So, Mr. Gove has spoken. I’ll summarise. From 2015, “Knowledge” will become the Everton of education. With a big fan base and a long history, it’s set to challenge the nouveau “Skills” (Chelsea?) for a Champions League place. Meanwhile, “Memory”, for so long languishing at the bottom of the lowest tier is set to do a Bradford and turn up at Wembley after years in the wilderness. “Coursework” and “Modules” are the Aston Villa and Newcastle of the new order (hanging on but it sure don’t look good). AS levels are QPR (they’ll still exist but won’t attract Premier League clientele). The option to switch allegiance to the IB (La Liga?) remains.
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My house backs onto the Prep School’s playing fields, and I have recently had the pleasure of watching carefree young Bromsgrovians gambol and pronk on the snow in scenes reminiscent of Breughel – assuming Breughel had moved to the Antarctic with a herd of springbok. Not really. To be honest, the view from my window looked more like something from Assassin’s Creed. People wary of Darwinism or prone to thinking Lord of the Flies was overly harsh on our little ones need only watch youngsters in the snow. The second a back is turned, the snowball onslaught begins: prolonged and ruthless. Some schools send parents twee Christmas cards of their pupils cheerfully enjoying the winter wonderland. No fear. All that’s missing with our lot is the Attenborough commentary as the pack takes down a fully grown adult.
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But the snow didn’t stop me getting in to work: I’m a trooper if nothing else. It’s a good ten metres from my front gate to the Mary Windsor entrance, which is more than enough for catastrophe to strike given that my performance on ice is not so much Torvill and Dean as a new born gnu. I wasn’t the only hero though. Let’s hear it for the Bromsgrove Support Staff who, with shovels and muscles, effected the biggest topographical clearance since Moses had a bash at the Red Sea. Note this, though. Last Friday, when Britain ceased to function, two sets of visitors turned up for full tours of the School. One from Budapest and the other from Berlin. All the Brits cancelled.
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I often feel compelled to remind myself how stupid I am. In such circumstances I read the late Christopher Hitchins. Barely a word the super brainy “Hitch” wrote or uttered failed to attract opprobrium and vitriol from some quarter or other. “You have to choose your future regrets” is one of his quieter meditations, however, and I was reminded of this as I looked at our architect’s drawings for the next phases of the Bromsgrove School site masterplan. At Easter we will start work on two new boarding facilities on the Housman campus, and then we will return to the main campus with all the verve of Donald Trump on Prozac. But one has to prioritise, and in doing so one knows that a particular year group will just miss out on this or that wonderful new facility. So, when looking ten years ahead (and that’s what we are doing), those future regrets amass strangely but inevitably beside the mountains of wonder and excitement.
