HMC Conference, London 2013
Chairman’s Address
Dr Tim Hands
The first Chairman’s speech was given 50 years ago, almost to the exact minute, by Derek
Wigram of Monkton Coombe. Addressing an audience probably a little like those on the
cover of this year’s tongue in cheek Conference Programme, he acknowledged that HMC
schools were now a subject of “acute controversy”. He tried to define what the Association
stood for, and should therefore do. Fifty years on, here is a reassessment.
Who and what are we? “Headmasters,” said Winston Churchill, “have powers at their
disposal with which Prime Ministers have never been invested." Some have gone further.
“Sir”, a new pupil is alleged to have asked the Headmaster of a leading public school, “is
there any difference between the Headmaster and God?” “I can think of one small
difference,” came the reply, “but there is no need to let it trouble you whilst you are a pupil at
this great school.” (Ian Power, having consulted the records, confirms that difference as
HMC Membership). Attitudes have not necessarily changed. At St. Albans, for example,
where Alban’s severed pate tumbled down the hill, one might particularly expect a
recognition that heads can roll. By contrast, I have it on the authority of a previous Deputy to
Andrew Grant, the Head of St. Albans, that when new pupils start the prayer Grant we
beseech thee, they commonly believe that that they are addressing not their God but their
Headmaster. The prayer is said to have been in particularly widespread use during Andrew’s
year as our Chairman. Indeed, chambermaids report that in some bedrooms of the
Liverpool Adelphi it resonates still to this day.
For one former member, HMC can only be compared to Yugoslavia: a set of people of
different beliefs, thrown together by historical accident, – warring amongst themselves until
threatened with invasion. A more recent member has already suggested why this
Conference is heading for London Zoo. Commonly seen, a bit like Eton, as a tourist
1 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address attraction, and equally full of photo opportunities, the Zoo also in fact, like us, has scholarly
foundations, and is a refuge for endangered species, housing animals of many kinds. Some
are aggressive, some colourful, some best behind bars, some at their best when propping
them up. Many incline towards sleep as the afternoon beckons.
HMC first met in 1869. Its foundation is often misunderstood. It represented not the ancient
schools, with their social reputations, but the newly founded or re-founded independent
schools, catering for a new middle-class which newly had educational aspirations. From
earliest times it had an interest in the education of both genders but its fundamental belief
was that education was a matter for professionals. State interference in education was
growing and unhelpful: professionals could best run the best schools by meeting together for
fellowship and training.
The Association also reflected a new zeitgeist, a new broader philosophy. For, to a certain
extent, the Victorian age was the first to acknowledge the existence of the child, to realise
that children are special. It was the age when the child could ask for more, and, newly,
expect to be heard. Children should above all be loved – not threatened by violence, by the
likes of Mr Squeers, or filled with facts, by the likes of Mr Gradgrind. The child now had a
new status; and as a consequence, the child’s education was of major national significance.
This background is important. For if it was the 19th century that invented this understanding
of the child, it is the 21st that bids fair to hold its funeral. The chief mission and pride of our
schools, historically and at the present, is to keep that concept of the child alive and
cherished.
Derek Wigram spoke as a consequence of a new and exceptional readiness of the state to
interfere in education. The 1960s state had twin revolutionary aims: abolition of public
schools, and introduction of egalitarian comprehensives. The first of these aims was not
accomplished – perhaps because otherwise there would have been nowhere for many
politicians to send their children. The egalitarian agenda was more fully implemented, but not
without multiple irony. Harold Wilson’s government unintentionally managed to create more
independent schools than any English administration since Edward VI. No Secretary of
State closed more grammar schools than Margaret Thatcher. In 1997, by removing
Government Assisted Places, Tony Blair replaced selection by ability with selection by
wallet. This greater state interventiveness has extended, particularly since the mid 80’s, to
greater academic prescriptiveness, of which more later.
The story of the last 50 years is therefore, I suggest, the intrusion of Government and the
disappearance of the child. More radically put, it is the intrusion of the State, and the
2 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address disappearance of love. This address is catholic in it is criticism: it applies to the corporate
state, rather than to any individual party. It argues that the long interfering arm and dead
restraining hand of Government has emasculated the education system of this country and
deprived children of their long accumulated heritage. Only the independence of our schools
has kept alive in its fullness that heritage, that hard-accumulated national birth-right. Using
the fundamental Cumberland Lodge training principle – what are the facts, what are the
issues, and what are we going to do about them – this address contains three sections,
which look at the child, our Association, and this Conference.
3 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address SECTION I: THE CHILD
As the letters HMC no longer fit our title since 1996 of Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’
Conference, perhaps they should be reinterpreted as an acronym for Heed and Marvel at the
Child. Our association’s historic understanding of the child has three parts: the pastoral, the
academic and the extra-curricular.
First and most important is the pastoral. Our schools believe that the school is to the child
as the parent is to the child. It might surprise viewers of If, to suggest that boarding could in
any way be fundamental to the development of this pastoral concept. However the strong
boarding tradition in our schools has always innately ensured that the school has to be to the
child as the parent is to the child because the school is, for many weeks of the year, to the
child its very home. In the revolution of the 1960s boarding had to modernize this ethos if it
was to survive. It had to change from devotion to the hearty to responsiveness to the heart. It
had, in a very particular sense, to be feminised. Inside the independent sector, pastoral care
thus became all the more important, a key, for some schools, to their very survival.
Perennial cross fertilisation between day and boarding education has meant that the
boarding concept of pastoral care – that the school is to the child as the parent is to the child
– has been kept alive in the independent day sector whereas the state, beginning with its
unkept promise to introduce widespread boarding after the war, has allowed it largely to
disappear. The strong religious element in our schools, as well as the growth, and nature of
our junior schools, have also been important factors. Pastoral care is the essence of
independent schools. The child is now placed in the midst of all.
The contrast with historic developments in Government policy is marked. Labour zeal for
egalitarianism, followed by Tory zeal for league table driven academic excellence, means
that pastoral care has been distorted and down-valued within the maintained sector. To the
teachers at the notorious William Tyndale Primary School in the late 1970s, egalitarianism
came to be equated with neglect. In nearby Haringey, form tutor Dave Matthews told
parents that ‘kids who can’t work or don’t want to work should be allowed to do nothing.’ At
iconic Countesthorpe in Leicestershire there was no Head, only a Warden. The Warden had
no office, explaining that his job was to potter about the school talking. Anyway, he did not
approve of private rooms. Everyone, at his own request, called him Tim.
Thatcherism over-corrected these excesses. The post- 80s drive on academic standards
was based on the mistaken belief that you do not need to make a child happy as your first
priority, so that they can then be successful, as your second. Indeed it believed that if you
make a child academically successful then happiness will follow. This was roughly the Chris
Woodhead philosophy, now elaborated by the current educational administration: “Exam
4 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address success makes children happy”, argues Michael Gove, as the BBC recently reported. It
manifests itself in Government pay structures, which are removing pastoral posts and
placing an emphasis on results alone.
This philosophy also manifests itself in excessive curricular interference. The 1988
Education Act introduced a national curriculum and widespread testing. Principles of
commercial accountability were transferred to education. Hence the flawed mechanics of
league tables, about which this sector has protested regularly but in vain. Hence also the
increasing obsession with the curriculum, and especially a curriculum which is prescriptive
not liberal; functionalist, not humanist. One expert has dubbed this the Pied Piper
curriculum, which, by imparting too many facts too early, crushes the intuitive lateral thinking
of childhood. This reversion to the Gradgrindian has recently entered a kind of
Gotterdammerung phase, with Government prescription with regard not only to what is
taught, but also to how it is publicly examined, and, most remarkably of all last year, what
grade boundary it falls within.
By contrast, academic matters are secondary within the historic philosophy of our schools.
This, the academic, is the second part of our philosophy of the child, and its secondary
nature may surprise some. After all, the statistics, often quoted, show the success of our
pupils in university entrance, in gaining top A Level grades, or even in league tables. Last
year, for example, my own school came 365th in the DfE’s GCSE league table, a position
which afforded us inordinate pleasure. Winchester College has historically occupied an even
lower position, though I should hasten to add that this was not the reason why, for the
present, it has ceased membership.
For our schools have never been focused primarily on the academic. They have always
had a specific intellectual egalitarianism, a specific indifference to academic standard. This
academic egalitarianism is perennially consumer driven, but it also has two strong historic
personal influences in Arnold and Thring. Arnold, as we all know, wished to revere the life of
the intellect, but ended up creating a cult of the body, since the Rugby ethos, as
promulgated by his pupil Thomas Hughes, elevated athleticism above intellectual
achievement. Thring institutionally succeeded where Arnold had personally failed. As Nigel
Richardson’s masterful forthcoming biography illustrates, Thring, having been extraordinarily
unhappy as a pupil, wanted, once a Head, opportunities for all: “I don’t want stars or rockets:
I want every boy here to have a chance of showing his little light to help the world.” This
necessitated an exceptionally broad extra-curricular programme allowing every pupil some
form of individual self-esteem, “something by which they can attain distinction, and by doing
so restore the balance of self-respect”.
5 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address The resultant third part of our understanding of the child is an emphasis on the importance of
the extra-curricular. The more the state has intervened post war in the life of the child, the
less it has offered by way of extra-curricular provision.
It is almost painful to dwell on the
consequences of the gap this has created. There is a tendency for critics to bemoan the
success of independent school pupils rather than honestly acknowledge the approach which
facilitates that success. So well done our speaker on Wednesday, Sir Michael Wilshaw, who
when discussing sport and independent schools told the Telegraph that the independent
sector “has been very good over many years at guiding character and giving pupils a sense
of self-esteem. The youngsters who leave the independent sector have a sense that they
are going to be powerful people in society and we need to develop that.” In part our extracurricular philosophy may reflect the practical requirements of boarding, which necessarily
retained a commitment to extra-curricular activity after the strikes of the 1980s. But it is
misplaced to blame teachers, many of whom make highly vocational and lonely efforts to
keep many activities alive. It is not teachers who sell off – as successive governments have
done – the playing fields – the most clearly symbolic and auditable index of lack of
commitment. The political commitment of the state to extra-curricular activity disappeared
once the state had lost a commitment to the child and its full holistic development. The state
has been as indifferent to Arnold’s failure as to Thring’s success. But to us, both have been
historic guiding principles.
Planning today’s service, I came across a poem by HC Beeching, a pupil at City of London
School in the 19th century. To my surprise, I found that my father, whose 95th birthday fell
last week, and who is registered blind and severely limited in mobility, knew it by heart and
quoted it to me down the phone,
GOD who created me
Nimble and light of limb,
In three elements free,
To run, to ride, to swim:
Not when the sense is dim,
But now from the heart of joy,
I would remember Him:
Take the thanks of a boy.
Boyhood – and girlhood – is no longer what it was for HC Beeching, nor indeed for my
father, nor indeed what it was for many of us. The heritage of the child has become a legacy
6 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address neglected by the state. It is one that our Association has kept alive and has a duty to
maintain.
7 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address SECTION II: OUR ASSOCIATION
Fifty years ago our Association felt under attack. Demonisers might insist that the twin
negatives remain: we charge an unreasonable fee and, in modern terminology, we restrict
social mobility. This second section re-examines those charges.
Finance first. To some HMC stands for horrendous and monstrous costs, which test even
the softest hearts. ‘I can’t get my hat on in consequence of the monstrous charges’ wrote
Dickens, once an HMC consumer, ‘Why was I ever a parent?’
We would all, I suggest, rather not charge a fee; but some of our fees are not, in
comparative terms, high. When Andrew Adonis joined Tony Blair’s team in 1998, the
education budget stood at £39 billion. Ten years later it had doubled. But so also, over the
13 years of New Labour, had the achievement gap at A level between state and
independent sectors.
In November Adrian Buckley, a Manchester jeweller, wrote to Lord Adonis pointing out that
the state budget for education of £97 billion educated 9.1 million children at an annual cost
of £10,659 per child. By contrast, Manchester Grammar School, which Mr Buckley’s father,
the son of a Lancashire cotton worker, had attended on a scholarship, provided an
education stigmatised as elite, for a lower price. Andrew Adonis’s reply failed to address the
issue. He argued instead that Chris Ray likes independence – an insight which few who
know the Vice Chairman would regard as startling. Indeed, the North West manifests an
almost united view on the matter. HMC will commission proper research.
Facilities will form part of the explanation. Nick Clegg recently explained that he could not
think of a better purpose for £1 billion than school buildings. The new £80 million Holland
Park School has been described by a local politician as “the best school in Western Europe.”
Pupil chairs retail at £300, staff chairs at £400 and an atrium extends the whole length of the
building. This vogue design takes its cue, of course, from the DfE itself, the office of the
supreme Goviet, which boasts a huge central atrium – ominously symbolic, one might fear,
of a departmental philosophy with not a child, but a hole, at its heart.
By contrast, as we all know, our prime metric of school expenditure is human – recruiting
and retaining the older members of our communities, and attending to the holistic needs of
the younger ones. The comparison with the contact hours, let alone extra-curricular
8 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address provision, at universities, with their £9k fee, readily demonstrates how economically we do
this. The independent sector is often accused of a facilities arms’ race, but in my experience
the reverse is often the case. Many independent schools have very poor buildings. My
previous school, for example, in Portsmouth, once had what a previous Chairman of this
Conference supportively described as the worst school buildings in England. One of my
predecessors there, perhaps thinking Cicero and Pompey somehow mystically related,
quoted the former to his bewildered pupils. Spartam nactus es: hanc exorna: Sparta has
fallen to your lot; adorn it by your actions. That human challenge has not been the metric of
this government or its predecessor. They prefer a metric of expenditure, particularly
expenditure on buildings. They choose, if you see what I mean, a fabricated metric.
The second accusation against our schools, of restricting social mobility, is in many ways
perverse. Social mobility became a buzz concept in the late 90s. The term is now
predominantly an overtone. What exactly is social mobility?
Tony Blair, opening a London Academy in 2005, talked of the different ways in which parents
could transform their child’s education. Examples included moving house in order to access
a better school and employing a personal tutor – one quarter of all parents in London pay for
private tuition in the course of their child’s school career. Moral opprobrium attached to
neither of these, though the latter is of course paying for a private education, and the former
is not social but postcode mobility, potentially productive of social division. “Ollie,” an
inspector once asked, “would you recommend this school to children who moved into the
neighbourhood?” “Well,” replied Olly, “it would depend if we liked them.”
The current government has applied ever more crudely simplistic distinctions between the
state and independent sectors. Postcode mobility therefore requires further investigation.
Tony Blair sent his children to London Oratory, a Roman Catholic voluntary-aided school in
Brompton. Nick Clegg now intends to send his son to the same school, having considered
Westminster – not just postcode mobility, perhaps, but also something of a leap of faith. At
London Oratory 6% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, and the Guardian reports
there are houses on sale in nearby Halford Road for £2.25m. At one independent school,
which is therefore obviously de facto at the other end of the moral spectrum, 88% of pupils
are on means-tested bursaries and almost half pay less than 10% of full fees. I invite any
occupant of the Clapham Omnibus, the mode of transport by which I myself got to school, to
tell me which school they think fulfils a greater social function, London Oratory or John
Franklin’s wicked Christ’s Hospital. London estate agents need not apply. Making the
journey to independent education, parents are currently made to feel, is an unacceptable
mobility: expenditure on purchase of a car, holiday or house is moral; expenditure on the
9 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address education of the child is not. The illogicality is clear. Why should those members of the
public who so value education find that those responsible for publicly funded education do
not value them?
Social mobility, as I understand it, means the ability for the individual to alter their economic
and other kinds of status, and, in the current debate, to do so as a result of a high quality
education. Social mobility is the founding principle and the historic and enduring specialism
of many of our schools – King Edward’s Birmingham, Whitgift, King Edward’s Witley – and a
principle to which we all adhere.
Other forms of mobility have also developed over the last 50 years, as, partly in response to
social criticism, the independent sector has set about reinventing itself. In David Hare’s
post-colonial play South Downs, set in a public school in 1962, Belinda observes, “They built
these places for a reason and now the reason is gone.” In contrast, today’s independent
schools have a remodelled and expanded global function, for international mobility has
joined social mobility as an aim. Some may say that the importance of the United Kingdom
as a world power, and of London as a financial centre, are in decline. But British
independent schools, like British universities, enjoy an unrivalled international reputation.
Just as our universities are distinctive in their style of teaching and their liberal curriculum, so
too our schools are celebrated for their liberal attitudes, their liberal curriculum, the
distinctiveness of their educational offering.
Education has often been a major part of the
British economy and of Britain’s world contribution, and looks set to become even more so.
In the past fifteen years, our schools have opened 21 schools abroad, as well as increasing
the number of their own overseas students, until very recently with little government
encouragement. We are asked to believe that our schools induce a new kind of social
leprosy, with one politician recently arguing that attendance at an independent school was
“seriously disabling”. We inhabit a modern global world. As the collapse of recent state
initiatives has shown, our educational masters are failing to respond to it. Our schools are
not marooned on islands of privilege; they are instead preventing our island from being
marooned. It is not our schools that are splendidly isolated but our politicians. They are
stuck in a past, in a kind of Tom White’s Schooldays.
Hence the recent political invention of magic mobility, a mirage of mobility achieved via the
political manipulation of words. In recent years various parties have tried to persuade us
that the gap between government schools and independent schools has diminished to the
point of irrelevance. Appropriation of vocabulary, of the kind detested by George Orwell, has
been the chief tool. We have grown accustomed to Academy, slyly sired by Blairite Islington
out of Socratic Athens. But free and independent when applied to government schools are
10 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address non sequiturs from a new lexicon of educational deceit. To be independent of the state
requires independence of the state’s funding. There is a real danger that, promised an
educational treasure house, adults end up deceived by a shameful political Thesaurus. State
education, rather than being in any way independent, remains maintained – indeed, to the
despair of many teachers within that sector, poorly maintained. It is increasingly in the grip of
central Government; and, worse, increasingly at the mercy of much favoured commercial
providers who would like to expand their operations. One colleague reports the local effect
of recent changes is that the responsibility for education in his area has shifted from
Humberside to Nord Anglia. Young people were born free: soon they may be everywhere in
chains.
The independent sector, threatened 50 years ago, has survived, and, in difficult economic
times is thriving, in no small measure because it offers an uneasy but highly effective
reconciliation of twin principles of selection and egalitarianism which are elsewhere the
subject of an unresolved debate. In effecting social mobility, not social engineering, and also
much else, the independent sector provides a useful benchmark: that indeed is one of its
unintended functions and benefits. Each year, the percentage of members of the public
who would like to buy an independent education rises by about 1%: this year, in the most
reliable of the surveys, 57% of families said they would choose a private school for their
child, compared with 54% in 2011 and 51% in 1997. As or more interesting is the fact that
ISC day schools now have more “non-white British” pupils than the average for all state
schools – a branch of social mobility and aspiration it suits no political party to celebrate.
Either we have a product that the public values; or government has policies of which voters
are unconvinced. More probably both apply. Above all, parents know that at the heart of our
schools is respect for the child. This involves concern for their self-esteem, an interest in
their every aspect. This does not involve narrow prescription, or over testing, or treating a
child as a piece of data. We are not free and we can only be honest about that. We do
however facilitate social mobility and we are highly effective in doing so. The difference
between HMC and government schools is growing. We are the schools of the 21st century
not the schools of 1984. The government is taking the maintained sector forward to the past.
HMC schools strive to take the best of the past into the best of the future.
11 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address SECTION III: THIS CONFERENCE
Third, and last, this Conference – visual proof, perhaps, that HMC really stands for Herding
Monster Cats. Designed around the theme of The Child, it offers two days of full activity –
perhaps it might be subtitled The Suit Camp. Today identifies and celebrates who we are.
Tomorrow focuses on why we are, giving the opportunity to experience again a day in the life
of a senior pupil: lessons, Sixth Form discussion, university presentation, careers’ visits.
Wednesday looks at what the consequences should be: training so that we may better serve
our schools.
Lesson planning has involved researching what Heads previously studied: almost twice as
many studied history as anything else. This does not imply that our schools are rooted in the
past, any more than the large sign up for the talk on Richard III suggests an interest in aging
rulers with bad backs, tyrannical dispositions, and hopes for revisionist reassessment.
The training seminars, given the multitasking skills required of us, all have titles involving the
word Head. Luddites who believe that the modern combination of Twitter, Facebook and
You Tube can be abbreviated to youtwitface should for example have already signed up for
the IT seminar entitled Heads in the Clouds. Some of the titles suggested by less charitable
voices have been eschewed: Heads in the Sand (the Golf), Getting one’s Head down
(afternoon nap) Thick Head (final breakfast) Bash ones head against a brick wall (fitness
suite), Sheikh of the Head (unsuccessful bartering at shops in the immediate locality) or You
do my Head in (account of last year’s discussions with Ofqual).
There is the traditional emphasis on Fellowship, and on refreshment, spiritual and physical.
The Conference Brochure explains the Magic Carpet background to Wednesday’s visits.
Please do not forget the possibility for free will – or indeed for an almost free wheel – given
the serendipitous proximity of Boris Bikes. The specially prepared HMC biker’s guide to the
area, Heading Off, represents an unusual outreach opportunity and has the imprimatur of the
Mayor himself. This is a good and early moment to mention those Heads who are retiring:
Geoffrey Boult, Giggleswick; John Clark, Birkenhead; Stephen Cole, Woodbridge; Stephen
Connolly, Bangor Grammar School; Leo Maidlow Davis, Downside; Gareth Edwards,
George Watson’s;. Gabriel Everitt, Ampleforth; Andrew Grant, St. Albans; Alistair Hector,
George Heriot’s; Paul Henderson, Eltham; David Jarrett, Reed’s; Tim Keyes, King’s
Worcester; David Levin, City of London Boys; Angus McPhail, Radley; Claire Oulton,
Benenden; Hugh Ouston, Robert Gordon’s; Crispin Rowe, St. Paul’s, Brazil; Mark Slater,
The Leys; Stephen Spurr, Westminster; Guy Waller, Cranleigh; and John Witheridge,
12 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address Charterhouse. At the final dinner there is a special opportunity to mark all that they and their
partners have contributed in a lifetime of service but I am sure we will also want to do that
now. We are newly joined by a significant number of GSA members joining HMC in addition:
you are very welcome. It will greatly help us get on even better together if we have the best
possible idea of who we all are. Please do have your photo taken, or supply us with a photo
of your choice, so there can be a proper photographic database, available to all.
A major focus of this year will be enhancing professional services. A number of practical
initiatives are already underway: a Handbook for Divisional Secretaries, and a Hand-overHeads Guide intended to improve life for both ingoing and outgoing parties. North East, with
Heidi Salmons, are working on a kite mark initiative; Heidi has also produced a series of
HMC information cards, available today. South East, with Melanie Horsburgh and Ian
Power, are considering how members without an effective cluster group might be better
supported. Dick Davison has been engaged, with assistance from many of you and
generous sponsorship from Melanie Tucker’s MTM, on a social mobility survey which has
already yielded what we have long lacked, case studies of our bursary holders, and
statistical insights about them. Ken Durham will work part-time for the Association this year,
giving support to members in the field as well as liaising with Stuart Westley on
improvements to the AGBIS Handbook. Brenda Despontin, a former member of this
association and President of GSA will assist Ian Power with accreditation visits, while Ian
himself will work on a new inspection initiative, which will reinstate the peer-based inspection
of subject disciplines in our schools. Conference and Common Room began 50 years ago
when Frank Fisher explained to this conference: “In the years ahead we may have to defend
what we believe to be vital freedoms. We should at least give ourselves this means of doing
it.” James Priory is now masterminding a new publication, due to appear in November. The
Predictive AGM, which follows, seeks to identify issues for the year ahead: Wednesday’s
AGM will then contain a summary of Divisional discussions on how members might be still
better supported.
Schoolmasters were once described as “the trustees of education in England”. Over the next
few days may we as an Association prove worthy of that trust, working as hard, and playing
as hard, as the pupils – and deputies – we have left behind us.
13 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address SECTION IV: CONCLUSION
In Dombey and Son, one of his many fables of a disadvantaged childhood, Dickens
imagines a boy, Paul Dombey, who has just lost his mother. He is being sent to Brighton –
not for a school, nor a College, nor a Conference, nor even for a stick of rock. He is being
sent there for an Academy. This is Dr Blimber’s Academy, and this description of Paul’s
reception by Dr Blimber’s assistant Mrs Pipchin is taken, should you wonder, from an etext,
available at www.gradesaver.com:
“My son is six years old, and there is no doubt, I fear, that in his studies, he is behind
many children of his age – or his youth,” said Mr Dombey.
“There is a great deal of nonsense – and worse – talked about young people not
being pressed too hard at first, and being tempted, and all the rest of it, Sir,” said Mrs
Pipchin…. “It never was thought of in my time, and it has no business to be thought
of now. My opinion is ‘keep ‘em at it’.”
The Doctor was sitting in his portentous study, with a globe at each knee, books all
around him, Homer over the door, and Minerva on the mantel shelf. “How do you do,
sir?” he said to Mr Dombey, “and how is my little friend?”
“Very well, I thank you, sir,” returned Paul, answering the ticking clock quite as much
as the doctor.
“Ha!” said Dr Blimber. “Shall we make a man of him?”
“Do you hear, Paul?” added Mr Dombey; Paul being silent.
“Shall we make a man of him?” repeated the Doctor.
“I had rather be a child,” replied Paul.
“Indeed!” Said the doctor. “Why?”
Understanding the child is possibly the last historical barrier. Children lack political
significance: they do not have the vote, nor do they have a political movement, like feminism
or socialism, to represent their interests. As academic disciplines have developed,
minorities have been able to speak for themselves: women’s history, Black history, gay
history. The history of the child, increasingly of interest to historians, is a history that
14 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address probably can never be written by children themselves. This conference seeks to be tiny part
of that evolving history.
Childhood, recast by philosophers and artists between 1790 and 1850, explaining how our
Association began, was institutionalised between 1880 and 1940, explaining how our
Association grew. In reviewing the last 50 years there has clearly been a diminishing sense
in which Every Child Matters. Childhood was forgotten by Margaret Thatcher, and therefore
unknown to Tony Blair, thus bequeathing the funeral rights of the child to a coalition. Before
long, the state may have removed the child for ever. The Secretary of State, of whichever
party is in office, will be known as the Great Educational Undertaker.
“In my opinion” said Niall Ferguson in his recent Reith Lectures “the bests institutions in the
British Isles today are the independent schools.” ”if there is one policy I should like to see
adopted…" he added, “it would be … to increase significantly[.. their] number.” Thring saw
our schools as “the leading power in England” and his colleagues as ‘leaders of the world.”
The popularity of our brand and the strength of our resources remain considerable. We do
not claim Churchillian powers, still less divine ones. But at the same time we know our good
fortune in not having to cry out, as leaders of so many public funded institutions do “Grant,
we beseech thee.”
The history of our association lies in challenging government practice. Children and
childhood are too precious to be abandoned to the anonymous and impersonal guardianship
of the state. . The state is not currently suitable to direct education unaided or unchallenged
because it does not understand the child. We have a key offering – we have a key
international product. Especially at this time of party conferences, wise political parties will
want to listen to us. All political parties know our appeal, and our number. The lines are
always open.
When we return, Conference over, to our schools it will be National Poetry Day. The writer
and poet Gervase Phinn recalls a visit to a Yorkshire schoolroom where he came across a
piece of writing in small crabbed print:
I asked the little boy if he had any help with it. He shook his head. Well, it was quite a
small masterpiece he had written, and I remember the words so well:
•
Yesterday, yesterday, yesterday:
•
Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow.
•
Today, today, today:
•
Hope, hope, hope.
15 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address •
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow:
•
Love, love, love
What a wonderful little poem, I told him. He thought for a while, and stared at me with
those large, sad eyes. And then he announced: “They are my spelling corrections,
Sir.”
Children have insights. Children can make mistakes – as can adults, at whose mercy
children are. Every day, in our schools, our children stand up for us. I have a proposition in
return. Over the next two days let us stand up for children – and not only the children that
are ours.
Thank you for listening.
ENDS.
16 HMC Annual Conference 2013 – Chairman’s Address