Missing Notes and Queries response - 29th June 2021

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The Guardian closed the comments on this week's Notes & Queries, before I could add my well-researched, rigorously fact-checked voice to a debate, regarding what one should say to a friend who is planning on sending their child to a private school. Hence the appearance of my response here on this blog.

For the record I failed my 11+ and attended an hilariously violent comprehensive school, from which I emerged with three A Levels and a lasting contempt for the education system. I sat two additional A levels at a fee paying school in London. Some of my friends attended fee paying schools almost from the get go. We all turned out alright.

What’s the right response to a friend who says they are sending their child to private school?

What’s the appropriate response to a friend who tells you they are sending their child to private school? Anthony Huxley, Dunfermline

It would depend very much on the private school.

By way of example, if my friend was the parent of a young boy who was possessed of a delicate constitution, then I would advise against sending him to Elkinore, in Sutherland. Though the reputation of this establishment for instilling all-round toughness is well-deserved (one need look no further than Dennis Baskcomb for evidence of this) the harsh life lessons that are meted-out on a daily basis require a sturdy foundation of physical fitness, if they are to be endured.

New pupils (who are referred to as “foxpersons”) will spend a significant part of their first year living in “the warrens” - an area of woodland that occupies the extensive school estate. Here, they will occupy burrows that they have dug themselves, either by hand or using improvised tools. These dens are filled-in at the end of each year to prevent them from being reclaimed by the subsequent intake of students. These pupils will also be expected to wash and do laundry in the Buglass – a mountain stream whose temperature has never risen above 5 degrees Celsius, since records were first taken, 77 years ago.

In order to assume residence in the dormitories, a student must prove to a council, composed of their educators and their older peers, that they are worthy of living indoors. They must demonstrate that they can survive off the land; that they are able to maintain a smart appearance, despite sleeping in a hole in the ground; and they must be able to recite, at very least, the first nine verses of the school song.

Because of the hardships that are foisted upon the school's most vulnerable pupils, the academic year at Elkinmore commences with the Summer term, which runs from Easter to July. Those who are still outdoors by the end of the Autumn term (late October) as the weather deteriorates, are permitted to take residence indoors at McGrail Hall, but enjoy less privileges than the other students. A few will never rise above this lowly domestic setting. The attached stigma may, unfortunately, follow them into their professional lives.

Under different circumstances, I would inform your friend that the long driveway leading to Farrows, an all-girl's school on the outskirts of Marlow, is riven with victory potholes – the relics of cannon fire, dating to the English Civil War. A few years ago, some of the Farrows' sixth formers created a GPS app that will micromanage your journey along this treacherous stretch of private road, in a manner that will spare you the ruinous cost of repairing the suspension on your Bentley.

NASA have purchased a licence to use this software, in an adapted format, to guide the movements of roving vehicles on other planets. My ordinarily mild-mannered friend, Richard Grey, became so apoplectic when he heard this news that I genuinely thought he was having a stroke.

“You'll never see a group of girls at Crabwicke get an opportunity like that,” he seethed.

Crabwicke is the mixed-gender academy in Marlow, attended by his two daughters. While it suffers a multitude of problems, many of which are documented in the most-recent Ofsted report, they do not endure a ½ mile long driveway, riddled with small craters that are collectively categorised as an historic monument and therefore cannot be filled-in. Necessity being the mother of invention, it is hard to see how the pupils at Crabwicke would have come up with a piece of software that could be repurposed to assist exploratory vehicles in navigating alien topography, even with more educational resources at their disposal.

I think that I would also tell you friend a story:

In 1994, there was an explosion at the Platts Seachalk factory, in Helsby, on the Devonshire Coast. Thankfully, no-one was seriously injured. All afternoon, fountains of different coloured chalk dust erupted into the sky, raining down on the school pupils as they made their way home, earlier than normal. Gradually the town's youth began to separate into factions, based upon whatever new colours dominated their uniform. This spontaneous tribalism degenerated into a running brawl that didn't peter out until after dark.

“I saw boys from the rough comprehensives teaming up with boys from Hookways public school because they suddenly had the same colour uniform,” recalled part-time art teacher, John Monaghan. “I didn't know whether to be overjoyed that these young people were able to easily set aside their class differences, or be brought to a state of despair by the undeniable truth that they had allied themselves in violence against children who had been covered in a different tone of chalk dust.”

A more grounded response appeared in the local newspaper, courtesy of a local headteacher, named Colin Duck:

“In my experience, children will make friends, or fall out, over the most ridiculous things,” he said. “I've just suspended two pupils after they got into a stand up fight over who was the king of the beasts. It's the lion, obviously.”

I hope this is of help.