Creating a global perspective
Much has been made recently by Ofsted and the Government of the requirement for all schools, state maintained and independent, to promote fundamental British values, capturing that elusive sense of what it is to be British while including the diversity of cultures and faiths which make up Britain today, and the global perspective to recognise our nation’s place in the world community.
If you believe some sections of the media, the rarefied ivory towers of the English public school might be the last place you might look for the latter perspective. But nothing could be further from the truth, and in fact it is something which UK independent schools, especially boarding schools, do uniquely well.
As an embodiment of the British traditions of pursuing excellence, holistic education of mind and body and preparation for adult life in leading professions, we know that UK independent education is in huge demand around the globe. It should come as no surprise that that something we do supremely well (UK independent schools top the PISA rankings among other measures) is in such demand by international students in search of the best education and preparation for life they can find.
Once again, though, if you believe the media, the presence of such students from overseas is something we should be wary of because it somehow spoils what we want for our children. Far from it.
The presence of overseas students is something we should capitalise on, not resent, as a brilliant opportunity to prepare all of our children for their future as leaders in the modern world. At King Edward’s our community is a cosmopolitan one where around a third of the student body come from some 43 different countries. It works really well for these students: the diversity of nationalities ensures English is the lingua franca and an environment rooted in the Surrey countryside, where their day pupil friends (a third of the school community) live and grow up, gives them a fully British experience and a real sense of place.
For our British majority, the benefits are immeasurable. In the first place, growing up alongside people from different parts of the world encourages global-mindedness in an otherwise potentially insular part of the world, and from first-hand experience rather than through media or other preconception. To have their eyes opened to the possibility of study abroad (which is their friends’ experience already, of course) opens up horizons of universities in Europe, the USA or further afield as real and exciting possibilities. Many of our students will end up in multinational companies with careers taking them throughout the world, and even if they are based in London (where a third of people were born outside the UK) the imperative to be able to understand and work alongside people from very different backgrounds and cultures will be crucial to get ahead. And lastly, as I always say to parents, they will never need to stay in a hotel again: with friends all over the world that GAP year is sorted.
Most importantly, and at the risk of sounding pious, creating a diverse community, but one based and steeped in a single nation’s tradition, gives our pupils a sense of what is really important about one another and an understanding which we can only hope will help their generation towards a more peaceful world. The perspective on real world situations to be gained from those who live them day by day is a salutary lesson against flippancy and NIMBYism as well as a wonderful opportunity for cultural, intellectual and moral enrichment. In one of the most remarkable Chapel services I can remember at King Edward’s, during the 2014 demonstrations in Kiev, a Ukrainian student stood up and spoke of his half term week, spent delivering medical supplies to the injured protesters in Independence Square. That was eye-opening enough, but then his best friend, a Russian from St Petersburg, came forward to talk about the fierce argument they had had over Ukrainian independence but how, in the end, they couldn’t bring themselves to fight because their friendship transcended the politics foisted on them by their nationality. Nobody left Chapel that day without a new understanding of the reality of war; but even more so of the possibilities for peace where leaders of and within nations can have been schoolfriends together.
Of course there is a balance to be struck: as I have hinted, maintaining a spread of representation and a distinctive British tradition is crucial for UK and overseas pupils alike. But where it works, as at King Edward’s, it creates the most exciting, vibrant and forward-thinking of educational environments imaginable, and one which should be aspired to by British families as it already is by their overseas counterparts. What better British value could there be?
John Attwater is Headmaster of King Edward’s Witley, an 11-18 day and boarding school in Surrey.