Are good facilities top of your ‘must have’ list? Adam Ruck asks the question to parents and schools, while Sally Jones asks three up-and coming Olympians how their school helped them achieve their sporting potential
When it comes to choosing a senior school for their children, parents face a serious choice. While large schools often offer a wider range of sports facilities, training aids and coaching to a high level of performance, many parents are more concerned with vigilant and sensitive pastoral care for the difficult teenage years. Plus there are all-important exams to pass, and pass well.
“Education is what matters to us, not lifestyle,” says Penny Chambers, who is currently trawling southern England in search of the right school for her 11-year-old daughter. “Expensive facilities impress the children, who look at the beautiful pools and sports halls and think, Wow! I could have fun here. It’s up to parents to look beyond that and remember that a successful outcome depends on people – the friends she makes and the teachers who support, direct and inspire her.”
Word of mouth and the example of other children is the best advertisement but the Open Day is no less important. “Some schools seem to think they don’t need to sell themselves and send you round in a large group, or guided by scruffy and uncommunicative pupils,” says Chambers. “Looking at Summer Fields for our son, who is younger, we had a mature and articulate school leaver who was about sit the Eton scholarship, and we were hugely impressed.” Having visiting more than a dozen schools, Chambers advises parents to look beyond the head’s welcome speech. “Any half-decent Head can talk the talk,” she says. “The point is, if there was a crisis, are these people that you could talk to?”
If they are to keep up with the competition however, the governors of boys public schools face a daunting shopping list. “At the open day, Abingdon made a huge thing about presenting the plans for their £7-million sports hall, with its eight-lane swimming pool, indoor rowing suite, and much-talked-about producing medallists for the 2012 Olympics,” says James Parfitt, father to a pupil in the school. “I remember thinking our timing was good, and how frustrating it must be for school leavers. But now that our son is in the school, I’m not convinced the sports hall (which opened in October 2008) plays a huge part in his life. The music facilities do, though. It’s the aspect of the school that impressed us most when we visited, and we still think music is what Abingdon does best.”
Abingdon is a town school for boys, with an 80/20 split of day boys to boarders. “You can tell the Abingdon boys when you’re out,” says another satisfied parent. “They look and behave in a civilised manner. The school takes a holistic approach, like a day school with the pastoral care of a boarding school. We like the headmaster’s regimental approach to management and discipline, although the boys take a different view. They chose Abingdon for the sport. How that will fare under our much-heralded new headmistress (Felicity Lusk) who arrives next year, remains to be seen.”
Rightly or wrongly, less is expected of girls schools. Highly reputed institutions such as Heathfield and St Mary’s Ascot are famously basic compared with their boy-counterparts. “After seeing boys schools, visiting girls schools came as quite a shock,” says Jenny Hughes, who has a son at Radley and a daughter at Downe House. “But our thinking was: if they can get the academic results they do and produce such obviously happy girls, in a place like this, they must be doing something right. And having said that the facilities are nothing to shout about, our daughter has taken up music and drama, in which she had no previous interest. All the facilities are there […] it’s just not the same glitzy package you get from boys schools.”
The setting and facilities, however, do have an impact on how the school is perceived by both parents and pupils. When asked how her son likes Radley, Hughes is unequivocal. “He adores it, of course. I adore Radley – I want to go there! It’s the setting, the wow factor, the whole package.”
Parents choose schools for a mixed cocktail of motives, by no means all rational. “I’ve always maintained that expensive sports, drama and music facilities distract from the core stuff,” says Philip Smith, who nevertheless spent a six-figure sum putting his son through Radley.
“My godson’s at Radley and I have become a much more attentive godparent since he went there,” says another parent, “because he occasionally invites me for a round of golf. Who’s to say his putting skills won’t serve him as well as his A levels?”
If you have a sporty child, read our Sporting Students and their Schools feature to find out more.
If you have a talented child, read our Schools for Talented Children feature.
Comments