According to journalist Simon Jenkins, the town of “Worksop has an unhappy name and an unhappy setting”. Worksop College’s location is certainly an unusual one for a public school, set amongst the pit villages of north Nottinghamshire and adjacent to the former coalmining town from which it takes its name.

 

In contrast to this landscape of industrial change, the college is placed in 300 acres of glorious wooded parkland on the edge of Clumber Park, one of the National Trust’s most visited properties, at the gateway to the ‘Dukeries’, the four vast estates whose great houses once dominated the area. Symbolically, Sherwood Forest surrounds the school, a reminder of early experiments in the redistribution of wealth and the stands of naturally regenerating oaks scattered across the college estate may be taken to represent the economic recovery of the area as a whole.

 

Worksop College is a Woodard school and it is perhaps worth saying something about the Reverend Nathaniel Woodard and his vision. An Anglican clergyman, Woodard founded ten schools between 1848 and 1890 to provide a Christian education for the children of the middle class. Worksop was the last of these and, in common with the other schools it had a very specific purpose. Woodard graded his schools so that, for instance, in Sussex, his original starting point, Lancing was designed to be a comparatively grand school and Ardingly a comparatively modest one.

 

Woodard was not only an educational visionary he was a shrewd and imaginative businessman. He understood the concept of the niche market whilst other schools were only concerned to produce – and, if possible, recruit – gentlemen.

 

Nevertheless, each school had much in common, not least physically, with their central chapel and single dining hall embodying the schools’ Christian ethos and strong sense of family. Worksop, founded in 1890 as the last of his family of schools, centred on his aim to provide a liberal education based on the firm foundations of Anglican teaching. That ethos remains strong today and the chapel continues to play an important part in the life of every pupil at Worksop and in all the other Woodard schools.

 

The chapel, dedicated to St Cuthbert, stands at the eastern end of a fine range of red brick Tudor style buildings that include the library and the Headmaster’s house and is an Edwardian design by Aston Webb. Christian education extends well beyond the chapel, for the college is especially noted for its pastoral care and the treatment of every child as an individual.

 

Worksop is not just a Woodard school it is also, by design, a fairly small school. As Headmaster, I know every one of the four hundred pupils well. Although the school has grown steadily in size and reputation in recent years and is large enough to enable specialisation, it remains small enough to retain a family atmosphere. Although about half of the boys and girls are now day pupils, the school retains a boarding ethos. Weekly boarders go home after sport on Saturday afternoon, leaving about 100 pupils in residence across the weekend, whilst during the week flexi-boarding is popular with the day pupils; on a typical week night up to 75% of the school may be in residence. This commitment to boarding is demonstrated by the investment of £2.5 million in a new girls’ boarding house opened by the Countess ofWessex in the autumn of 2007.

 

Specialisation has enabled us to introduce a two-strand curriculum, the traditional academic and the vocational. The academic curriculum, offering the full range of GCSEs and A levels, enables the stretching of the brightest pupils, three of whom won Oxbridge places in 2008. Vocational alternatives, both at GCSE and in the sixth form, provide a choice for those pupils who are not suited to the academic rigour of the grammar school. Nevertheless, over 95% of sixth formers go on to university and in a school that offers so many extracurricular activities academic pursuits are asserted as a priority.

 

Worksop and the closely-linked prep school, Ranby House, aim to produce young people who are confident, have self-knowledge, are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and who feel happy in any company. The down-to-earth nature of the region in which the school sits ensures that arrogance and self-importance are not traits of college leavers. Indeed, the college remains proud of its links with the local area, Woodard’s choice of this location being to serve the needs of parents whose income generation depended on the local manufacturing industries and agriculture.

 

A century later the strength of design technology and food and nutrition courses in the school reflect an area long renowned for its engineering and nowadays producing most of eastern England’s sandwiches, quiches and sushi. Perhaps one of the only HMC schools to grant ferreting rights to former miners in order to keep down the rabbit population, the college is also rare in boasting an 18 hole golf course in its grounds, for both rabbits and golf thrive in the sandy heathland. Worksop is of course the home of Lee Westwood.

 

Sporting excellence is matched by a strong choral tradition, which ensures that the college is a beacon for music-making in the area. The newly-refurbished theatre continues to maintain a high standard of drama and the art department, offering six different GCSEs and A levels, is one of the flagships amongst the academic departments. Educating pupils to earn a living is an expectation of an east midland region that is fast developing economically, boosted by excellent north-south communication via the A1, M1, the London-Edinburgh railway and the newly opened Robin Hood International Airport at Doncaster.

 

At the heart of the college is the community, for this is home not only to the pupils but also to over half the teaching staff and their families and members of the non-teaching staff too. This inclusive society ensures that the students develop respect for each other and an acceptance of others regardless of background or ability. A generous bursary scheme ensures the college is not socially exclusive.

 

We are proud of having educated Chad Varah, founder of the Samaritans, who died last year aged 94 and who maintained close links with his Alma Mater right up until his death. Traditional standards of behaviour and appearance continue to be asserted and Worksop College is very definitely not one of those schools which have adopted a laissez-faire attitude to hair length, top buttons and shirt tails. The Woodard Foundation is, as its founder intended, an innovative and forward-looking enterprise.

 

There are now 23 ‘owned’ schools covering the full range of independent education, from two to 18, single sex and co-ed, senior and prep, day and boarding. But, more significantly perhaps, 17 ‘affiliated’ state schools are also members of the Woodard family and plans are well advanced for the first Woodard Academy. Thus in the ancient wapentake of Bassetlaw, in a community that has run the full gamut of economic experience in the last hundred years and which was once as much the haunt of Dukes as Robin Hood, you will find a school proud to share the ‘unhappy name’ of its local town and the fine traditions of its region, boasting a warm secure community that continues to assist young people in discovering the inner strength within each of them.