of at least one of the reasons why the decision was made : ‘ I think it will change the character of the school , but probably for the better . One of the things I ’ ve learned from young OWs , people who are fairly fresh out of university , is that they say they didn ’ t know much about women : it is a problem to emerge at 18 knowing very little about the other sex .’
Steady on . In my time in the school there were some girls in the sixth form — two I think , as the daughters of dons . The question had been asked at that time , when James Sabben-Clare was Headmaster , whether to make the kind of expansion now planned , but the proposal was ultimately shelved . This time around the Governing Body carefully disposed with some arguments against making a change : that it would damage choice in a shrinking pool of boys ’ private schools , that you would be fundamentally changing the character of the school , and that you ’ d be ‘ messing around with 600 years of history ’. On the last point , Nick is very clear where he ended up : ‘ I came to the conclusion personally that no , the 600 years didn ’ t matter , that wasn ’ t the issue ; and you have to look forward not backwards .’
He also feels the admission of girls in V� th Book will increase standards in a school which unashamedly wants to select on the basis of ability .
‘ If we ’ d just taken in 100 more young boys , we would have been taking in the ones we currently turn down , so … we will up the quality … and that seemed to me essential for a school where quality is so important .’
And on the question of how the character of Winchester College would change , or as the plan puts it , the ‘ look and feel ’, he sees a number of likely changes , from greater variety in choirs and music to important changes in the teaching of Div , a matter close to the heart of all Wykehamists . Certainly when you speak to any OW , you get a torrent of memories of eclectic div subjects being taught by eccentrics , often with a passion that lingers in the memory decades later . I remember a heated debate at my time in the school , that there was too much
At home in Kilfinan
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