The full quote by Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United State (1913-21) is “You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”  He spoke these words well before his time as President , whilst Professor at Princeton, then not a fully fledged University, when speaking the annual address to the College fraternity. Now as then, these are remarkable words for young people to hear, as it helps fashion in their imaginations some shape to ambition and enterprise.

We have just celebrated our Secondary Schools Speech Day, and been won over completely by a 21st Century educator, this one a Vice President of Discovery Education, an enterprise somewhat different and in terms of scale, somewhat larger it must be said than Princeton of yore. Our guest speaker was Susanne Thompson, teacher, facilitator, mentor and from the Northern states rather than the South as Wilson was. Speaking to some 1200 of our community gathering of pupils, students, faculty, parents and guests, Susanne held us spell bound.  “Please raise your hands if you have failed!” she asked of us. Dutifully, we all raised our hands. She did not draw our attention to the great and wonderful things we were capable of doing, but to the many and various daily failures to which we managed to succumb.

Citing by pictorial quotation in her talk she reminded us of the very many career failures of Michael Jordan, of Thomas Edison’s mantra that he had but found 10,00 ways that did not work, that a google search on celebrating failure throws up almost 40 million ways so to do, and perhaps my favorite, J.K. Rowling’s take “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case you have failed by default.”

Honestly, as Susanne met each of the prize winners by hand, she made them feel very special, for that moment in the spotlight, one could see a very real connection of interest in the learner. Children and adults know that they are likely to ‘fail’ much of the time, and that can weigh us down, stifle ambition and kill curiosity. Her closing thoughts for us were to remember to fail forward; “that’s the way to ensure you make progress”.

It might seem odd to you, dear reader, that I mix the thinking from two Americans separated by 120 years. What was so obvious yesterday was that Susanne Thompson was assisting her great forebear in the mission to open our children’s eyes to what was possible, as exemplified by their many and various successes. “Carry on, learn from the wonderful examples around you and take your failures as lessons to help you succeed further in the future.”

At the close, Susanne confided in us (a personal message it must be said, each just for our own hearing); “My father was Scottish, my mother was English” she said. And suddenly she was in our hearts, to take home at Claires Court, ‘one of us’, to nourish our future days, sometimes to learn from our failures I guess, and more often I hope to build our future successes.

Please come back shortly when this blog is published.

Last week’s is below \|/

It has been a funny old holiday, drier than other summers I can remember, yet colder than most in recent years. Perhaps the Principals are to blame; in commissioning Agripower to seed some 15 acres of our new fields adjacent to CCJB, we took a calculated risk that a June sowing might get caught in drought and need overseeding later in the year. So dry had been May, that we had been able to sift almost all the stones and lay them under an almost perfect tilth of 20 cm or so. The seeds were drilled, and lo, as if Noah had called for the rain, it fell from the sky. Not it must be said as a deluge, which would have washed all our good work away, but just enough every few days to support the growth of a wonderful sward of the finest playing field.

We have just treated it with a mix of weed and autumn nutrient, to keep the grass growing, and to kill the pea and dandelion that seemed to enjoy the conditions just as much. The photo shows the 2 cricket squares (just) sat gently in a wonderful rolling landscape.

The wonderful thing about summer is that we also reap other rewards from our work. Here’s Matthew Becksmith, one of our new graduates just down from Durham University with a 1st class honours degree BSc (Geography) writing about his year to come:

“After an internship with PwC  in their Pensions Audit department in the Reading office last summer I received a job offer from them, which I have deferred to a September 2016 start. So in the meantime I’m having a post-uni gap year, currently working at the Belgian Arms in Holyport to earn some money before heading to Canada in November to be a ski instructor in Whistler for the winter. If I’ve got any money left I hope to travel in Central America next summer before cracking on with the ACA accountancy qualification next Autumn.”

Matthew’s brother Adam was one of the Year 13 students completing their A levels this summer. Adam gained straight A grades and is off to study at Bristol University, and really was quite an extraordinary pleasure to meet his parents on results day. His parents were extraordinarily proud that both boys have become such outstanding adults, and not just because they have got the grades, but because they have done so in such style. 2 brothers, both unexpected leaders of their generation, completely different in the way they get on with life, yet set for exciting futures both.

You’ll hear more next week as we run up to Speech Day, of our Head girl and boy, Ellie Rayer (England U23 Hockey international, now studying at Loughborough (yes back already for Hockey training) studying Sports Science, and George Monk (3xA*) off to read Chemistry at Oxford and of so many more outstanding characters off in the main to higher education, though some to work as well, for which they are well suited. We enjoyed our best ever series of A level results this Summer, with 53+% gaining A*, A and B. I know I bang on about being a broad ability school and all the benefits that brings, and here’s the proof once more that we would not have been a better school if we had deselected the bottom half to give us 100% A*, A and B.

Only one 8’s crew a year can boast being British Rowing’s National Champions, and here’s Chris Clarke and the Claires Court crew that won the blue ribbon event at Strathclyde at the end of July. Walking around school today, meeting the boys for the first time since their regatta win, it was rather touching to find they still had their medals in their pocket. Pinching themselves they were, even 6 weeks since their victory. With three of the boat club winning international selection for England or GB, it’s no surprise the crew still seemed to be walking on water.

If all seems green, one wonderful old girl of the school bit the dust this Summer. Our Wellingtonia, planted we think in 1853, started showing severe signs of distress 2 years ago, and this summer started dying back quite badly. The old dame started leaning even more dramatically towards the school, so sadly, we had to scale her for the first time and gently, carefully lower down to the ground. Here’s that process half way through, and you can see the obvious difference in vigour on the sides of the tree. The good news is that I have saved the odd branch and plan to make multiple table mats from the wood – not much good for anything bigger, being a wide grain wood prone to warp and bend, but a happy memory for those of us that spent our childhood years under its cover.

Round about results time this August, the Claires Court Shed Theatre made its debut in the West End, with 10 performances of ‘From Morn ’til Night’, the story of Vincent Van Gogh’s life as told through his letters. It’s a play developed by Maggie Olivier, Head of Drama, from original ideas developed last year and now worked up into a really commercial offer. Her colleague Rob Bowen played the adult Van Gough, Elliot Stokes his younger self, Dom Crayden as Paul Gauguin, and brilliant support given by Danny Cornell, Will Ansell and Vickie Morrish. For me though the 2 actors who almost matched Mr Bowen’s brilliance and shared the best supporting rolls were Charlie Tuck and Hannah Wardman – indeed it’s difficult to believe that there were not real stars in the making at the Leicester Square Lounge Theatre. The set design by Lucy Wardman and Lighting and sound by Callum Plain were grand enough to stir the imagination, but so subtly changing that they disappeared as we lost ourselves in the intenseness of the theatre, as Van Gough slipped in a madness beyond repair.

And finally, we have returned to school, adults and children, refreshed in the main from a rest from our endeavours. Our Academic Faculty of teachers, instructors and allied learning professionals number some 150, and we filled Norden Farm on Tuesday morning for our back-to-work get-go. The best hour and more was given over to Professor Guy Claxton of Kings College and Winchester Universities, taking the lid off how learning really happens, and assisting us in tweaking the Claires Court Learning Essentials to build even better learning power. (BLP). Honestly, there is no better inspiration than someone such as Professor Claxton to validate our work and yet show us our next steps along the way to ensure our pupils graze on our elysian fields even more successfully. Professor Claxton will be back with us to support the embedding of such ideas even more fully into our work. “You do need to find ways of helping children struggle; not by ignoring them, but by insisting they use the various tools at their disposal before putting up their hands and being helpless.” Here’s on of his ideas to set you thinking…

11 years ago, Frances Wheen published ‘How Mumbo-Jumbo conquered the world’, his seminal debunking of the ‘new’ thinking of the Dot.Com boom and moral confusion arising from twaddle peddled by politicians. I have the paperback edition in my hands as I write, and the back page credits include:

• ‘This joyous, exhilarating, angry and deadly assault on the march of unreason…Once an almost sense the ghost of Orwell eagerly egging him on’ The Guardian
• ‘Wheen cuts a Jonathan Swift-like swathe through the bullshit that threatens to clog our minds’ Daily Mail
• ‘You have a choice: either read it or pre-emptively shred your brain in anticipation of the coming darkness’ Independent on Sunday

In my anticipation that you would rather read this short blog for a little more enlightenment than pick up the 300+ pages of Wheen’s dissection of the political and populist chicanery of the nineties and early noughties, perhaps a quick glimpse at this short Guardian set of 10 exemplars at the time might help you return to my musings quite quickly – http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/feb/03/top10s.modern.delusions. Take a quick peek and once you have, pop back to read on…

You’re back – great – anything strike you as still relevant today? Is Religion assisting in solving the world’s problems? The market is rational; should we model China’s economic route to stability? Educated westerners would never shoot big game with crossbows for fun, would they? Governors would not ‘take over’ a school to radicalise its children? We can bomb those we fight into submission? Illegal immigration arises from the UK having too generous a welfare state?

Let’s have a quick look at the scene in Education in August 2015. Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan has suggested to teachers that they could ease their workload by not answering emails after 5pm. And loads of other garbage like that. Such as  ‘Teachers waste too much time marking and preparing lessons’. Her minister for school reform, Nick Gibb insists that text books are essential for better learning. Excellent, except of course this government has changed every secondary and Sixth Form subject and method of examining at the same time; where’s the benefit in suggesting there is no better way to service the modern motor car, yet suggestibg purchasing a Haynes’ guide for the Austin Allegro. It gets worse; the England cricket team has just retained the Ashes;l well done them, though I wonder how many attended English state schools? If only private schools would share more of their DNA…as if that’s the answer, which it is not.  The way to solve this country’s literacy problem is to commit that every 8 year old will be enrolled to their local library and be inspired by celebrity role models/authors like David Walliams to show Europe the way. Why is that hoping to work, except for Walliams, whose children’s fiction books are printed and ready to fly off the shelves.

At almost every level in Education, the next steps don’t start from where the country is now, because rather like ISIS in Syria, those in charge are destroying wholescale the infrastructure that previously has secured egalitarian access to services and solutions. The trouble is, this destruction of structures follows the previous regime for 20 years which had imposed a totalitarian approach to learning for so long that many adults entering the profession in 2015 are content to subscribe themselves to the ‘Do as you were done by’ approach, because to disobey means to attract the wrath of management and opprobrium of the inspectorate.

As Government cutbacks  accelerate away, Libraries on towns are closing wholesale, and/or hours reduced beyond reason. Schools and Music Hubs across the country find their permanent Music staff are being reduced to temporary part time roles, music lessons and events dramatically cut to beyond the bone. At a time when child and adolescent mental well-being and resilience have never been under greater threat, school nurses are so thin on the ground as to be invisible, hidden probably by the vast queues seeking to access adolescent clinical health services. When Girlguiding highlights just how serious these issues are,  sit up and take notice,  as they highlight the deeply depressing pressure on girls to conform to body type and firm. This week’s report by the Children’s  Society in which they publish their latest survey of happiness concludes that only children in South Korea are less happy out of 15 nations. It’s no surprise that many are confused when the DfE so often

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-33984082

emphasises that Asian children do so much better at school than English and the BBC runs a faux experiment that seems to prove Chinese ways of working are more effective in a state comprehensive in Hampshire. Child suicide is not just a real concern in South Korea; Japan sees ghastly numbers choose this each September when school restarts.

So when did the Mumbo-Jumbo takeover? It was not the imposition of the National Curriculum, or even the testing of the end of key stage outcomes that started the rot, back in the ’90s. It was the publication of school data as part of a league table culture that began the slow and insidious movement of ‘bad education’ within the key stage. The arrival of national literacy and numeracy hours to ‘focus’ children and teachers on the importance of these 2 subjects, and the movement of that focus up through KS3 and KS4 seriously damaged teaching pedagogies to the core. Suddenly everyone within a key stage had to be assigned a target grade for the end of the key stage; learning had become linear, and government expected every child to move up the grades (by 2) as cars do through the gears. But children are not machines, and cognitive development happens in ‘spurts’; worse still children born later in the year were expected to make as much progress as the oldest. All are forced to start school in the September after they are 4, even though there is no educational evidence that starting education as a cohort is better than when children are ready via drip feed.

Many articles written this week highlight that endless assessment from the start of secondary school, the requirement that every child be seen to make progress every 20 minutes in lessons, coupled with the obligatory target setting has removed for most children ‘joy’ during their school days. ‘Furthermore, girls in England came bottom in terms of happiness with body confidence, self-esteem and appearance. On the whole, children in England have low levels of satisfaction with four major aspects of life – relationship with teachers, their body, the way they look and their self-confidence’. Marc Smith, Huffington Post. Children of all ages are consistently confronted with the hypocrisy of the adult country in which they live, no more obviously than Ashley Madigan website encouraging from the advertising hoardings that ‘adultery’ works. Not I suspect what is meant by the concept ‘Sharing DNA’. How can we encourage a better understanding of morality and tolerance of others when the core subject that delivers same, RS is not given any status at all in the EBacc for state schools at end of GCSE?

What amazes me as that in terms of curricular and examination balance, we had actually got it about right some 10 years ago, but the incessant focus on league tables for individual schools, coupled with unprecedented press interest made it inevitable that leadership, management and teaching in schools started ‘gaming’ subject choice or ‘cheating’ the assessments, both in course work and their successor controlled assessments on a grand scale. Successive governments have reduced the role of local authorities to  a shadow of their former selves; but to advocate as the Conservatives do now that every secondary school should leave local authority control, become an Academy and report to the DfE directly shows extraordinary faith in a fascist approach for which there is no evidence of success. There was a time when both the Depart of/for Education and Her Majesties Inspectorate had a strong reputation for being wise and independent of the politicians and parliament, thus ensuring that change was managed with care and consideration.  Writing at the time of the GCSEs publication last Thursday DfE replied to a Daily Telegraph article that there is no need for drastic change, as the system is evolving. “We have radically overhauled GCSEs to ensure each one plays a valuable role as part of a broad and balanced curriculum that equips young people with the skills and knowledge they need to realise their potential,” a spokesman says.

So for most then, this radical overhaul by DfE is at the very expense of the ‘broad and balanced’ curriculum they suggest they are promoting. What price a creative industry, if the only ‘creation’ is in passing exams. Where are the artists, actors, musicians and sports stars in the state sector going to come from if the only way they are valued is through participation in national testing and making the grafe?  DfE are now introducing a new measure to show how well secondary schools are doing; it’s known as Progress 8, and guess what, it identifies that children should study 8 subjects at GCSE, with double value being given for following Maths and English. Include English Lit, and that double counts as well. By the time you have added in 3 sciences, an MFL and either Geog or History, you have your 8, so you can see why schools are not going out of their way to promote subjects 9, 10 and 11. After all there exists no bonus for schools in doing that, so good bye to real breadth after all.

It will not surprise you, dear reader (if you have stayed with me that is), that the government continues to state that it wishes to give all  of its schools the advantages that independents like Claires Court enjoy, ones that research makes quite clear convey huge advantage to those we educate. Our success is not built on privilege or better DNA. Here’s my Mumbo-Jumbo-free 6 of the best list of what is needed.

1. Provide funding that stays with the child and covers their needs, all of them, through their educational journey, through work and play, sport and leisure, in sickness and in health
2. Engage parents as partners and mean it; ensure the day is short enough so parents can enjoy part-time school when the children are young, but long enough so there exists the option of a one-stop shop for parents who work, and children who need the safety of school to get their homework done or rehearse or play can do so. Extending hours works, but not as a mandatory requirement.
3. Develop a teaching profession that is valued for its expertise in providing for all an inclusive and nourishing education. Lose immediately any notion that bonus-pay works in education, and use such funds to better promote in-service training and research. Play the long game, don’t value oxymoron  ‘fixes’.
4. Technology is not the answer, ever, to making school better. Investment is needed of course, in equipment, resources and staffing. There’s no such thing as a magic bullet; so don’t waste time looking for it. But we can agree what works, so once that’s sorted, stick by the choice for all. Keep phones off; children do not need to be connected all of the time and nor do adults.  Successful social interaction between people in schools gives rise to the greatest successes.
5. Teachers need time in school to plan, reflect and share best practice. Children learn to succeed through challenge and failure, not making progress every 20 minutes. As Singapore Education has found, don’t let children fall behind, and reduce curriculum content so there’s time to ensure they can’t. Don’t make work harder until all of an age can meet the challenge, stretch don’t break, and use your more able to assist those who learn less readily. Don’t let headteachers and leadership leave the classroom too easily; the profession is called Teaching after all.
6. The classroom has looked like the classroom for millennia. That’s not a sign of a thing that’s bad, but actually indicative of a successful space that has stood the test of time. Teachers can teach, but must give time for learning to happen, of skills as well as facts, and for the acquiring of attributes, such as leadership, service, collaboration and interest in research. Teachers must also be diverse in what they do; of course be lead specialists in subject disciplines, but be willing to graze more generally to support the co-curricular and to improve themselves as practitioners for social improvement.

I’ll conclude this lengthy post with a summary of Francis Wheen’s closing remarks in Mumbo-Jumbo:

“Those who refuse to learn from experience and strive to discredit the rationalism that makes such enlightenment possible are not only condemning themselves to repeat the past. They wish to condemn us all to a life in darkness”

Leading the way…

I have just completed my 40th year as a teacher. That might seem to some to be an anniversary worth celebrating, but as I plan to be around for some time still, I won’t overdose on champagne just yet. Looking back over the decades, I sense that I have managed to gain sufficient experience to know what works and what does not, without taking away my passion for working with children and the excitement of creating anew an education that will stand the test of time.

I am both evidence- and research-led, it must be said, born of my University education as a scientist and pragmatism as a business man. It means that a lot of what I want to happen in school must be led by the teachers and pupils for whom it means the most. I can’t expect to direct the lives of the 1500 or so in our community at the micro level, and indeed much of what I can do takes time for its impact to show through.

At the same time, I know people expect me to work hard, to share the difficult yards and muck in when help is needed. For Claires Court to be as good as we need to be for all of our children, we need to be an agile organisation, and by the very nature of such an approach, we need to travel lightly as appropriate. But keeping the baggage down does not imply a lack of expertise; far from that, our teaching and learning support staff spend a remarkable additional time each year to plan, rehearse, review and renew their curricular activities. Practice is not about making perfect, but about making permanent, and that crosses all avenues in education. The challenges we face each academic year have nasty habit of being more of the same and yet utterly new. Bullying for example stretches back in our memories to our own school days, but no way then (1960s ahem) would I expect to be pilloried 24/7 on social media that I could not escape.

If you do not already know, everything in English national assessment terms has been changed. National curriculum levels have been scrapped because long-term research identified that they had not given rise to any lasting improvement in standards. Primary school training courses now abound on assessing without levels, whilst Ofsted is making it clear that marking and assessment methods are to be changed/reduced. At secondary level, GCSEs are in turmoil, with new grading systems and ‘fatter’ English and Maths subjects coming in September 2015, the rest to follow in 2016. Out with grades A* to G, in with grades 10 to 1, with 4 (upgraded to 5 after the general election) being the equivalent of a C.

As Academic Principal of Claires Court, I am steering us clear of the turmoil. Having abandoned the National Curriculum 7 years ago, we are now pretty adept at measuring attainment, progress and effort as was independently confirmed at inspection last March – http://goo.gl/zEJnCS. Research into effective learning does not indicate the government is going to find its reforms easy to implement nor that it going to achieve the wins it expects in terms of international benchmarks against other countries. As I write (August 2015), we learnt that the Scottish Higher Maths exam (made harder by that parallel jurisdiction within the UK) has had to have its pass mark lowered to 34% from 45% to balance their books; to think that a candidate can get almost 2.3 of the paper wrong and still pass makes a mockery of what we know effective assessment looks like, that being an exercise within which a candidate can show what he knows, understands and can do.

As this edition of the Court Circular shows, life at school is not actually about assessment and examination, useful as both of these exercises are for evaluating success with learning. Education in its broadest sense is to equip children with the experiences, skills and expertise they need to lead fulfilling lives for themselves and the wider community into their future years. And Education is about having fun, being challenged, failing and falling as well as jumping and clearing the hurdles. Education is both a collaborative and solitary activity; there is a time and place for both, woven through a variety of opportunities in both public and private space. Parents are of course essential to best of practice seen in education, partly because they do often know their child better than others, and because their interest helps carry the child when interest flags.

I have become increasingly concerned that the failures in education policy have been mirrored in the provision of Child and Adolescent Mental Health services. Agreed multi-agency processes for the identification and support of children’s needs have become so bureaucratic, time-consuming and unfocused on the individual that specialist clinical interventions take far too long to implement. In response, I have appointed Everlief who have at their disposal 14 clinical psychologists and 2 Paediatricians. Dr Sue Wimshurst (pictured) is the associate now attached to Claires Court, who will be visiting six times a year to provide in-house support and advice for staff and, as appropriate, parents who have concerns. Key issues tackled this year include supporting  children and young people in emotional distress such as anxiety, stress/low self-esteem and self-harming as well as providing support guidance with parenting and family issues.

Talking of which, it’s been the greatest of privileges to work with some pretty committed parents this year, making the life of Corporate PTA, led so effectively in her own inimitable way by President Phyllis Avery MBE. Much of the success in our building of effective relationships comes from the work of our local Parent Teacher Associations, whether that be in the creation and running of social events, fund raising for much needed prizes and extras, or in the creation of yearbooks for those pupils ‘graduating’ at the end of the Summer Term. What was new this year was the ‘move’ of the PTA Summer Ball to the Ridgeway estate, selling out the planned 300 seats. That’s the kind of brilliant support that empowers our PTA Committees to continue to work so hard on all of our behalves, and I do hope new parents feel willing to step up and involve themselves in our various groups across the sites into the new Academic Year in September. There will be vacancies!

In writing this edition of the Court Circular,  I make no apology for drawing to your attention to some of the biggest blots on the current landscape we see. The publication of National League Tables in 2015 has done more disservice to the Independent sector than ever before. Over 60% of all GCSE examinations in English, Maths and Sciences which are sat within all independent  schools follow the iGCSE framework and are absolutely fit for their purpose. Not including such examinations (in our case Maths and English) in performance tables massively under-reports our effectiveness as educational institutions. When Eton College scores 0%, you know there is something really quite badly amiss. One of the reasons why independent schools have migrated their examinations to international frameworks is that continual change to the English examination programmes have brought many school teachers and departments to their knees. Currently, our secondary staff are rewriting most of our A Levels on offer, with English and Maths GCSEs on the move again from September too.  It will not be until 2019 at the very earliest that comparisons now can be drawn between subjects and pupil performance from one year to the next.

Claires Court is not just managing educational change, but helping lead it at national level. Head of Junior Girls, Miss Leanne Barlow with Mrs Lindsay King were invited to present the work we have created for our Early Years and Junior School curriculum as a model of best practice at ISA’s National Junior Schools Conference in February.  Our Head of Sixth Form, Andy Giles together with Stephanie Rogers assisted ISA in creating a separate National Conference for Sixth Forms last week.  They presented most powerfully the extraordinary work we are now doing to link academic students to the work place skills required for success at university and beyond. Head of College Paul Bevis leads one of the annual national conferences for deputy headteachers, and lectures for ISA and inspects Independent schools in addition. For my own part, this year saw me appointed as a Reporting Inspector for the Independent Schools Inspectorate, one of a select few (70 or so) who lead the inspections of the 1300+ Independent schools in England. I chair ISA’s National Professional Development Committee and have spoken at over 20 events leading educational thinking for our sector. All this activity gives us the certainty of ‘professional’ high ground – other schools and educational institutions take our work very seriously indeed!

One of the important channels by which I can inform and influence educational debate is my blog. I am not out to grab headlines, but to produce a coherent narrative of why we have a Claires Court way of doing things. After all with over 1075 children and 300+ employees, we are an important community in our own right, even before we extend it to include friends, relatives, former pupils, partner schools, businesses and fellow travellers. One of my recent posts highlighted the growing conceptual divide between government and employer hopes for education, and identifies ‘The Magnificent Seven’ ways in which a Claires Court education neatly seems to fit both bills. Please read more at www.jameswilding.wordpress.com.

That education is delivered by a truly dedicated staff in a day that runs from dawn to dusk (actually 07.30 to 18.30), longer when trips and evening events are involved, often covering 6 days a week and for a few since May, every day of the week as well. Their motivation is to ensure that the opportunities presented enable your children, young and old, to achieve the remarkable things they do. And what’s becoming ever more noticeable is just how much joy and fun is had whilst these challenges are undertaken. Said one appreciative parent as they watched their son perform at Art on the Street, “Claires Court has so much soul!”

Broader support from the key professionals we work with also leaves a special mark. Carole Hawkins, our safeguarding visitor, Helen Cole,our Careers Advisor, Rachael Williams, our counsellor from the Living Room and Paul Hay, our visitor for digital safety are all fine examples; there are few schools that give such prime attention and focus to the economic, mental and personal welfare of all of its children, whatever their age and stage. Whilst national guidance pleads with schools to attend to these matters, we have them all in hand by pioneering remarkable ways of working – Claires Court in so many ways is leading the way to model how difficult “stuff” can be done better.

Our wider partners, most notably Rotary International, Samsung Enterprise, Discovery Education and the Independent Schools Association recognise the difference that collaboration with Claires Court brings. It’s not just that we see eye to eye where our interests overlap, but that our vision is genuinely inclusive; everyone we work with matters, each child has value and we adjust and adapt for that. As a consequence, our partners feel their effort is that much more worthwhile, because at Claires Court it reaches everyone, not just a favoured few.  Of course schools are dynamic places – things go as easily wrong as right. Our get-go is not about self-aggrandising advancement, but a genuine and deeply felt wish to work with our partners so everyone succeeds. Art on the Street and Maidenhead’s Got Talent are two of the many showcases we support, clear demonstrations that the best of Claires Court is indeed the very, very best, while giving room for those who simply want to have a go; to be an enthusiast is enough!

And you don’t just have my word for this; the reputation of the School now takes our message to the wider world. Our website and the several editions of the Court Circular capture the highlights in impressive detail, while our Facebook and Twitter channels come alive most days with news of derring-do and joyful engagement. Our Former Pupils’ group is now firmly up and running, with Rugby, West End and Cricket fixtures rolled out in recent months. We even have an inaugral Annual Alumni dinner planned for Saturday 19 September at the Senior Boys School – bookings can now be made via Eventbrite at https://goo.gl/mfeviu.

And finally, what of the academic landscape that lies ahead for our children over the next 12 to 18 months? We have a Conservative administration for 5 years, determined to cut back the deficit and return us to national prosperity. For state education that means some of the toughest belt tightening ever seen as budgets fail to match the increasing numbers of children, and because government is increasing its take from employment via higher national insurance contributions and employer pension contributions. The offer for state secondary pupils is being dramatically narrowed to 8 core subjects (look out for Progress8), so the notion of a 21st century renaissance learner has been struck dead. With post 19 further education and training almost a zero entry in coming budget plans, it’s very much down to schools to make it all happen by age 18.

If ever there was a time when Claires Court’s value-added was visible that time is now. For every child and every family, there is something going on for them to be involved in, to support and participate to the full. Thank you to the 264 parents who completed the Annual Parental Questionnaire, spread in proportion to the numbers found in each age and stage on each site. Both Hugh and I value hugely the time parents take to give us feedback, because it is through receiving advice and guidance from you that we can develop the School further for the future. The vast majority of the feedback was incredibly positive, with only six parents (equally spread across the three schools) whose overarching feelings for the School are not positive. Your opinions on progress, behaviour, academic and co-curricular provision, reports and feedback and perhaps above all, child’s happiness are really very supportive indeed.  Of course unhappy customers is not what we want, and we still have areas to address. Even then, I can see that the other major success story is in the manner in which we have improved the effectiveness and communications between the School and parents, even when in the ‘soup’. How that has been enabled is largely down to our hard working office teams – and they deserve my final very big ‘thank you’.

James Wilding

I love reading research. It’s the academic in me, I guess, speaking here, because without an evidence base, you can’t actually prove your point. And unless the evidence base is large, inclusive, sustained over a period of years, and the research outcomes independently scrutinised, I know the conclusions are worthless.

” If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s a duck”

And here I mean no disrespect to fowl, but so many policy decisions made without evidence turn out to be ‘turkeys’ – one day wonders.

Two years ago, our Head of MFL Kate Ing and I started a serious sideways look at the teaching of modern languages, partly because the government had launched its ‘new’ initiative to ensure every primary school child would learn a modern foreign European language from age 7 to 11 from September 2014 onwards. We joined a local primary school cluster supported by the University of Reading, attended a couple of meetings through which direction was being given to primary schools on what might work well for them and networking with the University lead advisors to share with them our thoughts . Please bear in mind as an independent school we have considerable experience of teaching languages at this Junior level, both living and dead, and much of government’s rhetoric was directed at its own schools to unify and harmonise provision for its children.

Speaking at the time, Kathryn Board, head of languages strategy at the CfBT, an education charity which has merged with Cilt, formerly the National Centre for Languages said “When you scratch beneath the surface you’ll see there is an enormous diversity of things happening under the label of languages at key stage two – from a few words and a song to quite rigorous teaching. For some the new curriculum and the emphasis it places on grammar and written language will be a challenge, for others it’ll be business as usual.”

The national requirements seem to specify 30 minutes a week for Years 3 and 4, with 45 minutes for Years 5 and 6. When Kate and I heard this, it seemed to us quite extraordinary that anyone would expect children to make ‘progress’ in the primary years with such poor provision. Moreover, in so many schools where there are many languages outside of the ‘brief’, might not time be spent better looking at these and leave the ‘hard stuff’ of grammar and writing until the start of secondary school? After all, that’s what so many independent schools have done for years; encouraging enquiry and understanding of language and culture, promoting story and enthusiasm for learning during these formative primary years.

Professors Florence Myles (Essex) and Rosamond Mitchell (Southampton) have been researching Early Second Language learning for years, and their most recent research (2008-11) has now surfacing in a variety of lectures and publications, the one catching my eye most recently being yesterday’s article in the Conversation, an on-line academic journal. It’s worth a read, honest, because it really does reinforce what all experienced teachers know, and that is there is a time and place for enthusiasm, and equally, and probably rather later on in a child’s school career, a time for hard learning and rigour.

Summarising Myles and Mitchell’s work would be trivialise much of the very great detail held therein, but here’s the principal outline. Older children learn more rapidly and effectively than younger children, because they have a wider range of cognitive strategies at their disposal and because their more advanced literacy skills in their home language could be brought to bear to support their second language learning. That’s not to say that the younger children were not more enthusiastic, they were, and that if you want to speak like a native, you have to start  very young! But the reality of life in our schools is that we can’t immerse our children in that second language, it’s migrant children that can enjoy that benefit; if we really want to make an impact, then we’d need an hour a day including holidays and amazingly supportive home families, and even then the advantage is likely to be quite small.

Other research highlights that pretty much every ‘subject’ has a life cycle it seems, that cycle could be as short as three years, and is age and stage appropriate. The first HMI who ‘inspected’ my headship back in 1981 was the lead languages inspector for the South of England. His experience taught him that successful outcomes at 16 and A level take-up for the final two years of sixth form were as likely in schools that started at 11+, 12+ or 13+ and he certainly took a keen interest in what we were dong with 10 year olds with French and ‘wondered why we bothered?’ It is interesting to note that written outcomes in Latin have almost always been visibly better than in Modern Languages, and certainly CEM centre University of Durham’s research highlights just how much more demanding Latin and Ancient Greek are at GCSE level. This is because they only test 2 of the four skills for language learning, reading and writing, and leave well alone speaking and listening.

Really good schools (and teachers therein) understand their purpose in education well. Socialising children to collaborate, to work and play ‘nicely’ and to gain enthusiasm for learning starts their journey to age 5. Getting stuck in to becoming literate and numerate, to enquire and purposefully learn new skills takes children through their primary years, cognitive development aligning with ‘subject’ matter and ‘context’. Much research continues to highlight how disadvantageous it is for education outcomes for summer-born children in a country whose school year is organised around 1 September; too much too early is the significant problem here, because existing skills have not been practised sufficiently to become permanent before the child has been moved on.

This is so noticeable in school in so many other subject areas. Neat handwriting, once the pride of primary school outcomes is no longer something we can expect 11+ year olds to have. Such neatness requires fine motor control of hand and fingers, as already stated, practice makes permanent. Children no longer permitted a fine art experience in junior school might not be able to draw and paint, unless family values have ensured such activities have continued at home. In subjects as diverse as PE and Resistant material technology, it is obvious fine and gross motor control cannot be relied upon with new starters in year 7. These provide challenges for both teachers and children as they enter secondary school, so year 7 , 8 and 9 need to be spent establishing, rehearsing,  and developing the whole of a child’s skill repertoire, before moving to subject choice for GCSE in Year 10. If we trim the curriculum at secondary and force choices too early, then it’s not just the summer born children that are left floundering.

So I have no doubt that in the right hands, early second language education in our primary schools could do what research expects of it; to provide enthusiastic children ready to start the hard graft at secondary school. But if government requirements are for some higher purpose, then like all the other ‘quackery’ our politicians pronounce, it’ll be a dead duck.

There is a rising tide of mental health issues across the world, affecting most age groups, influencing young people irrespective or race, colour or gender. There’s also a matching growth of opinion that suggests that the causation of these problems arises because of the growth in pressure on children, pressure that’s nasty, corrosive, invasive and long-term. The outcomes for children don’t look good once struck down; anxiety, anorexia, obsessive-compulsive, depression, attention-deficit, spectrum disorders and so forth are extraordinarily debilitating and seem to affect life chances long term.

These disorders seem to have been with us for ever, passed from generation to generation via a small number of common genetic variants and yet until recently, they have been very much off the radar. Are we now seeing them because as parents and stewards of children we are so much more alert to the problem? I’d like to think so; ‘we are at the cutting edge of education and we know what’s best for your child’… ok, so probably don’t actually think that now, or ever actually.

These problem now appear almost epidemic across the country; the signs and symptoms now visible in every primary and secondary school I know. Our reaction as a school is in part to respond by upping the quality and availability of expert help advice and counsel. I am delighted that we have expert nurses, counsellors, teachers and pastoral leaders who continue to keep their own working knowledge of these issues up to date, and that now we can plan even more appropriate early intervention as we deem fit. This is only half the story, because inevitably, if we are not careful, we are medicalising the problem, institutionalising it as a norm’ and creating more cases simply because we are looking for them!

If you can afford to dwell some time, have a listen to a recent Woman’s Hour programme, where Jane Garvey interviews Professor Cindy Bulik on the growing evidence of links between schizophrenia, anorexia and family genes.  In short, you’ll hear one more compelling story that suggests these problems are really complex, and if there is a genetic link, it exists over multiple genes and so no one fit model for causation or cure exists. OK, I’ll have a go then.

Most of us would say we know what hunger, fear and fright feel like. For us, it’s not normal, we’ll release some adrenalin, which lifts our pulse, increases blood flow to vital organs such as muscles and sense organs and on occasion, causes us to defecate straight away. When I say, for us, it’s not normal, I talk of Sixty somethings, born and grown up in a time when there was no daytime TV, when newsagents were shut on Sundays, when other family largely ignored us and certainly did not see us in tandem with the buildings we live in as ‘home improvement projects’.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the stress on children is causing them to feel that ‘hollow’ feeling in their stomach as normal, something to seek and hold on to when the rest of the world rushes by. Indeed, self-harming too assists in creating that ‘buzz’ , re-releasing into the bloodstream the hormones that bring back that ‘comforting’ feeling. That’s what is meant by the phrase ‘normalising’, yet there is nothing normal about the activity of the feelings at all.

Why have the stresses grown so much? Children are found at the  heart of family life, VIP in Chez Nous, and they sit at the very centre of their Universe and their perspective is always valued. The opportunities for children to learn, to participate, to acquire skills, have never been so widely available or as diverse. The expectations on them, even if parents are protective, have never been higher. Children’s looks, fashion, size, shape, behaviour are all targeted by society in general, by media news organisations and commercial business in particular, and regular scientific research reports that children have never under as much pressure. Back in 2007, the UK ranked bottom for Children’s well being in a  UNICEF survey of 21 of the most developed countries of the world, and the Labour government of the day focussed some national resources to improve provision for teenagers in particular. In the follow-up survey of 2013, UK performance rose slightly, moving us up to 15 place,  but warning bells were rung again by both Unicef UK and the Children’s Society. The Banking crisis and change of government had seen resources for children slashed once more.

Anita Tiessen, deputy executive director of Unicef UK, said: “There is no doubt that the situation for children and young people has deteriorated in the last three years, with the government making policy choices that risk setting children back in their most crucial stages of development”.

“It is far too easy to assume that teenagers aren’t as vulnerable as younger children or don’t need as much support,” said Lily Caprani, director of communications and policy at the Children’s Society. A raft of other surveys looking at the academic performance of UK children in schools shows as a country we lag behind, and in those that lead the way such as Finland and Singapore, they make the point that we start formal school too early and we ‘test’ far too much.

Now things are not quite as gloomy as they seem. Improvements in older teenagers’ attitudes to alcohol, sex and each other have improved markedly, and national rates for unwanted pregnancies have plummeted.  The Good Childhood report last August (the third in a series)  – the third in a series published by the Children’s Society – compared England with 39 other European countries and North America, rating it 30th in “wellbeing” – defined as self-reported happiness and satisfaction. Use of computers at home is not a cause for the problem, indeed it’s the lack of its availability outside of schools in deprived families that’s been part of the problem. The financial pressures that families have found themselves under have had an impact, as have media stories particularly on adolescent females to look the part;”Popularity is very important, you have to be pretty, rich, skinny, clever. If not you get bullied,” one year 9 student said in the report, based on surveys in England of more than 5,000 children.

Running your fingers through the detail though, it’s not hard to agree with Dr Miriam Stoppard that the solutions are not hard to find.

“And the good news is that most of it is very straightforward. It’s about taking time to talk – and listen – to our children, showing them warmth, keeping them active and learning, letting them hang out with friends and explore their local environment.”

What’s Claires Court’s ‘previous’ been in all this picture you might well ask. We deliberately chose to leave the national curriculum and its testing programme behind in 2007, to liberate our curriculum and children from an unnecessary straight jacket. We have worked tirelessly to ensure we have ‘Pupil Voice’ at the heart of our work, to enable children to feel that their school days are indeed the happiest of their lives. Sport, social activity, intelligent digital availability, listening services and specialist support to enable early intervention are now hallmarks of our provision.

We know families have to work harder, both parents requiring to be in productive economic activity in the main, so our extended day and wrap-around care ensures that children are in a really safe place, able to sustain friendships and build skills. I have written before that the shortening of the school day at state middle and secondary school, the compression of lunch hours into minutes and the focus on work to be done rather than relationships to be built has been and remains a poor choice for children. I know just how much different our school’s approach has been over the past decade, where we have extended pretty much everything to ensure children have the time and space to grow. If Claires Court has a success parents have been able to see in droves over the past few weeks, it is that we enable children to have ‘fun’ whilst they learn.

As the heading says “Genes load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger”; I am as convinced as ever that environment plays an incredibly important part in supporting children through to be the multi-skilled and well balanced young adult all would like to be. It’s not just a ‘growth mind-set’ we need but a ‘nurture-set’ too. We have no idea what our children can achieve, but we mustn’t set limits to our expectations for them and must keep proximate to children sufficient wealth and diversity of opportunity so that they can make good choices most of the time. As our closing assemblies today, Friday 10 July will show, all our children and their achievements sit central to our celebrations at the end of a highly successful school year, and the reports that come home will provide further evidence that the teachers working within Claires Court have above all the children’s interests at the heart of what we do, ‘normalising the extraordinary’. Indeed without the amazing educators and administrators we employ, I’d not be able to be so positive, and I am deeply indebted to all I work with for the successes we have achieved.

In conclusion, as Academic Principal, I have an ‘intelligent’ finger firmly on the ‘pulse’ of our school life, and that what we work so hard to provide is informed by  extensive experience and academic research. I am delighted to report that our provision for children as a whole is in very good shape. I understand that the genetics of our children need to have the DNA of their school environment just right, and there is every sign that we are ‘coding for success’ in  the best way possible.

I’ll avoid further reference to those somewhat more unhelpful metaphors of  ‘trigger’ and ‘bullet’. The world is a violent place enough, after all.