Proprietorial governance in times of change

Posted on 06/02/2025 by jameswilding

All Independent Schools exist by permission of Parliament, and are responsible to the DfE for meeting what are known as the 8 Regulatory Standards (the regs) covered by the 2019 Guidance plus a plethora of policies for which we are to have due regard. Ultimately, individual proprietors are responsible for ensuring standards are met. Where the ‘owner’ is replaced by a Governing Body, it still remains for the new proprietor (the board) to take responsibility, an incredibly important protection for the Heads and their staff.

As proprietors, my brother Hugh and I also choose to be key workers in the school, covering administration and academics respectively, hence the titles Administrative and Academic Principals. It is required of us to ensure that the school’s leadership has the necessary skills and resources to enable the heads and colleagues to meet both the regs AND the aims, key values and offers of the school. We choose to employ professional experts who advise the school in matters of governance covering law, accountancy, finance & pensions, alongside visiting consultants who bring their insights in academic, health & safety, safeguarding, planning & building areas to complete (and complement) the knowledge and experience the Principals have gained over their 40+ years in post.

The evolving landscape of single-sex education in the UK is governed by DfE guidance, and where secondary schools choose to offer single-sex education because of the clear benefits for both girls and boys, we are required to provide comparable facilities and opportunities for both genders. As a consequence, the significant building investments in facilities including the refurbishment of both main secondary teaching wings, the provision of new Design & Technology, Food & Nutrition, and computer science classrooms concludes with the construction of new music and fitness centres this summer. To have completed this work within the 3-year time period has been a significant achievement for all involved.

Regulations keep moving, and most UK readers will have seen the immense fuss being created by the increasing poor attendance in the state sector across the country. Claires Court is required to report attendance information to RBWM and then DfE, and today’s figure shows that in the year to date, we are @94.6% which, as we’ve been midst ‘of winter bugs, Covid and all sorts’, is on target to be 95% or more (5* performance). Thank you, parents & guardians, you’ve done your bit, and well done to our nurses too for offering that professional yet sympathetic voice and diagnosis when appropriate. It is interesting too to see the public discourse on the mobile phone ‘good/bad dialogue’; the issue is well managed in many schools (handed into school for safekeeping during the day for under 15s). Screen time on scrolling clickbait videos and interpersonal relationships connected via social media are the current generational problems after hours (and not just for teenagers). Whilst we can’t prevent phone access at home, the school’s provision of secure, protected Chromebooks for 12+ years now is a remarkable success story for CC.

One of the advantages of my age and experience is that as well as serving on national and regional ISA Headteacher groups, I get asked to connect with some of the people with power and influence who are or may be driving public policy. Yesterday, I met up with Professor Francis Green, a social economist at UCL, whose work led to the Labour Party’s manifesto promise to levy 20% VAT on all private school fees. I spent a useful hour with the Professor, and he has taken the point that policymakers and those impacted need to meet to consider the outcomes of the policy now its negative impact on private school viability is becoming more visible.

Later yesterday and still in London, I met as part of the Association’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion committee in the offices of the Independent Schools Council, a really forward-thinking group who are well ahead of the government on assessing the impact of policy and the provision of successful education in England and informed by colleagues working elsewhere in Europe and the USA.

A good finish to the day was to return to school to attend the Juniors Parents evening to 6 pm and then the Senior Boys event to 8 pm. Genuinely it is with great pleasure that I ‘man the tea urn’ and catch up with parents, and it’s always good to hear how we are doing, ‘what’s going well’ and ‘even better if!’ What made the day perfect was catching this video from broadcaster and commentator, Ana Boulter, whose leading mission right now is to assist the government in changing its policy on VAT, and to use the authority of senior headteachers in the country to make her case. As Boulter proposes Wilding and Birbalsingh to share the job of sorting out education for the private and state sectors, I thought, dear reader, to draw it to your attention…

These are indeed times of change, yet ‘twas ever thus, and as the header, this week shows the early spring sunshine rising over Claires Court fields circa 7.45 am, we do need to look to the future and make sure our well-laid plans are realised for the benefit of pupils, parents and teachers. After half-term, I’ll be publishing the outcomes from the Parents Questionnaire 2025, and of course, will be inviting parents and guardians to offer their insights to aid our direction for 2026-2030. We couldn’t possibly have guessed Covid 19, Austerity and a Labour Government this time 5 years ago – does anyone have a crystal ball that works a bit better now?

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Academic Principal’s notes – 31 January 2025

Posted on 31/01/2025 by jameswilding

In my closing messages at the end of last term, I was delighted to share with you the Principal’s Court Report, covering the last two years formally highlighting some key milestones and achievements. If you missed the link to the digital report, you can find that here, and if you would like a hard copy, please pick one up from the school office or the check-in desks at any of the forthcoming parents’ evenings.

I also wrote the following:

If there is One Thing you can do for Claires Court over the break…It’s to pass on in your friendship groups and communication channels just how positive our school remains about the future ahead for our children. The Carol services at the end of term were true celebrations of how we collaborate and how musical and choral scholarship continues to grow across the years. All the many plans we continue to develop have your children at the heart of why we come to work and what we do. As we highlighted in our previous communication, we will continue to work on business efficiencies, develop further our existing relationships and work on new out-of-school partnerships to bring additional revenue in too.

Firstly, thank you for your ongoing recommendations and introductions of new families and pupils to the school; we have welcomed many new joiners from Juniors to Seniors last term and have registered more to join in the summer term and beyond.

Taking into account the increased pupil numbers , together with the scheduled business efficiencies we continue to make and plan for the future, , the Principals do not want to increase fees for September 2025. However, whilst we intend to offer the current school fees for September 2025, we have to remain very cautious. -One of the elements to consider when evaluating is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave no prior warning to business about the tax hikes she introduced at her last budget; the current media speculation is that further tax changes are inevitable. The Chancellor is set to make her Spring Statement on 26 March and we will update you further over the Easter break.

We do draw heart though that the Law Lords have decided that an early hearing of the legal challenge to the Government’s VAT on fees policy is required. This will take place in the High Court between 1 and 3 April. Lord Pannick KC, representing the six families who brought the claim, supported by the Independent Schools Council (our trade body), will claim the introduction of the tax on fees impedes access to education at independent schools and is incompatible with the right to education as per Article 2 of the First Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights. Lord Pannick will also argue the policy infringes Article 14 of the Convention because it causes unnecessary and discriminatory harm to certain categories of children. Throughout the country, state and independent schools are providing the evidence Lord Pannick needs to support the case being presented, made even stronger by the bizarre benefit (announced this week) being given to the US military to benefit from VAT-free fees, but not permitted to our own military or those European families choosing to use their own nations’ schools based in the UK.

As Academic Principal, I have remained at the forefront of the campaign ‘Education not Taxation’ group. I find the rhetoric regarding the fact that schools enjoyed a tax loophole disingenuous. The imposition of VAT is a new tax levied on private schools and state further education colleges. In addition, all charity schools are affected by the additional loss of 80% business rates relief, though as Claires Court already pays both corporation tax and full business rates, we’ve factored these into our costs previously. These changes, coupled with the increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions are clearly causing considerable damage across the private school sector, and we can but feel great sympathy for the families of schools now forced to close, such as Highfield Prep School here in Maidenhead and its sister in Belsize Park, The Village School for Girls. These changes have also seriously impacted both Eton End School in Datchet and High March School in Gerrards Cross, which have changed ownership structures as a consequence.

Through this active work, I’ve connected with Ana Boulter, BBC presenter through her active campaigning against the new tax. If you have not discovered Ana’s channel, please do check her out here – https://www.youtube.com/@anaboulterTV.. Next week I am working in the ISC buildings with our Association on allied matters, and also meeting with one of the Labour Party’s strongest supporters of this policy, Professor Frances Green, UCL. It’s only by working such hard yards that we can seek to open up the Government to discuss more openly the negative aspects of this policy. Parliament is alive with discussions in both Houses, and our sector is getting much more cross-party support for the great work we do for education in the UK and worldwide.

And finally – looking forwards… Monday 3 February Building works commence for the installation of a new pavilion to provide the central examination space for the Sixth Form during public examinations from May to July, as well as a recreation and study area for their use from September onwards. The schematic below shows the artist impression of the building view from the playing field:

February Half-term Our official sign-off of the new Food Technology facility by Modual Aspects takes place, with their attention switching to the installation of the new Music School scheduled for Summer 2025.

Friday 7 March Save the Date – the Claires Court PTA AGM followed by the Official Opening of our MUGA at CCJ – timings to follow.

Our PTA President, Phyllis Avery MBE will be leading the AGM during the school lunch break, sandwiches for all attendees, with reports from the various sections and elections for next year’s officers. After the AGM, we are delighted that our various talented sports stars across the school are to demonstrate their skills to the full, officiated by Steve Rider, Sports Commentator and great friend of ours.

I hope parents and guardians are able to join us for the PTA AGM, to learn of the major new projects we have received contributions to commence, and to celebrate the amazing support our Trustees and PTA Chairs bring to these fundraising efforts for the school.

Dolly Parton is not perhaps the most likely person I should quote when completing my notes to parents, but “The magic is inside you, there ain’t no crystal ball” hits the consciousness smack between the eyes. When I see what’s happening all around the school and beyond and through the magic of the school‘s App, Claires Court’s students and staff are showing their magic everywhere, in the classroom, on the playing fields and on the water, in the wider community and at international conferences and presentations. If you don’t have the App yet, please download it – there’s a reminder by the hour of us #CCMakingHistory.

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“The longer I live, the more convinced am I that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum.” – George Bernard Shaw

Posted on 23/01/2025 by jameswilding

A NotebookLM discussion on this blog can be found here: https://schl.cc:443/gz

The header picture this week shows the ‘beautiful disaster’ that was the Musk SpaceX Starship coming down over the Gulf of ~~Mexico~~ America last Thursday. Characterising any weekly blog by a suitable title that captures the news headlines of the moment and translates for a local audience is really difficult, made especially so the declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza over the weekend, then Monday commencing as it did with the spectacular show that was Donald Trump’s inauguration and the week progressing with the local politics of Britain and Europe being as fractious as ever. It’s a wonder that the Universe has actually tried to remind us that seeking some alignment across the world of humanity’s problems might be a good idea, and so has given us the night sky spectacular of a 6 ‘planetary parade’ as a reminder.

So down to Education business this week. Leaving aside the immediate and ongoing dispute between the Government’s imposition of an unfair new tax being imposed on private school tuition fees, I bring to the fore the parliamentary work commencing around the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, introduced on 17 December, now being examined by parliamentary committee since Tuesday, and it’s quite clear from every point of view that the bill is not going down well. Headteacher Katherine Birbalsingh’s letter in the Observer summed-up the problem from her state-side position brilliantly, with each section including the question “What problem were you trying to solve”. You can read the whole 4 pages of her letter here, in which she highlights the genuine good news available in schools that the government could be celebrating, yet it chooses to legislate against.

In summary, funding special opportunities in state schools to study Latin is a great idea, as is establishing ‘Computing hubs’ so why cut the funding halfway through the academic year and close the courses. Giving state schools the freedom to tweak the curriculum to encourage diversity and creativity to suit their intake works really well, so why forbid that and impose a strict, universal diet on all? Across England, we are currently working through and embedding the curriculum changes implemented 5 years ago, at a great cost in time and money. As a consequence, we’ve seen our primary and secondary outcomes rise up the international league tables and for reading literacy the English lead the Western world. Why spend precious energy, political capital and parliamentary time on destroying the reforms that led to this success? Across the country, the government programmes to recruit graduates into the teaching profession are failing, yet the school-based programmes have been a great success, so why forbid them to continue or try to reduce teacher pay? We know state school attendance has become a real problem, but the best schools use uniforms, badges, ties and kits to create a sense of belonging and value – why forbid such well-understood strategies, used so well by sports teams etc.?

Regular readers of my Blog know I’ve been offering the Secretary of State help for 18 months now, even when she was in opposition. Phillipson apparently has booked now an opportunity for KB to meet at the DfE, but that’s a ‘show reaction’ to the bad press she’s received in recent weeks. For the government, the press is only going to get worse, with Secretary of State for Health, Wes Sweeting wishing to shut down SEND funding for children with both physical and learning differences, and the HMRC insisting on taxing SEND tuition fees as shown on invoices, with Local Authorities in return refusing to repay schools for the ‘tax lost’, because they’ve already gone down the route of giving personal budgets to parents, which of course were always ‘without VAT’. Because I know that no-one in government will read letters, I’ve taken to ‘vlogging’, my latest on this issue can be found below:

The Rt Hon Bridget Phillipson MP attended BETT2025 this week on Wednesday, at the same time as my colleague Jawad Laouira, Deputy Head Academic at Juniors, where Meryln Mind (an American AI company that Claires Court has been working with for 3 years) were showcasing their latest offering, Merlyn Origin, for which Jawad and ICTteacher/school photographer, Chris Rowan created this intro film. Well, the film was incredibly well received and a packed Tech-in-Action audience of educators from many different countries were able to question Jawad and the rest of the panel, including VP Merlyn Jason Mayland and UK Partner, Ian Nairn. The message that the panel shared was that there is a real depth of Learning Science behind what Merlyn is helping teachers achieve in their classrooms and in addition Merlyn saves teachers circa 15% of time every lesson. We’ve also found our children are able to interact directly by voice with Merlyn, and as a consequence, we are seeing a direct improvement in the accuracy of their oral questioning. Wins all round.

My closing message to this blog is pretty obvious really. When GBS originally wrote of the Lunatics, that was well before I was born. I can’t find a precise date, but we are talking about the time of the rise of the fascist dictators in Europe and the chaos that brought. Despite all, humans managed to develop antibiotics, modern conveniences such as the Hoover, the motor car, and above all of course, Sliced Bread, packaged and promoted in the UK as early as 1928! I’ve loved watching the latest series of ‘Inside the Factory’ on BBCTV, with Paddy McGuiness. The Warburton’s loaf factory in which he used to clean the machines at the start of his employment packs 1.4 million loaves a year. That’s progress for sure, and as a nation, our food is secure through major companies doing what they know best. Paddy like me worries about his children, and I just wish Bridget would work with major schools like mine – of course, we are always ready to learn, but we do start from a very strong position of knowing what we do.

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“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”André Gide.

Posted on 23/01/2025 by jameswilding

I was saddened to hear this Wednesday of the closure of one of our local independent schools, Highfield, part of the long-term network of provision for families in Maidenhead and the surrounding area. Highfield’s owners, Chatsworth Schools, have made it clear that the combination of declining school roll, imposition of the new tax of VAT on school tuition fees and the increase in employer contributions to National Insurance have been the cause of the closure. Chatsworth schools have asked us to provide support where we can, and of course, we will do our level best to support those children and parents as they seek a suitable next step for their education.

I chose the quote by André Gide, possibly the greatest French writer of the 20th century, because it seemed so apt in the current circumstances. When new governments enter power, as the Labour Party did last Summer, they have the opportunity to deliver their mandate to the electorate, but they also do bear the responsibility for the wellbeing of all children concerned, specifically of course because they are from where our future wealth and prosperity are going to arise. I have been representing the voice of our sector as strongly as I can, in person in parliament, in writing, canvassing and even most recently via video on X. Whilst there seems great strength in the arguments we have given about the inappropriate speed and longer-term unfairness of this tax, it is clear that political dogma is to rule.

As last week’s post makes clear, and the publication of our own community questionnaire to parents and guardians early next week enables further, I do accept that we have to get on with the new ‘réalité’. But that’s not to say we should lose empathy for those caught up in the ‘blight’ that government policy is causing in our sector, and Maidenhead as a town is all the poorer for the closure of a school that’s been here a century. And we as its neighbour will do all we can to make real for its girls, should they join us, their school’s motto “Empower. Discover. Succeed”.

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“Welcome to a New Year at Claires Court – Making our mark in 2025”

Posted on 09/01/2025 by jameswilding

A NotebookLM conversation about this blog can be found here: https://schl.cc:443/gs and below.

The header image for this week’s blog, shows Claires Court’s 48 acres of playing fields to be found off Cannon Lane on the driveway into school. The photo doesn’t really give the scene full justice; -5 degrees Celsius, the frost crisp and even, taken on Friday morning 10 January 2025, from one of our ‘breakfast club’ families on the way in. We’ve always been incredibly conscious of the requirement to provide that longer school ‘envelope’ for the day, and now we have unpredictable road chaos everywhere, it’s probably a lifesaver for many working parents required to return to the office every day!

These fields have heralded a remarkable development for the school, not just because of their scale, but because they host a huge and diverse range of other community sports groups, winter and summer, and are now registered for use for four local cricket sides in the Thames Valley leagues this coming April. It’s nice to know that these facilities are now put to good use over the year, providing homes for a wide range of community groups who help pay for the provision that our own children already enjoy.

Other physical projects to be completed over the next few months:

January – Tarmacing and carpeting of the MUGA at Juniors, official opening 7 March 2025;
February – Installation of a Flexitent social area for parents at Juniors, funded by the PTA;
Spring and Summer, investment in music and drama facilities at Juniors, thanks to a generous donation received through the PTA Foundation;
Easter – installation of a new Pavilion for the Sixth Form, initially for public exam use and then as an additional study centre;
Summer – new Music Centre at Senior Boys, new PE/Sports Fitness centre at College for Senior Girls and Sixth Form;
Planning application to cover the replacement of the Drama ‘Shed Theatre’ and adjacent facilities at Senior Boys.

Whilst our physical development ideas do not end there, the above signals the completion of projects currently as part of the school’s overall development plan to date.

As Principals, Hugh and I are being naturally very cautious of the planning of future investment, because of the choice of the Labour Government to impose VAT on our tuition fees, a direct cost to parents of course, and the consequential need for the school to ensure tuition fees to not rise any more than absolutely necessary. We await with great interest the outcomes of the judicial review of the legality of the imposition of this tax; nevertheless, the school must continue to consider our next steps for the benefit of our children, young people, staff and parents. At this stage, I feel it important to explain quite how we arrived at our current set of outcomes.

As our original plan to develop the school onto one site was refused in 2020, our challenge since has been how to reestablish a new focus and direction. The Court Report 2022-24 published last month highlights many of our achievements, so I won’t reiterate them here. Suffice it to say that we moved from a #NewCampus to #MaidenheadIsOurCampus and as a consequence have set our sights on improving all three school sites in Maidenhead and establishing even more mutual relationships within sports, the arts, ecology and the wider community.

Making our mark in 2025 is not just about physical building, and perhaps even more importantly, it’s about ensuring we continue to develop our education, health and care offer for all age ranges so that we continue to see everyone thrive, strive and as appropriate overcome the difficulties and hurdles that they encounter along the way. So much of the narrative under the new government carries the warning label of ‘Blame Game’, as if nothing good has come of the past quarter of a century in the country. As all informed commentators keep highlighting, we’ve really had enough time spent on consultations and reviews, we’ve plenty of actions recommended for those in service to get on with. After all, Claires Court may have encountered some roadblocks, but we haven’t just stood still and wrung our hands.

Writing in 2025 may very well be considered a different process, given that we have paper, pen, screen, voice and AI to assist, but children must not jump the developmental steps needed on the journey to conscious competence. 20 years ago, Professor Pat Preedy and I worked together with our association to highlight the absolute requirement for the children’s nursery space to include sufficient outdoor play and playmat activities to ensure that the primitive reflexes controlled by the brain stem we are born with are suitably overwritten by cortical activity in the brain. These adaptive responses develop during the neonatal period and integrate over time as the brain matures. They are present for survival and development in the early months of life. Physicians and therapists commonly use these to assess the integrity of the central nervous system. In this video produced six years ago, Pat talks about the failure of the current EYFS assessment and profile; she’d won the DfE over to commence the reform she recommended in 2019/20, redundant as a consequence of the pandemic then. Claires Court, and other good schools with whom Pat has worked, have made the changes recommended in the book she co-wrote, Early Childhood Education Redefined.

In 2025 we know that not only must parents permit their children to crawl and struggle, and NOT cause to walk upright in bouncers, but we also know that too much contact with ‘screen time’ means children won’t develop the 3-dimensional grasp of the world they need, and that their state of excitement created by the over-release of endorphins can in due course lead to other unexpected differences in their physical, social and emotional development. At school, whilst we have thoroughly embraced the introduction of screen-based learning and the use of AI, our early adoption has been matched by clear consideration of the other needs children still have as they go through school. Movement for learning and making their mark on paper are both essential in slowing down the child’s intellectual response so they consider the ‘why, how and what’ they wish to do and say.

The new curriculum review will be welcomed by the state sector, as it has been deprived of the funding needed to provide universally across the country for the wider full funding of a truly broad curriculum. No one really will welcome any immediate changes to the upper secondary and sixth form examination syllabi, partly because we are just now gathering the evidence for the outcomes of the new 2017-2019 examination changes (largely positive), and we need wider society to decide whether it is going to re-introduce the wider pathways into adult skill development in addition to undergraduate education at University. The latest political decision (October ’24 budget) to place a higher cost by way of pay and higher tax on youth employment is already causing the delay in the growth needed of employer-based apprenticeships, so both government and employers must resolve the current impasse. Apparently many in their twenties are both crippled by debt and inertia that the state is funding their unemployment – that’s not a recipe for future success.

Claires Court’s curriculum will continue to develop, embrace and promote the best of academic know-how, with the parallel requirements to build the opportunities to use the physical, collaborative and entrepreneurial skills they need, coupled with a school-wide sense of belonging, engendered by “Your place is here”. Again the Court Report speaks to these developments too; at Junior level leading as we have in the trialing of the use of AI in the classroom, adjacent to the success we have had ‘out in the woods’ with Forest School, at senior level with the growth of the CCF and Paddling centre on Boulter’s Island.

To conclude, whilst there is much to do, as the Academic Principal leading Claires Court, I know it’s my duty to keep the school on its ambitious programme to the best we can be for everyone in the school, a ‘challenging space’ yet ‘safe place’. Next week sees us launch our annual questionnaire for our parent & guardian community. I look forward to hearing what our customers think of what we have been able to do and have in mind for the future. Watch this space!

Educational footnote: In academic terms, we’ve known for 7 millennia that classrooms need to welcome about 20 children to the space for teachers to lead their instruction. Since those early marks made in clay 5000 BCE and beyond, we’ve learned that the actual process of writing, drawing, painting, and making music all cause the growth of intellect and imagination. The first known writer in clay by name in history was a woman: Enheduanna. She received this name, which means “high priestess, ornament of heaven” in Sumerian, upon her appointment to the temple of the moon god in Ur, a city in southern Mesopotamia, in present-day Iraq The first book discovered written during Sumerian times is the Epic of Gilgamesh, part man, part god, now over 4000 years old, and the video below does rather highlight the extraordinary imagination of humans so long ago.

The Epic of Gilgamesh started out as a series of Sumerian poems and tales dating back to 2100 B.C., but the most complete version was written around the 12th century B.C. by the Babylonians. The story was later lost to history after 600 B.C.E. and it wasn’t until the mid-19th century that archaeologists finally unearthed a copy near the Iraqi city of Mosul. Since then, scholars have hailed the 4,000-year-old epic as a foundational text in world literature. Link

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“What do George Bernard Shaw, Jeff Goldblum and I have in common?”

Posted on 06/01/2025 by jameswilding

A Notebook LLM conversation about this blog can be found here: https://schl.cc:443/gn

Today, Monday 6 January 2025 I start my 44th year as a school head, yet another almost relentless anniversary barrier I break through when I come back to work for the new term at Claires Court. My sole place of permanent employment since September 1975 has been the school my parents first established in 1960, and who invited me back to be a teacher of Maths, Science and Sport since graduating from the University of Leicester, 2:1 BSc in Combined Sciences, double major in Biologica Sciences and Psychology. I am now 71 years of age, remain happily married, and have the responsibility for the education of my first grandson now in Year 2. I confess to starting every day with the same enthusiasm as Admiral William McRaven, whose book ‘Make Your Bed: How Little Thing Can Change Your Life” – I know by doing stuff I make a difference, and his graduation speech at UT is perhaps the best of its kind worth watching: The Power of Hope.

Admiral McRaven is a couple of years younger than me, and his career past working for the military has been pretty stellar too. Not only has he been the Chancellor of the University of Texas, and enjoyed a career as an academic, currently a Professor of National Security at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin and a Senior Advisor at Lazard. Moreover, being very well connected, he received $50 million from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancé Lauren Sánchez to use for charity. McRaven intends to use this 2024 Bezos Courage and Civility Award to support the children of fallen servicemembers and advocate for veteran mental health issues and education.

Sadly, I am not that well connected, yet I don’t have any ambition to retire; honestly, I don’t wear the ‘still working’ badge with pride, but have a wholly different mindset to my parents and their generation who could not wait to retire to get on with their lives after work. Thanks to the world of Social Media, I caught up with another celebrity speaker, celebrating his own birthday, one year older than me, actor Jeff Goldblum, reflecting on what inspires him to stay at work. Here’s Goldblum’s response, in which he quotes entirely from memory the words of George Barnard Shaw:

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

There’s quite a lot not to like about GBS, particularly in his final years in which he became a great supporter for both Mussolini and Stalin, but his words above resonate hugely for me too, as clearly it remains in all of our hands to make out of the honest clay from which we came the future earth onto which we choose to stride out in the years to come. Having a corporate memory for Education’s declared purpose from 1975 to the present day, I see us all still striving to ensure that every child is given the opportunity “to know, understand and can do”. The tools we were using in the 1970/80s were developed to ensure problem-solving took place in the classroom, in the labs by the way of the Nuffield Practical Science programme. Academic qualifications changed to incorporate such practical skills and measure them at the time of utilisation via coursework and viva voce assessments.

Over recent decades, with the intervention of the Internet, handheld devices, software and now AI, discovering the knowledge component has been made far easier, proving via assessment of student understanding as problematic, and indeed what they can do now compromised by the utilities that can do it for them. Honestly, this is nothing new. As a baby scout, I was required to learn so many skills to earn badges, which still included Scouts needing to know how to carry messages, use gas masks, and handle crowds. Most of my A-level studies in Chemistry and Biology either included industrial processes defunct from the 1930s and making inaccurate drawings of embryology across the species that tested my visual and practical reasoning skills and didn’t touch the idea of genetics at all (until I entered University).

On short, and to pick up from GBS, the torch I used to hold included Ever Ready batteries and could sit on the front of my bicycle, with a hood to use in the case of Blackout. That device has changed beyond recognition, inspires as an Olympic flame every 4 years and in the meantime now uses modern li-ion and diodic lights that seem equally at home as lasers cutting through metal or lighting my Christmas Tree to assist Santa find his way! I continue to seek out the new technologies that can illuminate what I do further, so I doff my hat off to Google, WordPress, Jetpack and all who make this purpose easier to share. Thanks to NotebookLLM, dear reader you also get their commentary on my thoughts as well. Happy New year, it’s certainly needing to be a Brave New World, but we can make that happen for sure.

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‘Sweet dreams are made of this, Who am I to disagree?’ – a final hurrah for 2024?

Posted on 21/12/2024 by jameswilding

NotebookLLM Deep Dive Audio review of this article can be found here – https://schl.cc:443/gm

It’s 10.30pm, Saturday evening, 21 December, and we’re watching BBC2, a night dedicated to Annie Lennox and her singing.

Lennox’s life exposes all that’s so wrong, yet brilliant about the way individuals have been able to grow up in the UK during our parallel lifetimes. Her work captures the smallness of growing up in a closed, Scottish community up to the grandness of being the best in our generation.

When I say wrong, she was permitted to join the Royal College of Music age 17 and drop out, these days that would be regarded a ‘safeguarding’ issue. Long before Simon Sinek, she asked (1992) the question ‘Why’; for over a decade she’d empowered (along with Bowie) an understanding that life could be androgenous, and none were required to make a choice they might later feel uncomfortable about.

At the close of yet another year in which the natural order of things is in complete turmoil, from the things we know (Austerity, UK bankruptcy, VAT, government incompetence) across the insoluble (Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Climate change, Poverty) to the unknown (dark energy, Farage, Musk & Trump), I feel moved to put in print a few words I’ve spoken frequently about over the year.

Change has been with us with such increasing frequency that it’s become the norm. As a consequence, almost all organisations of scale have lost contact with the corporate memory of how they got there in the first place. And of course, the very nature of democratic choice is that if a new team (red) is elected, then all existing (blue) ways of working will be cancelled. This leads to major government departments having to give press releases supporting the ‘new’ orthodoxies, which must taste like sawdust in their mouths.

For us long-standing leaders of our generation, it’s both exhausting and inexplicable; how can government agencies move from swearing that ‘4 legs are good’ without recalling the antics described in Orwelll’s Animal Farm. Orwell would be regarded these days as a failure, dropping out from school before going to college. How is it possible for the Oxbridge/UCL educated intelligencia of 2024 not to appreciate that they’ve adopted the ‘Newspeak‘ Orwell brings alive in his statement of the future ‘1984’, now of course 40 years old?

For at least most of this century, we’ve been lied to by our politicians, from ‘weapons of mass destruction’, the ‘Ponzi’ scheme that lead to the 2008 Wall Street crash, Brexit and the stolen US election of 2020. It’s ever been this, and will remain so I guess.

Lennox’s longevity remains an inspiration; as culture, gender, politics, technology and life itself have been little more than ‘quicksand’, she’s floated and stayed ahead of the game. I’ll leave you with her reminder of where ‘sweet dreams’ are made – but preface that by my thought that ‘When surrounded by ‘Shit’, all you can do is ‘Shine”!

Cover art for Sweet Dreams by Annie Lennox

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody’s looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody’s looking for something
Hold your head up, keep your head up movin’ on
Hold your head up movin’ on, keep your head up movin’ on
Hold your head up movin’ on, keep your head up movin’ on
Hold your head up movin’ on, keep your head up
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
Hold your head up, keep your head up movin’ on
Hold your head up movin’ on, keep your head up movin’ on
Hold your head up movin’ on, keep your head up movin’ on
Hold your head up movin’ on, keep your head up
Sweet dreams are made of this
Sweet dreams are made of this
Sweet dreams are made of this

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Principals’ End of Term Words 13 December 2024

Posted on 13/12/2024 by jameswilding

Dear Parents

This time last year, we wrote to share with you news of developments at Claires Court, and 12 months on it’s pleasing to report that at Senior Boys, the Food Tech studio is now successfully commissioned and the MUGA at Juniors nearing completion. We have permission to replace the Senior Boys Music facilities, planned for July 2025, and we are reviewing how best to conclude the refurbishment of the ‘Shed Theatre’ drama studio and adjacent workshops in a similar manner. Further applications for a new PE facility and a Study pavilion for Sixth Form at College continue to work their way through RBWM planning. Across the sites, our efforts for continual improvements to meet our children’s needs and our future aspirations will continue with careful consideration.

VAT Matters

We continue to work with HMRC to complete our VAT registration and implement the requirements of the Autumn Budget 2024 and Finance Bill 2024-25. In passing, please support the new petition for Parliament to reconsider the imposition of VAT on school fees — please use this link: https://schl.cc:443/gk.

It’s not just our sector that feels the government has significantly failed to consider the repercussions of its decision to impose VAT on tuition fees. Last week, Buckinghamshire County Council published this paper, leading as follows “The recent introduction of a 20% VAT on independent school fees, and the abolition of business rates relief by the Government, has sparked significant concerns about the potential impact on Buckinghamshire’s education system.” Read more here. Over the 43 years of James Wilding’s Headship, Buckinghamshire Council (and Buckinghamshire County Council before it) has always taken a proactive approach to working with the independent sector, including Claires Court, both to maximise the benefit for all of the children and as appropriate to minimise the additional cost to the Education Authority. The new government has yet to recognise how complex the meeting of SEN needs is, how seriously underfunded the sector is, and how schools like Claires Court have played a significant part in alleviating the problem for local education authorities.

Court Report

We used to publish an annual 200+ page book to chronicle all aspects of the school; however, now we are in a more digital age and publishing so much more frequently on many channels, we have condensed it to our main highlights over the years. We are delighted to share the Court Report for 2022 to 2024 with you next week when it will be available online via our website. I will also add a further post to this Blog as well. In the meantime, our ever-updating website media continues to cover the news as it arises, also available via the Claires Court App, from the Apple or Android store.

Parent questionnaire – opening for comments on Wednesday 8 January 2025

This annual questionnaire takes the form of the one used by the ISI Inspectorate. It will be released as an on-line form at the start of next term, be open for two weeks and will be emailed to you. At the same time, we will be running our annual pupil and staff questionnaires, as these assist in triangulating incoming data to check for common patterns of praise, concern or interest. A sample for view, but not completion can be found here.

PTA matters

We express our immense gratitude to the PTA Trustees, Committee Chairs and active supporters for the wonderful events already run this term, including the Autumn Fireworks, Chess Competition, Christmas Fayre, Wreath Making and PTA Quiz Night.

Many will have seen PTA President, Phyllis Avery MBE at these events, not just leading by showing an interest, but as Chair of the PTA Foundation charity, working hard to ensure new incoming funds are put to best use. Our PTA AGM is to take place on Friday 7 March at 2pm, to be concluded in good time to support the official opening of the new Multi-User-Games-Area for our Junior school and other community users. We are delighted to confirm that Sports commentator Steve Rider will conduct the official opening later in the afternoon, with some showcase activities on display on the astroturf from children and adults from the school! More news to follow on both the AGM and a funding update from our JustGiving channels.

Independent Schools Association (ISA)

ISA is the largest and most diverse of the associations in our sector, where each of the 691 headteachers act as our representative. As Principal, James Wilding has been elected from those to serve for a further three years on the Executive Council. Not only is James the longest serving head on Council (since 1990), but when at the same time, as the ISA member the school joined, we then discovered that the founder of The College, Maidenhead, Andrew Millar-Inglis was one of a handful of school proprietors who chose to establish the group of Principals of Proprietorial schools formally in 1878. Messrs Wilding very much hope to be representing our school in 2028 when ISA celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2028, for which event an updated History of the Association is to be written, in which we hope our contribution over time will be recognised!

Staff Departures

The photo shows Chris Rowan, ICT & music teacher, on the keyboards at the Junior School Carol service at All Saints this week. After 38 years teaching at Claires Court, Chris steps away into his new career as proprietor/photographer for Classpicks, so in many ways will still be seen around our events, capturing the scene, and as required stepping back in to play the Organ, Piano, Keyboards or Ocarina for the school as required. When alumni talk about their time as a junior, most will always have Mr Rowan up there as someone who inspired them, as class teacher, for music, for technology and anything involving the school ‘show’!

Next steps

We have much to look forward to in 2025 and would like to wish you all a peaceful, happy and healthy Christmas break with your families and friends. As you might expect, teachers and administrators continue to catch up on workflow and quality assurance activities. End of term Friday sees the staff working with Finn O’Regan, one of the leading Behaviour and Learning specialists in the UK, to understand even more clearly what we now understand about neurodiversity in our community. In addition, the staff will workshop together on how to use the growing set of tools using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to best effect in the classroom, as well as in their workflow as professionals.

Senior and Sixth Form staff with Finton O’Regan

SchoolTV advice for the break

Our SchoolTV website is well used by our community, providing excellent independent advice and information on common areas of concern. We highlight specifically the item on ‘Managing Overwhelm’ here, the advice provided by Laverne Antrobus, child & adolescent psychologist, to highlight the active parenting actions to consciously and intentionally assist their children to learn good well-being strategies. The video is easy to watch, 10 minutes of good advice that covers very up-to-date concerns.

If there is One Thing you can do for Claires Court over the break…

It’s to pass on, in your friendship groups and communication channels, just how positive our school remains about the future ahead for our children. The Carol services at the end of term were true celebrations of how we collaborate and how musical and choral scholarship continues to grow across the years. All the many plans we continue to develop have your children at the heart of why we come to work and what we do. As we highlighted in our previous communication, we will continue to work on business efficiencies, develop further our existing relationships and work on new out-of-school partnerships to bring additional revenue in too.

With many best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year.

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“Make Your Bed” – Admiral William H. McRaven

Posted on 05/12/2024 by jameswilding

In his book, published in 2017, McRaven makes 10 suggestions, the subtitles being ‘Little things that can change your life…and maybe the world’. 7 years earlier, when he gave the commencement address to 8000 graduating students at the University of Texas UT. Rather than read the book, the video of his speech is worth watching here.

I’ve been reminded of these simple messages recently, which sit in direct contrast to the incredibly complex set of instructions we face every time we wish to cause the creation of something new. And though I continue to do my best to understand and then accelerate those next steps, actually, sometimes only time is needed, and there is nothing I can do to short-circuit the calendar. In many ways, that’s the nature of the school curriculum itself, which is carefully paced through each year to ensure there is time for the breadth of cognition to develop, knowledge AND skills to be acquired.

This year, I have completed 4 years of service for the Independent Schools Association as the chair of their Inspections committee and as their representative on the cross-association Universities committee checking in with universities and colleges on their processes and requirements, and causing them at the individual University level to consider carefully the concerns the schoolwide sector has about student management and well-being. It’s been an enormous privilege, being the representative of almost 700 independent schools in these 2 forums, and whilst my contribution has been genuinely valued by my colleagues in ISA, I am delighted to have drawn to an end those 2 elements of work-flow. Having recently been re-elected to serve on ISA Exec Council for a further 3 years, I’m pleased my voice has not been silenced completely, yet returning just to work in my school is hugely rewarding in turn.

As my previous posts this term have made clear, we have no choice other than to look for the positives and celebrate the successes, not just for ourselves but everyone else concerned in our society, because it’s team, collaborative work that will make the difference for us all. When as a headteacher I am asked to engage with any national government consultation, I will make that contribution rather than set it aside. During the recent HMRC consultation on the introduction of VAT to our sector, it’s clear to those MPs directly involved that the huge volumes of correspondence that followed made no difference to the roll-out of policy, but that does not mean we can’t hold HMRC to account when the process falls over and fails to deliver the outcomes (6500 more teachers) predicted.

It’s worth mentioning that the new government’s review of the curriculum content of our state schools is coming to a close, and there’s considerable focus from pressure groups on the need to reform once more the public examination system and the extraordinary and bureaucratic beast it has become. I urge the utmost caution on everyone currently hoping for a dramatic transformation quickly – don’t go there yet! Dame Christine Ryan, formerly Chief Inspector of the Independent Schools Inspectorate made very clear to the government 7 years ago that Michael Gove’s wholesale changes to the then National Curriculum at both GCSE and A Level simultaneously would place the country’s ability to check the nation’s progress into limbo for 5-7 years – that’s how long it would take to assess whether the changes had made an impact, and if so, was that a good one. It’s also worth saying that the Scottish Government did the same thing, and so now we can for the first time see the results rolling in. Yes, in principle, England’s system is improving, but we need 4 more years to check that the improvements are making the ‘change in practice for the better’ permanent.

England’s reading, writing and science progress has been very strong indeed, the latest evidence of which comes from the TIMMS 2023 assessments for Maths and Sciences. What’s important to appreciate is that it takes teachers also a very good deal of time to get used to new mechanisms for teaching, learning and assessment, and I certainly approve of the academic focus that has returned to the teaching of the sciences, and the importance of Literature in our lives as ways of learning about emotional regulation and change. It’s genuinely nice to see that our ‘recovery’ from the pandemic has been quicker than other countries, and for Science we are now placed at the very top of expectations, so well done fellow science teachers for that. Scotland adopted a far more modern approach, diluting rigour with relevance, the latter sadly being ‘opinion’ and with little actionable content. The Curriculum for Excellence has proven not to be, which saddens so many I know where once Scottish Education was held in the highest esteem.

Where the English system works at the 18+ and graduation process to work or University remains the most efficient process, permitting young adults to move on into apprenticeships, college or University with graduation beyond expected in 3 years. As our higher education qualifications incur the acquisition of serious debt, the last thing we should currently be thinking of is a migration to a 4 or even 5 year pathway prior to graduation, at an adjusted debt cost of £100,000. One of the brilliant innovations in the private University sector is the willingness to compress this process into 2 years, mostly in the music and fashion business because it’s the work that follows that aligns work experience to skill and knowledge already acquired.

What’s not working anywhere in the UK is the availability for planned support for those whose learning difficulties are not being met, the funding for diagnostic assessments that need to be carried out and the subsequent skilled support, counselling and other therapies ensuring intervention happens in a timely manner. Apparently there is an investigation by JCQ underway to explore why there is such a difference between the state and independent sector in terms of reasonable adjustments to be made to meet disability requirements for public exams. As anyone who has worked with out school has found, we conduct rigorous assessments towards the end of Year 9 to assess those needs prior to commencing GCSE courses, and again at the start of Year 12 and Sixth Form courses. These routine activities cost money, time and resources, teacher-feedback and then ongoing assessment to check that the concessions awarded are actually being used. Whilst I certainly support this review, I don’t expect to read that our sector has been too generous – as it is very clear just how under-resourced the state sector has become. Not wishing to sound facetious, but the lack of National Health dentistry is not down to the over-provision of dentists in the private sector!

In McRaven’s short book (p122), he describes the Wednesday of ‘Hell Week’, during which the SEAL trainees spent 15 hours after dark up to their necks in mud. All that was needed was for 5 of the trainees to quit and the whole squad would be released from the slime. Just as it looked the squad would fail, one brave voice began to sing, then a second until of course the whole troop joined in. Bit by bit the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little tamer and the dawn a little nearer.

“If you want to change the world, start singing when you are up to your neck in mud!”

I’ve just watched Sherborne’s rugby video of our U14 side beating their A team away in the quarter-final of the South West Rugby Cup by the narrowest of margins, 17-15, and the last 5 minutes epitomise the strength that a team can draw from when no-one gives up! Throughout this term, I’ve seen that spirit of teamwork shine through, evident in the classrooms, the arts, music and drama events, and indeed in the relationships evident at the PTA events such as Fireworks and Christmas Fair. Despite the complexities to be found in the ‘game of life’, we can make things a whole lot easier if we do the simple things well. Here’s to completing the term in such style, singing well whatever the weather!

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