The 'X' Factor

Choosing the right school depends on parents’ reactions and attitudes as well, argues Patrick Tobin, Principal of Stewart’s Melville College and Chairman-elect of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference

On 1st May 1997 millions of individuals entered ballot booths to exercise their solitary democratic right. We all had to reduce our political comprehension to some very basic propositions. Did we want to register a cross at all?  If so, which of the choices available to us was superior to all the others? Thus we did choose our government for the next five years.

When 2nd May dawned, many journalists admitted to being struck afresh by the fundamental principle of political democracy – that, when all the social science in the world has been studied and written, the fate of governments depends on the views, whims and caprices of a myriad of individuals. It is a dignifying thought, as dignifying as the other great choices which we make in our lives.

If marriage is, for most of us, the supreme individual choice, the education of our children has claims to be the most demanding preoccupation which parents will face. From the very beginning, from the wallpaper in the nursery and the mobile in the cot, we are providing educational influences for our children. We colour their lives by where we live, by our friends, by our example and beliefs, by our holidays and our hobbies and so on. We are fiercely protective of our offspring. We care about the influences which come to bear upon them, or which they choose for themselves, particularly their own friends and groupings. At times, the little boats which we have launched seem to surge effortlessly down the middle of the channel. Then, unaccountably, they seem to be becalmed or plunged into eddies and whirlpools. Do we interfere? Do we let be? In all cases and at all times we are making choices.

Do we choose our children’s schools? There was a time when the educational scene resembled a One Party State. The local school, primary or secondary, enjoyed a total monopoly. The local authority ran the show. I suspect that the change in government will not reverse the ideological shift of the past 20 years. It is apparent to all that, where possible, parents should enjoy a genuine choice of schools. Otherwise, schools lose sight of their central mission, which is to serve the children whom they educate and their parents, rather than to affirm their own vested interests. However crude and harsh the league tables can be in their workings, the last Secretary of State for Education spoke true when she said that she never knew a school come bottom of the table twice. The parents would not stand for it.

Independent schools exist to meet parents at the height of their aspirations for their children. That they remain open at all, let alone prosper, is because they have persuaded parents to put a cross in their box and, like the vote cast for political parties, it is unlikely to be a ‘single issue’ process of selection. Rather, a variety of factors will be attracting Mr and Mrs Smith to one school, Mr and Mrs Jones to another – academic results, yes, but also such considerations as religious affiliation, single-sex or coeducation, boarding or day, architecture, ambience and atmosphere, local reputation, how the next door neighbours’ boy turned out, what the pupil guiding them around the school had to say, how the pupil-to-be-reacted – it is a wonder that parents ever manage to make a choice at all!

In the end, the overriding ‘x’ factor boils down to a simple question: what is best for my son, my daughter? This will be a question of ‘feel’ as much as of information. I think that this is a very sound instinct. It is matched by a similar reality on the ‘supply side’, the quality of the schools themselves. Here too an ‘x’ factor is all important.

In the early 1990s I had the privilege of being a pioneer in the new Educational Assessment Centre. This sought to define the managerial qualities needed for successful headship. Participants in the process were put through a rigorous and rigorously observed series of situations, in which 12 individual ‘competencies’ were measured and described. Eleven of these 12 competencies would be valid for any occupation requiring management skills. Only the last was specific to education, Educational Values. It turned out to be the most difficult to extract and measure.

This poses problems for governing bodies charged with the selection of new heads. If only it could be reduced to scientific formulae. Instead, they too are confronted with their ‘x’ factor: who is the right person for this job at this time? It is indeed a crucial choice. All the research of recent years has brought out the extent to which the welfare of a school depends on the leadership of that school. The truly successful head of an independent school is the man or woman who finds the crock of gold, the insight into what every good parent wants for son or daughter – and who finds the answer to that question even before the parents themselves do.

So parents visiting a school should not be afraid of their own subjective responses to atmosphere and impressions. Every school is as good as the values which it genuinely affirms, nurtures and expresses. And each school is concerned, above all, with the quality of the relationships within it. The expectations which the teachers have of their pupils, social as much as academic, are crucial. The readiness of teachers to go the extra mile will determine the breadth and quality of what the school has to offer. The way in which boys and girls behave towards one another will be the single biggest influence on the social attitudes and behaviour of individual boys and girls in the school. Yes, impressions can be formed by the decorations on the walls and the manicuring of the lawns, but some of the best schools are relatively impoverished by such standards. Their true riches lie in the concern of teachers for their pupils and by the smiles on faces and the laughter in conversation. There is no contradiction between smiles and laughter on the one hand, and high expectations on the other. On the contrary, the happy child is the one who knows that life is thoroughly worthwhile.

When parents are able to choose a school for their children, their own values and relationships intersect with those of the school itself. In the end, the independent school is, in one sense, nothing more than the sum of all the love, attitudes and influences brought into it by the pupils who constitute it at any time. At a different level however, it is the intersection of a new generation with all the values, relationships and traditions passed down by previous generations and expressed by the teachers of the school, a fusion as mysterious as it is fertile. The fact that hundreds of thousands of parents make great sacrifices each year to choose their own independent school, to cast their educational vote, is a profoundly important and encouraging feature of our society.

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