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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

1HMC 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


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.


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


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”.


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 extra-

curricular 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


neglected by the state. It is one that our Association has kept alive and has a duty to

maintain.


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


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


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


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.


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,


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-over-

Heads 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.


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


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.


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.


web view“in my opinion” said niall ferguson in his recent reith lectures “the...

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