At the close of this Academic Year 2024-25, I’ve sought to summarise the lessons I’ve learned over the last 12 months, In Blog 1 advised “Speak truth, build and give trust”, Blog 2 “Show up on time, know the text and have an idea” and to close “Be Curious, Not Judgemental”. The quote is attributable to the American poet, Walt Whitman, yet I gathered it from a wonderful scene from Ted Lasso, in which the American football coach surprises a pub audience that he can play darts really well. The endearing point of the scene is that, as so often in life, those who think they know often underestimate the skills and talents of those around them, or in his case, of a foreigner from the US knowing anything about the pub game of darts, let alone being able to throw triple 20, triple 20 and bull in a set of 3. Fortunately, you don’t need to subscribe to Apple TV, the scene in question is here.

As I have written to parents in my end of term letter, here, my brother and I could not be more proud of Claires Court’s achievements, where the support of our parents and guardians lies at the heart of every occasion. Outside of the limited catchment area of our day school in the Eastern Thames Valley, few know of the school, unless they move in one of our common circles of influence. Therein lies the rub, because it is expected that such schools have only one or 2 areas in which they shine, their chosen specialities. Claires Court covers the age range 2-18, so it might be thought that we don’t work to scale, yet with 981 on school roll as school closed yesterday, taught by 173 teachers, with additional learning support, nurses, school administrators and all, that’s a powerful faculty that do understand teaching, learning and welfare very strongly indeed. 

Newspapers like judging schools, providing league tables and the like, yet have no mechanism at all how to judge schools that choose not to select their entry on ability. I feel a little uneasy to highlight that the Telegraph rates Claires Court as ‘poor value’, suggesting that’s because we don’t have a squash court, golf course, stable or theatre, and apparently, to cap it all, we don’t row. Of course, I have written to ben.butcher@telegraph.co.uk, the journalist concerned, but as with Labour MPs, I’ve had no reply and expect to get none. This is no lonely lament; it’s true for all the inclusive independent schools in the country, including Millfield and Royal Hospital School, which I mention because we’ve been in competition with them recently in national finals for tennis and sailing, respectively. Of course, I’d love to find us named in the ‘Tatler’ or ‘Muddy Stilettos’ awards of the year, but that requires us to pay a very large sum of money, and that get’s ‘trumped by the school’s leading key value of Integrity. We continue to promise our parents to keep our costs down, and to spend all we can to maintain the quality of provision, teaching, learning and access to both opportunities and support as necessary. Many years ago, Australia produced a value-added measure for its schools, which showed how successful a school’s students were 4 years on. Did the progress the young people made during their education get maintained as they left university? For us, that’s an indicator we follow really carefully, and from September 2025 plan to add post-Uni support for our alumni, because even if the majority graduate with 1sts or 2/1s, there is no guarantee of a job afterwards.

The EdTech community are curious, and follows what we do at Claires Court with considerable interest. First school in the UK to the cloud with what is now known as Google Workspace (2012), then first in the World outside the US with Merlyn AI in the Junior Classroom (2021), it’s going to be a real challenge for the school to move forwards with promoting a SMARTphonefree childhood whilst embracing all the lessons that need to be gathered around Agentive AI and how to use those tools intelligently. These seem very similar to me to the challenges provided by the arrival of the motor car over 160 years ago, when in 1865, the Liberal government of Lord Palmerston passed the Locomotive Act, soon to become known as the Red Flag Act, with the extraordinary stipulation that any self-propelled road vehicle had to be preceded by a person walking at least 60 yards ahead, carrying a red flag.  With all the benefits of hindsight, the Red Flag Act, according to one writer, “effectively stopped innovation in powered road transport in Britain for over a quarter of a century”.

In common with other thinkers in this area, I’ve been very aware of the dangers of TV, video games, phones & tablets upstairs in children’s bedrooms for decades. Circa 2000, I suggested to parents that they leave a basket at the bottom of the staircase in which the family phones were deposited rather than follow everyone upstairs. It prove to be particularly helpful, because the text messaging that preceded WhatsApp, Snapchat and Messenger were already proving to be toxic, and the kids needed to escape even then! As a school we’ve chosen to leave X as a vehicle, and we know that some 50% of our parents already shun social media, other than the local social groups on WhatsApp or Signal. It’s fair to say that no-one trusts Elon Musk, owner of X, but I do have a high regard for Meredith Whittaker, President of the Signal Foundation, which owns the Signal App. In March this year, she spoke about the real danger of adults just giving permission to AI to unite all their applications using their AI assistant, describing the user as being willing to put ‘their brain in a jar on the shelf’. To reduce the need for parents to use interactive Social Media, we post Flickr albums too on the school website, because everyone does like a good photoshoot!

So, inline with staying curious, I’ve kept a close eye all year on Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education, who continues to ignore my calls for engagement and collaboration. Her latest pronouncement on getting children ready for school, which requires “4-year-olds to sit still so they can learn”, shows a breathtaking ignorance of the Early Years Foundation stage, and has once again opened up howls of disbelief from experts in the field. I quote parenting specialist Kirsty Ketley, who makes this crystal clear: ‘The issue isn’t that these kids aren’t ready for school, it’s that schools often aren’t ready for them. It’s not just that they can’t sit still.  It’s that so many of them don’t know how to play. They can scroll an iPad and smartphone independently, but when it comes to real, independent, curious, creative play… no idea. We’ve taken away the space for it. We’ve filled every moment with screens, schedules, and adult direction and then wonder why kids can’t settle in Reception. And for neurodivergent children? It’s even tougher. If we’re serious about school readiness, we need to bring back unstructured, imaginative play, build classrooms that work for all children, not just the neurotypical ones, and above all support parents instead of judging them.

We have whole books written in recent years to assist us in the field of education, perhaps the best one in the field (if a little dated) is Daniel Willingham’s “When can you trust the experts? How to tell Good Science from Bad in Education”.  Where all the advice books fail is to assist parents in getting out of the swamp once they are stuck in the middle, without a boat or paddle. That’s been particularly difficult as the emergence of really anxious children is now at such volumes that children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) are overwhelmed. The key is always to work together, to find common ground, build future enthusiasms and not be dictated to be the ‘it’s not fair’ initial reaction of the child. Life truly is not fair, and we have to be realistic. In England, we always have an opportunity to reset the child-school relationship at the juncture of primary and secondary, and it’s in this area that senior schools can be particularly insensitive, loading children with 3 hours of homework a night and expecting parents to carry the burden. Where parents can be particularly helpful is in the encouragement of reading, and if not of text only, with picture books too, and to supplement those by listening to tapes, made just as easy now as in the last century using Yoto players for example. Whether reading or listening, there is a benchmark time of 20 minutes that allows for vocabulary to pass from short-term memory into the long-term, and that builds attention spans and concentration. Likewise, where schools have given up teaching handwriting, suggesting that the keyboard makes handwriting irrelevant, they are having to put into place handwriting recovery plans because the very act of fine motor control helps build neural networks across the brain that increase the child’s agility to recall information and manipulate objects in 3 dimensions. It’s no accident that my school has stayed closely involved with managing dyslexia in the classroom. It’s not an SEN but a different way of thinking, and many dyslexics, as they move into adult life, find their creative ways of thinking are highly valued. 

And finally, of course, I am proud that our Year 9 boys made national news last week through the saving of a man’s life on the River Thames, an unexpected addition to their successful DofE Bronze Expedition award. Critics of our sector blame us because many state school children don’t have the same opportunity to learn these practical skills, and attach yet another ‘privilege’ label to us as a consequence. As the headlines in the Yachts and Yachting magazine made clear this month, this is where Claires Court truly understands why being a really active partner in the local community, investing in and sharing facilities and opportunities, puts that criticism in the bin, by running a regatta for all comers over the weekend. 

Secretary of State Bridget Phillipson and her Labour constituency MPs refuse to visit schools like ours, stating that they are there to provide support for the state sector only. So they will stay ‘Judgemental’, of schools like ours, of families like ours, of communities like ours, and ignore the many and varied opportunities that a collaborative partnership could bring to benefit all. As with the Red Flag decision 160 years ago, whilst this government remains in power, they will effectively stop innovation in children’s education, health and welfare for the foreseeable future and damage the young people they purport to represent for their lifetime.