games to bird-watching.
About 250 external
speakers visit the school
every year.
There are 53 music
ensembles, a resident
artist and a rowing lake.
Eton does not just have
an art room, it has an
entire block devoted to
art, design and
technology, as well as a
debating chamber, a
theatre and a natural
history museum with
16,000 biological
specimens.
“We take the view that
the boys learn as much,
if not more, outside the
academic arena as
within it and they learn
as much, if not more,
from each other as they
do from the adults,”
Henderson said.
Independence and
leadership are
encouraged early on and
“service to others” is
integral to the ethos of“educating for the future
since 1440” and
technology is integral to
its teaching. All boys are
given an iPad when they
arrive at the age of 13
and most of their work is
online. Teachers have a
stylus to scribble digital
notes on pupils’ essays
and increasingly use AI
to personalise learning.
During the pandemic
Eton started offering
online courses to
students across Britain
through its EtonX
platform. Last year the
school also signed a
partnership agreement
with Star Academies to
open three selective state
sixth forms in deprived
parts of the north and
the west midlands.
Teachers will work
across the group and
some classes will be
shared between Etonians
and state school pupils.
Eton is highly
competitive and pupils
are ranked in each
subject based on their
performance, although
the announcement of the
GTF (the “General Total
Failure” who had come
bottom of the overall list)
has been abolished since
Boris Johnson was there.
Henderson insisted,
though, that exams are
not the main priority:
“We don’t overly focus
on that, particularly at
GCSE. Those aren’t the
skills the boys are going
to need in their careers.”
Children are
encouraged to follow
their passions both
inside and outside the
classroom. One parent
says Eton is “more like a
university than a school”.
The teaching style is
discursive and there are
more than 70 boy-led
societies on everything
from football to
philosophy and boardthe school. All pupils are
expected to undertake
community engagement,
which could be helping
with reading in a local
primary school or riding
with disabled teenagers,
and they have a full-time
social action mentor to
assist with individual
initiatives.
One boy spoke at the
Cop26 climate
change
conference on
behalf of the
school and the
environment
society plans
to rewild some
of Eton’s land.
“The boys are
treated as adults,”
Henderson said. “There’s
very little compulsion
here. They can choose
what they get involved
in. They have a lot of
opportunities to lead
things and they have a
lot of autonomy.”View
of the
parents
Etonian prime ministers,
clockwise from top left:
Lord Grenville, Sir Alex
Douglas-Home, Lord
North, William
Gladstone, the Duke of
Wellington, David
Cameron, Boris
Johnson, Sir Anthony
Eden, Lord Salisbury
and Harold Macmillan“We are failing children,”
said Jade, a mother of
three, who like many
parents has taken on the
role of home-educator
(Holly Papworth writes).
“Children are coming out
of school with no idea of
how to cope, how to
budget, how bills work,
how bank accounts work.”
The concern that a
drive towards knowledge
in the curriculum has
squeezed out skills is
shared by the other
mothers speaking to The
Times Education
Commission in a focus
group convened by the
Mumsnet parents’ forum.
They fear that the race to
catch up on lost learning
has placed emphasis on
academic attainment.
“School has become
this thing you endure for
six hours, particularly
under pandemic
conditions, which I think
has become a lot stricter.
It has turned school into
this Gradgrindian misery,”
Esther, in London, said.
The group asserted that
knowledge and skills can
coexist. “I would like to
see lunchtime clubs
where they learn life skills
and first aid,” Esther said.
Jade said the solution
lay in assessment reform.
“Nine, ten, eleven GCSEs:
do you really need that
many? Actually, I think
we do have time to have
maybe a couple of hours
learning life skills, social
skills and team building.”
Rosemary, a single
parent in Scotland,
suggested that a system
geared up to reward the
acquisition of knowledge
was behind declining
social mobility. “What
they should be doing is
trying to give children
that love of finding out
about the world, a sense
of aspiration.”
Evidence to the
commission highlighted
immense pressure on
schools to produce the top
grades, yet parents seem
to put far less weight on
Ofsted ratings. “I was
very obsessive when I
chose my daughter’s
school and I looked at all
the information, league
tables and Ofsted but in
the end I went by visiting
and feel,” Esther said.
On average five
children per classroom
experience a probable
mental health disorder
and parents blamed high-
stakes exams. Joanne said:
“Obviously some subjects
do need exams — you
have to know the
principles — but there
should be more
coursework, more
teamwork, more
presentations, to make it a
more rounded, fairer
system.”TIMES EDUCATION
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