Parent Pages new website

Though I went to four girls-only schools and only ran away from one of them, I can’t get over one difficulty about educating girls apart from boys. There’s a lot to be said for it: the girls don’t have to worry about what boys are thinking of them when they’re trying to learn; they do all the tasks [...]

Read the full story

Pupils at Nick Clegg’s old school sang Hey Jude during prayers and staged a water fight in a Facebook-organised end-of-term rebellion. Students at the £23,000-a-year Westminster School refused to sing Deus Misereatur during Latin prayers and instead gave a rousing rendition of the Beatles classic. Up to 80 were said to have staged the water [...]

Read the full story

Reading Michael Gove’s mischievous speech on the disproportionate grip that private schools still have on the upper slopes of British life, I was reminded of the day I fired off a breakfast email to a colleague, saying that his latest article had been so unhinged that I had gone straight to Who’s Who to see [...]

Read the full story

On the assumption that my wife, a woman of impeccable taste, will stick to her habit of never reading a word I write, it must be confided that this week I fell in love. Perhaps this puts it too strongly. It may be nothing more than a transient man-crush. Anyway, call it what you will, [...]

Read the full story

The 16-year-old who has not been named for legal reasons, was camping with fellow 1st XV team-mates on the coast north of Cape Town when he was pulled out of his sleeping bag and set on by older boys for some kind of initiation ceremony. The incident, on March 17, was filmed on mobile phones [...]

Read the full story

Children’s life chances are more likely to be linked to parental achievement and wealth in this country than almost any other developed nation, it was claimed. The Education Secretary said the “sheer scale” of the dominance exercised by former private schoolboys pointed to a “deep problem” in British society. In a speech, he said public [...]

Read the full story

The scale of private school dominance of top jobs in Britain is “morally indefensible”, Education Secretary Michael Gove told a conference of independent school heads today He said it was “remarkable” how many of the positions of wealth, influence, celebrity and power in Britain were held by former independent school pupils. “On the bench of [...]

Read the full story

Figures show the number of girls aged just two and over in fee-paying preparatory schools has increased by 1.1 per cent this year to almost 90,000. The rise recorded over the last 12 months was more than twice that seen for boys, it was revealed. School leaders claimed that the increase reflected parents’ desire to give [...]

Read the full story

It started with a phone call from the hospital. ‘They said Dominic’s in A&E and he’s very poorly,’ recalls Paola Crouch, staring out of the window of her spick-and-span living room in Gretton, Gloucestershire. Photos of her son Dominic, her daughter Giulia and her husband Roger perch on every bookcase and windowsill. Dominic was 15 [...]

Read the full story

A schoolboy was snatched off the street as he walked to school in Malaysia yesterday – triggering an international appeal for information from his frantic parents. Nayati Moodliar, 12, was about to enter the school compound when he was grabbed by three men who bundled him into a black car and sped away. A member [...]

Read the full story

All-girl schools could be pushed to the margins as pupils increasingly reject the “reserved” surroundings of single-sex education in favour of mixed classrooms, according to the editor of The Good Schools Guide. Lord Lucas estimated that fee-paying girls’ schools were in danger of losing a quarter of their British pupils over the next 20 years as [...]

Read the full story

The worst economic downturn since the 1930s is seeing British households cut back on spending. And, for some, that appears to include paying for a private education for their children. Figures published by the Independent Schools Council (ISC) show that last year there was a tiny increase of 0.1 per cent in numbers attending the [...]

Read the full story

Parents are increasingly buying private education for their sons rather than their daughters, a census reveals. Fee-paying schools now educate nearly 10,000 more boys than girls following a rise in the number of boys enrolled. Parents are increasingly buying private education for their sons rather than their daughters, a census reveals. Girls are outperforming boys at every [...]

Read the full story

Average fees increased by 4.5 per cent this year, figures show, adding another £600 to the bill for each pupil. The average price of boarding topped £26,000 for the first time, it emerged. Over the last decade, the cost of independent schooling has now soared by more than 75 per cent – or £6,000 – far [...]

Read the full story

One in four pupils at independent schools in the UK is from a minority ethnic background, data suggests. A census for the Independent Schools Council shows 74.5% of pupils (280,671) are from white British backgrounds and 25.5% (95,904) are from minorities. The census also shows overseas pupils make up 5.2% (26,376) of the pupil population in [...]

Read the full story

Boarding school in the 1960s usually conjures up images of cane-wielding disciplinarians, Latin lessons and smart uniform. But not if you had the fortune to go to the avant garde social experiment that was Burgess Hill – where lessons were voluntary. Fancy a cigarette during class? No problem. Plough through the school grounds on a motorbike? [...]

Read the full story

Parents around the country could be forgiven for feeling more than a little frustrated at the news that the number of students dropping out of university rose 13 per cent last year – the first time since records began a decade ago that the number has crept above 30,000. It is the equivalent of throwing [...]

Read the full story

The network of state-funded academies will have “well being” at the heart of the curriculum, with lessons in positive psychology for all pupils based on classes pioneered at Wellington College in Berkshire, where fees for boarders are £30,000 a year.   Anthony Seldon, the master of Wellington, has appointed James O’Shaughnessy, who until October was [...]

Read the full story

David Cameron may avoid talking too openly of his tailcoat-wearing schooldays at Eton, but if the Conservative members of government want to avoid conjuring images of ruddy-cheeked prefects, brisk games of rugger and chapel before breakfast, they don’t seem to be trying very hard. In a speech this week to Scottish voters before the local [...]

Read the full story

Schools are in danger of becoming “the sole preserve of the super-rich” following a sharp rise in fees, said Martin Stephen, the former High Master of St Paul’s School, west London. Dr Stephen said year-on-year price increases had resulted in the “financial and social marginalisation” of the independent sector that could lead to the “extinction” of [...]

Read the full story

A headmistress of a prestigious girls’ school ‘singled out’ a member of staff and bullied her because of her ‘inappropriate’ dress sense, a tribunal was told yesterday. Nicky Walsh, 57, was repeatedly reduced to tears by the ‘belligerent’ attitude of Elizabeth Robinson while she was employed at the £13,000-a-year Brigidine School. The sprawling school, which [...]

Read the full story

Private schools are risking extinction because they are pricing themselves beyond the pockets of ‘normal’ parents, They are losing the confidence of the public because they are increasingly the preserve of the super-rich, according to Dr Martin Stephen, who was High Master of St Paul’s School. Parents earning more than £50,000 a year would struggle [...]

Read the full story

Hiddleston is currently regarded as one of Britain’s hottest talents thanks to his roles in War Horse and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, and will be seen next in superhero film The Avengers. But the actor said he faced prejudice in the early years of his career when directors perused his CV. “I was meeting [...]

Read the full story

New figures show that the number of schools offering the Pre-U – a course devised by Cambridge University’s exam board – has increased by a third in two years. For the first time in 2012, it was revealed that almost as many state schools opted for the qualification as those in the fee-paying sector. The [...]

Read the full story

If, 30 years ago, you had said that Sir David Hare, scourge of the establishment and intellectual leftie given to cracking scornful jokes, would one day open a new public school play in the West End on a double-bill with a dusty old classic, The Browning Version, by Terence Rattigan – and, what is more, [...]

Read the full story

It is a unique example of co-operation between the state and private sector of schooling. Normally, co-operation means the independent schools open up their plush sports facilities to pupils from the neighbouring state school or share a teacher with them. In this case, though, the two private school headmasters concerned have rolled up their sleeves [...]

Read the full story

Sophie Bowden is set to graduate in four years’ time without a penny’s worth of student debt. Nor will she have to fret this summer as to whether she will get the necessary A-levels to meet the demands of a conditional offer from a university. The 17-year-old from Taunton School, Somerset, is one of a [...]

Read the full story

Some 36 per cent of schools are altering – or planning to alter – the traditional academic year in an attempt to raise standards, it was revealed. In one case, an academy is cutting the summer break in July and August from six to just three weeks to reduce the amount of time children spend [...]

Read the full story

The 16 year-old student, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was interviewed by detectives last Thursday. Reports claimed he took “indecent images” of other students in the showers of the 400 year-old school. The schoolboy is then said to have allegedly stored the images on his computer. Police were alerted after members of the [...]

Read the full story

I recently attended an event to welcome new parents to a private school in Manhattan. The options presented to the wealthy parents were jaw-dropping: kayaking and skiing for field trips; yoga among dozens of electives; the school gives each kid a new iPad. Parents asked one question after another about the offerings, sounding more as [...]

Read the full story

Eight Eton schoolboys are preparing to travel more than 4,600 miles to Everest in a bid to fly an Olympic flag from the mountain for the first time. The group — the youngest member is 13 — will leave for Kathmandu on Thursday. They will be greeted by the British ambassador in the Nepalese capital [...]

Read the full story

Does the written word encourage forgetfulness? Will novels play havoc with the delicate emotions of impressionable young women? Do the movies make us all into mindless zombies? Are video games art? The last of these questions can now join the rest in the junkyard of cultural history, for the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, [...]

Read the full story

RELOCATING to a new country can be a daunting experience for anyone. Getting a job abroad is often the reason for the move, but this is only the first of the hurdles an expat faces. Finding a new home, reorganising your finances and managing the expectations of the friends and family you are leaving behind [...]

Read the full story

A music teacher was forced to resign from a private school after she was added to the headteacher’s ‘hit list’ because he didn’t like her ‘nose stud,’ a tribunal heard. Sarah Cameron, 44, quit her £10,000-a-year role at Quinton House School in Upton, Northants., because new head Geraint Jones wanted her out and created a [...]

Read the full story

Teachers are effectively acting as surrogate parents for thousands of pupils who often eat breakfast at school and remain in extra-curricular activities until the early evening, said Andy Waters, chairman of the Society of Heads of Independent Schools. He said “more and more responsibility” was falling on schools during the economic downturn because of the [...]

Read the full story

A senior master at a prestigious girls’ school has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a teenage pupil under the age of 16. Chemistry teacher Tony Brown, 49, has been suspended after a complaint was made to police. Parents, pupils and staff at the £24,000-a-year Godolphin boarding school in Salisbury, Wiltshire, have been shocked by [...]

Read the full story

Rising numbers of pupils taken out of private schools by parents who can no longer afford the fees are ending up in tough comprehensives as competition increases for top grammars and academies. One admissions appeals service said enquiries from parents whose child has been assigned to an unpopular or distant school after leaving an independent [...]

Read the full story

Class is over, or so says Melvyn Bragg. The toff in his topper, suburban man in his bowler and Stanley in his flat cap, they are yesterday’s stereotypes, as stale as the crust on a week-old Hovis. According to the long-time presenter of The South Bank Show, we now define ourselves by our culture, by [...]

Read the full story

Once upon a time, we knew three things about John Lewis. One: it’s a very nice, very middle-class department store. Two: it owns Waitrose, that very nice, very middle-class supermarket. Three: it is, or claims to be, never knowingly undersold. These days, we can add a fourth: never knowingly under-referenced within plans to reform the [...]

Read the full story

Teachers should be encouraged to take a stake in John Lewis-style partnerships to run state schools as profit-making enterprises, according to proposals outlined by the conservative Policy Exchange thinktank. Private companies would be allowed to set up and run schools under a social enterprise model that would give employees a share of ownership and re-invest [...]

Read the full story

Companies are being allowed to generate substantial returns by running nurseries, units for expelled pupils and management and IT services for mainstream schools, it is claimed. The report by the Policy Exchange, one of the Coalition’s favourite think-tanks, said the sheer scale of involvement by profit-making organisations in the state sector made a mockery of [...]

Read the full story

It is essential for the health of our society, and a measure of its health, that bright children, regardless of background, have access to top universities. While the kerfuffle over the latest “Vince’ll fix it” initiative has been playing out, whereby top universities will be bullied into taking under-qualified students on the basis of their [...]

Read the full story

Many mothers would have broken down in tears if their child had asked them, aged five, if they could become a boarder at their school. Was life at home so miserable that they would rather live in a dormitory? But author and journalist Anna Pasternak saw her daughter Daisy’s request to board as a sign [...]

Read the full story

Mr Little made the comments at a seminar for independent schools in London, and said he would prefer GCSEs to be replaced by a school-leaving certificate determined by individual schools. According to the Independent, Mr Little said: “I’d love to be in a position where my 16-year-olds took no public exams at all.” He called [...]

Read the full story

It started out as a tongue-in-cheek checklist for a group of City bankers going on a rugby tour to Dubai. But the set of rules – which say cheating is allowed while bragging about wealth is compulsory – has left the four ex-public schoolboys open to global ridicule. The group of young friends, who call [...]

Read the full story

Tony Little said teachers were often unable to innovate because of the demands of official inspections and the need to get pupils into leading universities. He warned that schools in Britain were less independent than those in the United States which have more freedom to validate and run their own courses. Ministers want growing numbers [...]

Read the full story

Despite Government pressure on universities to diversify their admissions, it emerged that bright candidates from fee-paying schools had around a 25 per cent better chance of getting into the ancient institution last year. It was also revealed that black and Asian pupils with decent grades had a significantly lower acceptance rate than their white counterparts. [...]

Read the full story

A top girls’ school is planning a “failure week” to teach pupils to embrace risk, build resilience and learn from their mistakes. The emphasis will be on the value of having a go, rather than playing it safe and perhaps achieving less. Pupils at Wimbledon High School will be asked how they feel when they [...]

Read the full story

Even though the Government is doing some tinkering with the relationship between state and independent education – in particular, allowing free schools to be run by private groups and funded by the government – the landscape has not yet experienced any seismic changes, and doesn’t seem likely to in the near future. There are, after [...]

Read the full story

A for-profit company is setting up private schools that claim to offer the same quality education as top public schools but for half the price. GEMS Education, based in Dubai, intends to open six fee-paying day schools for boys and girls aged three to 18 in towns and cities across England over the next two [...]

Read the full story