DT article on CH
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East Gun Copse
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DT article on CH
Have you seen the article in the Telegraph today (Sept 24th) which gives a full page to CH entitled "What would the Victorians say" I think the writer is trying to be provocative but doesn't seem to have done his homework. He seems to think of CH as a Victorian foundation. One quote is "Wouldn't more 'children of the poor' benefit if it sold off its vast estate- the upkeep of which must be appalingly expensive- and used the proceeds to improve the range and quality of state education in the inner cities and perhaps, buy places for the especially gifted at leading independent schools?"
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Richard Ruck
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Re: DT article on CH
East Gun Copse wrote: He seems to think of CH as a Victorian foundation. One quote is "Wouldn't more 'children of the poor' benefit if it sold off its vast estate- the upkeep of which must be appalingly expensive- and used the proceeds to improve the range and quality of state education in the inner cities and perhaps, buy places for the especially gifted at leading independent schools?"
This is something that the school would not be allowed to do, surely?
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Thee's got'n where thee cassn't back'n, hassn't?
Thee's got'n where thee cassn't back'n, hassn't?
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East Gun Copse
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jtaylor
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If anyone has a copy, do email me a scan and I'll post it - altnernatively, snail-mail it to me (PM me for address) and I'll post it up here...
J
J
Julian Taylor-Gadd
Leigh Hunt 1985-1992
Founder of The Unofficial CH Forum
https://www.grovegeeks.co.uk - IT Support and website design for home, small businesses and charities.
Leigh Hunt 1985-1992
Founder of The Unofficial CH Forum
https://www.grovegeeks.co.uk - IT Support and website design for home, small businesses and charities.
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Richard Ruck
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Julian, I've got a copy of the article.jtaylor wrote:If anyone has a copy, do email me a scan and I'll post it - altnernatively, snail-mail it to me (PM me for address) and I'll post it up here...
J
If you still need it, I'll post it. Just let me know.
Cheers.
Ba.A / Mid. B 1972 - 1978
Thee's got'n where thee cassn't back'n, hassn't?
Thee's got'n where thee cassn't back'n, hassn't?
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Happy
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I was at Oundle yesterday where I was almost smugly given a copy of this article by the registrar. John Clare (the author) is evidently respected there as he published a glowing endorsement of their system and ethos a while ago.
You're right, he hasn't done his homework or his 'source' has an axe to grind. The admissions process comments alone were enough to convince me. Either way, he looks very silly indeed; his argument was not reasoned or thought-out and I wondered whether he was merely angling for a supper date with Ruth Kelly....how sweet.
You're right, he hasn't done his homework or his 'source' has an axe to grind. The admissions process comments alone were enough to convince me. Either way, he looks very silly indeed; his argument was not reasoned or thought-out and I wondered whether he was merely angling for a supper date with Ruth Kelly....how sweet.
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Great Plum
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BTaylor
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Here's the article in full, pulled from one of the many clippings services I use. Overall, I think the article is well balanced. Whilst John Clare makes some assertions that may sit uncomfortably with some, he balances this with comments on the charge etc, which are helpful.
I'll leave it to the rest of your to form your own opinions.
What would the Victorians say? Christ's Hospital, with its quaint traditions, is an excellent school, but Education Editor John Clare wonders whether it has strayed too far from its founders' original purpose and could use its considerable assets to do a lot more to help educate the 'needy'
By JOHN CLARE
1234 words
24 September 2005
The Daily Telegraph
001
English
(c) 2005 Telegraph Group Limited, London
THERE are two ways of looking at Christ's Hospital, the most charitable school in the independent sector.
One is that it offers a first-rate boarding education in exceptionally stately surroundings to children whose parents could not afford it. Another is that this unusually wealthy foundation - its assets are worth pounds 300 million - has strayed a long way from its original mission to educate the children of the poor.
Either way, the 840 pupils aged 11 to 18 lucky enough to have been awarded a place here - mostly because their parents were able to show they would be better off boarding - enjoy a more elaborate and expensive education than 95 per cent of the school population.
There are also two ways of looking at that. One is that there is no moral justification for restricting such an education to those who can afford it. Another is that a charity with Christ's Hospital's mission and an annual income of pounds 18 million ought to be educating a lot more children in greater need - even if need is defined largely in terms of boarding.
Pupils board in the state sector, for example, at little more than a third of the pounds 18,000 a year it costs Christ's Hospital. So if it collaborated with the Government, it could fund a network of boarding academies serving truly deprived children.
But what then of Christ's Hospital's vast estate? Here, on 1,400 prime acres tucked away in the lushest part of the West Sussex countryside, is an astonishing collection of monumental red-brick buildings dating from the late 1890s, all of them Grade II listed.
Arranged around one of the biggest quadrangles in the country are a chapel the size of a cathedral and a dining hall that would grace a palace, both seating nearly 1,000. Strung out in a long line on either side are 16 identical boarding houses, currently being refurbished at a cost of pounds 40 million. And stretching into the distance are 150 acres of immaculate playing fields.
Imagine the impact on an 11-year-old transported here from a council estate in Peckham. More than that, imagine the impact on the same child of returning to a council estate in Peckham for the holidays.
Whatever else the Victorian charity grandees responsible for building this extravaganza were thinking of, it could not have been the founders' original purpose - confirmed by Edward VI in 1553 - "to provide education and a home for the children of London's poor''.
Even so, Christ's Hospital claims that its "mission has remained virtually unchanged for 450 years''.
In fact, it has been entirely rewritten to encompass "children from all walks of life in social, financial or other need''. The circumstances in which that need may arise "include loss of one or both parents, lack of appropriate education provision, inadequate housing, poor health, low income or some combination of these and other social pressures''.
The consequence of such an all-embracing definition is that two thirds of the pupils come from ABC1 - essentially middle-class - backgrounds, and half are from one-parent families. As Peter Southern, now in his 10th year as headmaster, puts it: "We have genteel poverty here as well as inner-city deprivation.''
On average, parents, who are rigorously and regularly means-tested, contribute pounds 2,500 a year towards the cost of what Christ's Hospital describes, with reason, as "a public school education of the highest calibre''. It is, in other words, a bargain.
Not surprisingly, about 500 pupils, drawn from the top third of the ability range, contend every year for 112 places, though many more undoubtedly would if their parents could fathom the charity's arcane procedures.
After a two-stage assessment process, about half the places are allocated to children who have been "presented'' by one of 650 governors, each of whom earns the right to make a presentation by donating the equivalent of a year's fees. Although governors can adopt a candidate from the pool of those who have applied directly to the foundation, about 80 per cent find their own in whatever way they please - which makes for a fairly closed shop.
Most of the remaining places go to children at selected primary schools in Inner London and the "most deprived areas'' of the Home Counties where the heads, having been shown what Christ's Hospital has to offer, draw selected parents' attention to it - a similarly haphazard procedure.
Advertising produces few results, Dr Southern says, presumably because the minority of parents who might consider sending their children away to board are baffled both by the nature of the school and its mission.
"The site,'' Dr Southern concedes, "doesn't convey the right messages about us.'' Nor, it might be argued, do the other phenomena by which the school is chiefly known - the 15th-century charity-child uniform that its pupils still wear and the elaborate 15-minute ceremony of marching into lunch six days a week to the accompaniment of a 100-strong martial band.
As Mary Ireland, the deputy head, recalls, it was not much more than 100 years ago, when the school was still at Grey Friars in the City, that passing gentry could pay to go in and watch the children eat.
The ambivalence at the heart of all this is illustrated by Dr Southern's reluctance to dwell on the school's charitable purpose. He doesn't, he says, want to "bang on about neediness'' and, "I don't want to sell the school on the basis of acts of charity''. Similarly, Mrs Ireland says: "This is an independent school for ordinary people.''
The question is whether that is really what Christ's Hospital is for when, to put it bluntly, at any one time there are more than a million school-age children in significantly greater need than most of its pupils.
Wouldn't more "children of the poor'' benefit if it sold off its vast estate - the upkeep of which must be appallingly expensive - and used the proceeds to improve the range and quality of state education in the inner cities and, perhaps, buy places for the especially gifted at leading independent schools?
None of which is to detract from the excellence of what Christ's Hospital does or to deny the difference it makes to the lives of those it admits. Its exam results at GCSE and A-level - it came 107th in this year's league table, its best performance - demonstrate significant added value.
Being a full-time boarding school, it also offers a wealth of opportunities in music - 500 learn an instrument - art, drama, sport and community service. Best of all, the staff work hard and successfully to create an ethos in which tolerance, unselfishness and a sense of social justice flourish.
On their last day at Christ's Hospital, pupils are presented with a Bible and enjoined to give back something of what they have received. The record suggests that an unusually high proportion do so.
I'll leave it to the rest of your to form your own opinions.
What would the Victorians say? Christ's Hospital, with its quaint traditions, is an excellent school, but Education Editor John Clare wonders whether it has strayed too far from its founders' original purpose and could use its considerable assets to do a lot more to help educate the 'needy'
By JOHN CLARE
1234 words
24 September 2005
The Daily Telegraph
001
English
(c) 2005 Telegraph Group Limited, London
THERE are two ways of looking at Christ's Hospital, the most charitable school in the independent sector.
One is that it offers a first-rate boarding education in exceptionally stately surroundings to children whose parents could not afford it. Another is that this unusually wealthy foundation - its assets are worth pounds 300 million - has strayed a long way from its original mission to educate the children of the poor.
Either way, the 840 pupils aged 11 to 18 lucky enough to have been awarded a place here - mostly because their parents were able to show they would be better off boarding - enjoy a more elaborate and expensive education than 95 per cent of the school population.
There are also two ways of looking at that. One is that there is no moral justification for restricting such an education to those who can afford it. Another is that a charity with Christ's Hospital's mission and an annual income of pounds 18 million ought to be educating a lot more children in greater need - even if need is defined largely in terms of boarding.
Pupils board in the state sector, for example, at little more than a third of the pounds 18,000 a year it costs Christ's Hospital. So if it collaborated with the Government, it could fund a network of boarding academies serving truly deprived children.
But what then of Christ's Hospital's vast estate? Here, on 1,400 prime acres tucked away in the lushest part of the West Sussex countryside, is an astonishing collection of monumental red-brick buildings dating from the late 1890s, all of them Grade II listed.
Arranged around one of the biggest quadrangles in the country are a chapel the size of a cathedral and a dining hall that would grace a palace, both seating nearly 1,000. Strung out in a long line on either side are 16 identical boarding houses, currently being refurbished at a cost of pounds 40 million. And stretching into the distance are 150 acres of immaculate playing fields.
Imagine the impact on an 11-year-old transported here from a council estate in Peckham. More than that, imagine the impact on the same child of returning to a council estate in Peckham for the holidays.
Whatever else the Victorian charity grandees responsible for building this extravaganza were thinking of, it could not have been the founders' original purpose - confirmed by Edward VI in 1553 - "to provide education and a home for the children of London's poor''.
Even so, Christ's Hospital claims that its "mission has remained virtually unchanged for 450 years''.
In fact, it has been entirely rewritten to encompass "children from all walks of life in social, financial or other need''. The circumstances in which that need may arise "include loss of one or both parents, lack of appropriate education provision, inadequate housing, poor health, low income or some combination of these and other social pressures''.
The consequence of such an all-embracing definition is that two thirds of the pupils come from ABC1 - essentially middle-class - backgrounds, and half are from one-parent families. As Peter Southern, now in his 10th year as headmaster, puts it: "We have genteel poverty here as well as inner-city deprivation.''
On average, parents, who are rigorously and regularly means-tested, contribute pounds 2,500 a year towards the cost of what Christ's Hospital describes, with reason, as "a public school education of the highest calibre''. It is, in other words, a bargain.
Not surprisingly, about 500 pupils, drawn from the top third of the ability range, contend every year for 112 places, though many more undoubtedly would if their parents could fathom the charity's arcane procedures.
After a two-stage assessment process, about half the places are allocated to children who have been "presented'' by one of 650 governors, each of whom earns the right to make a presentation by donating the equivalent of a year's fees. Although governors can adopt a candidate from the pool of those who have applied directly to the foundation, about 80 per cent find their own in whatever way they please - which makes for a fairly closed shop.
Most of the remaining places go to children at selected primary schools in Inner London and the "most deprived areas'' of the Home Counties where the heads, having been shown what Christ's Hospital has to offer, draw selected parents' attention to it - a similarly haphazard procedure.
Advertising produces few results, Dr Southern says, presumably because the minority of parents who might consider sending their children away to board are baffled both by the nature of the school and its mission.
"The site,'' Dr Southern concedes, "doesn't convey the right messages about us.'' Nor, it might be argued, do the other phenomena by which the school is chiefly known - the 15th-century charity-child uniform that its pupils still wear and the elaborate 15-minute ceremony of marching into lunch six days a week to the accompaniment of a 100-strong martial band.
As Mary Ireland, the deputy head, recalls, it was not much more than 100 years ago, when the school was still at Grey Friars in the City, that passing gentry could pay to go in and watch the children eat.
The ambivalence at the heart of all this is illustrated by Dr Southern's reluctance to dwell on the school's charitable purpose. He doesn't, he says, want to "bang on about neediness'' and, "I don't want to sell the school on the basis of acts of charity''. Similarly, Mrs Ireland says: "This is an independent school for ordinary people.''
The question is whether that is really what Christ's Hospital is for when, to put it bluntly, at any one time there are more than a million school-age children in significantly greater need than most of its pupils.
Wouldn't more "children of the poor'' benefit if it sold off its vast estate - the upkeep of which must be appallingly expensive - and used the proceeds to improve the range and quality of state education in the inner cities and, perhaps, buy places for the especially gifted at leading independent schools?
None of which is to detract from the excellence of what Christ's Hospital does or to deny the difference it makes to the lives of those it admits. Its exam results at GCSE and A-level - it came 107th in this year's league table, its best performance - demonstrate significant added value.
Being a full-time boarding school, it also offers a wealth of opportunities in music - 500 learn an instrument - art, drama, sport and community service. Best of all, the staff work hard and successfully to create an ethos in which tolerance, unselfishness and a sense of social justice flourish.
On their last day at Christ's Hospital, pupils are presented with a Bible and enjoined to give back something of what they have received. The record suggests that an unusually high proportion do so.
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It all comes down to opinion.
One School, on it's own, cannot solve the problems of poverty and educational inadequacy that have dogged and perplexed successive governments, with all their resources courtesy of the taxpayer, for years and years.
The question is whether or not CH does it's bit in the best way possible or not. Clare's suggestion of selling off the assets may help more needy children in the short term but once the proceeds are spent they are spent.
Over the 450 years of CH's existence numerous Old Blues have helped the needy either through CH or in other ways. Roger Martin at Starehe (? spelling) in Africa being one example off the top of my head. I suggest that the numbers of needy children helped directly or indirectly by the contribution of Old Blues throughout the history of the School will equal or exceed the "short term fix" of selling off the assets.
Where Clare has a valid point is in the implied question of how do you define need in 21st Century Britain?
One School, on it's own, cannot solve the problems of poverty and educational inadequacy that have dogged and perplexed successive governments, with all their resources courtesy of the taxpayer, for years and years.
The question is whether or not CH does it's bit in the best way possible or not. Clare's suggestion of selling off the assets may help more needy children in the short term but once the proceeds are spent they are spent.
Over the 450 years of CH's existence numerous Old Blues have helped the needy either through CH or in other ways. Roger Martin at Starehe (? spelling) in Africa being one example off the top of my head. I suggest that the numbers of needy children helped directly or indirectly by the contribution of Old Blues throughout the history of the School will equal or exceed the "short term fix" of selling off the assets.
Where Clare has a valid point is in the implied question of how do you define need in 21st Century Britain?
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Great Plum
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I think you are right - the school needs its enormous assets to SUSTAIN for a long term looking after pupils...
I think something that does have to be said about the number of pupils the school now has...
when there were 2 sites, there were 850 at Horsham and 350 (??) at Hertford...
When I was at CH there was only about 800 students - there are about 850 now...
I think something that does have to be said about the number of pupils the school now has...
when there were 2 sites, there were 850 at Horsham and 350 (??) at Hertford...
When I was at CH there was only about 800 students - there are about 850 now...
Maine B - 1992-95 Maine A 1995-99