Urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way: Kirkham Grammar School Founders' Day

Kirkham Grammar School Founders’ Day

Today, Wednesday April 1st 2020, at 2:30pm Kirkham Grammar School would have been holding its annual Founders’ Day Commemoration Service at St Michael’s Parish Church.

Founders’ Day is an occasion on which the school community reflects on and gives thanks for its long and distinguished history, whilst remembering in particular those who over the years have been supporters and benefactors of the School.

Holding the service in St Michael’s Church gives an appropriate reminder of the School’s earliest origins and its continuing links with the church: KGS was founded in the Sixteenth Century as a chantry school in the church grounds, in all probability before the stated founding date of 1549. For the next four hundred years, the School was situated next to the Church and the lives and work of the two institutions were firmly intertwined. The School moved to its present buildings in 1910 but has retained close links with the St Michael’s.

The Founders’ Day Service is actually a relatively recent tradition: it was instituted after the Second World War as an end-of-term event perhaps comparable to a modern Open Day, in that it was an opportunity for the School to display to the public something of its life and work and to celebrate all that it stands for. The day used to feature an inspection of the Cadet Force followed by a public parade of cadets to the Church, and the service was followed in the afternoon by a School against Old Boys cricket match.

The first recorded occurrence was on Saturday 26th July 1947, when the then newly appointed Headmaster Mr Dennis Norwood instituted the event as an end-of-term celebration of the School’s heritage. This extract from the newly-formed General School Committee in May 1947 shows the new Headmaster’s plans for the day.

In modern times, Founders’ Day has become a service of thanksgiving, normally held on the last Wednesday of the Spring Term, at which the school community gathers for a short act of worship, with music led by its choir, an address by a guest preacher and an act of thanksgiving for the School’s benefactors read by the Headmaster:

The names of those benefactors whose names are read out are somehow evocative of the school’s long and distinguished history: Thomas Clifton, Isabel Birly, Cuthbert Clifton, Thomas Westby, John Parker, Thomas Langtree, Thomas Hesketh, Arthur Greenacres, Henry Colborne, James Barker and William Grimbaldeston.

These names all have a role in the history of the school which is recorded by history, most notably Henry Colborne, whose bequest left in trust with the Drapers’ Company of the City of London in the seventeenth century led to the longstanding and still flourishing connection with the Drapers. Perhaps the most colourful story relates to Isabell Birly, daughter of a Kirkham alehouse keeper who apparently saved the school from falling into disrepair in the year 1621 with a donation of £30 (then a substantial gift) which she brought to the school authorities in her apron. 

Like so much else in our lives, today's Founders’ Day has fallen victim to the Coronavirus pandemic, along with the whole routine and rhythm of school life: like all schools in the UK and across much of the world, KGS is closed for normal teaching and learning for the immediate future, with pupils and teachers adapting to distance learning, and the school campus deserted other than for a handful of children of key workers. Public examinations have been cancelled leaving the GCSE and A-Level cohorts uncertain of their fate, and deprived of the bittersweet rituals of the end of their school days, with celebrations such as the Fifth Year Party and the Sixth Form Ball postponed to an as yet unplanned future date.

Founders’ Day is a perfect opportunity for all in the present and past school community - pupils, parents, teaching and non-teaching staff - to pause, reflect and give thanks for being part of an ancient, loved and resilient community. In its 470+ year existence, the School has been through difficult times and always emerged in the long term even stronger and wiser, and will do so again.

Let’s all take a moment today to pray for our well-loved school, to give thanks for the leadership and energy being demonstrated by the Headmaster Dan Berry and his staff, as well as the guidance and support of the Governing Body.

I have also always thought that on Founders’ Day, every pupil past and present should perhaps take a moment to give thanks for the financial and other sacrifices made by their own families to give them such a special education. We too easily take our schooling for granted, and I think many Old Kirkhamians will echo the thought that we appreciate and love the School even more as the years go by.

Since 1999, the Founders' Day Service has concluded with the School’s adopted hymn, the much-loved Lord for the Years. We're not singing it today, but here it is on YouTube - watch, enjoy and reflect on those words.

And in case you haven't seen it before, here is a link to a blog post I wrote a few years ago about Lord for the Years.

I am a Rock: Why are the British so bad at languages?

I try very hard to be an optimist and I genuinely think that in many - indeed in most - ways, the world has become a significantly better place over my lifetime. However, there is always stuff going on to counter that rose-tinted view of the world, both in my own life and in the wider world, and just occasionally things crop up which make me succumb to feelings of doom and gloom.

One such thing greeted me in this morning’s news (February 27^th 2019), with the not exactly surprising revelation that language learning here in the UK appears to be in meteoric decline, according to a survey by BBC news. The story is here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-47334374

For a linguist it makes depressing reading, and it is difficult to resist the temptation to link this apparent decline in our willingness as a nation to engage with the language and culture of other countries as symptomatic of the same narrow-minded insularity that drove a (very slim) majority of Britons to vote to leave the EU back in 2016.

As a retired languages teacher, I am relieved to say that this is now for me just a subject of deep concern, rather than one of professional survival, but that doesn’t mean to say that I am not very sad to see it happening. We Brits have always been bad at it, but why are we getting worse at learning languages? And why are we not more worried about it? In short, why are we so arrogant?

When I graduated and came into language teaching in the early 80s, the future for language learning looked bright. We were relatively new members of the EU, and as a nation we were rapidly becoming more familiar with our European neighbours thanks to easier communications, the boom in foreign holidays, growth in trade and a love affair with cuisine more interesting than the “boiled beef and carrots” on which our parents’ generation had been raised. It’s very hard to believe now, but pizza and pasta were exotic rarities as recently as the 1970s, whilst wine was a drink for the well-to-do or for special occasions, and baguettes, croissants and quiche were words encountered only in French lessons at school. Languages were valued and booming in schools, and a move away from élitist grammar-based teaching, with more emphasis on practical communication skills - listening and speaking - promised a bright future for the subject.

That’s the way it was in the first 25 years of my teaching career: modern languages (in the case of my school French and German) were part of the core curriculum alongside Maths English and the sciences and whilst some didn’t like them and weren’t very good at them, there was a feeling that, like Maths, language learning was somehow “good for you”. For me, a pragmatic and good-humoured approach to teaching, combined with giving pupils the opportunities for fun trips to foreign parts, made it relatively easy, and certainly enjoyable, to teach languages.

In my small school, with around 100 in each year group, all pupils took GCSE French or German, and A-Level entries of between 10 and 20 for my main language, French were the norm as recently as the early 2000s, with many of these going on to read the subject at university.

So what has gone so badly wrong with language learning, and in such a short time? These days, taking a language to GCSE has become just an option, taken up by just a few keenies, and as a result, A-Level language teachers in many schools and colleges often struggle to recruit more than a handful of candidates, with formerly mainstream languages like German having become the preserve of a tiny minority, as confirmed in today’s news report.

Part of the answer lies in a perfectly laudable broadening of the curriculum over recent decades: more apparently attractive, relevant and  - dare I say - easier subjects like Business Studies, Psychology, Photography, Physical Education and Media Studies have all proved to be an irresistible temptation to pupils burdened with a “must pass” core of English, Maths and the sciences. Moreover, some very poor choices made by the exam boards who devise specifications at GCSE and A-Level have served to make languages statistically a very risky choice for pupils, with top grades elusive. This, combined with schools leaders’ nervous pursuit of league table success has led to a “perfect storm” for languages in schools.

This is very, very sad, and in my opinion very damaging to our long-term success and well-being as a society, at two distinct levels:

The first is self-evident and practical: our unwillingness to engage with the language and culture of other countries is deeply harmful to trade and business. We hide behind the excuse that “everybody speaks English”, failing to realise that the wheels of commerce are driven by human interaction and good manners, which often amount to no more than making an effort to meet others halfway. Yes, the detailed negotiations for that lucrative contract may be carried out in English, but the small-talk and goodwill that underpin it may be immeasurably strengthened by a simple greeting in the language of the host, or maybe a “please” and a “thank you” at mealtimes or a comment about the weather. It’s amazing how much ice can be broken by trying to use just a bit of school-level language.

And please don’t tell me that speaking another language is difficult: much of the rest of the world is bilingual, and we are reminded all the time by the many lovely and capable people from across Europe who have in recent years come to live and work in our country how easy it is to become fluent in English, one of the subtlest, richest and most illogical of all languages. We all meet them every day: think of that every time you are served in a restaurant or a coffee shop, helped recover from illness by a doctor or nurse in hospital or greeted by a hotel receptionist, many of whom are non-native speakers of English.

Or how about footballers and their managers? Is there a better and more expressive user of English than Jürgen Klopp? Does anyone in Manchester speak better “Manc” than Ole Gunnar Solskjaer? These guys, and those who play for them have mastered our language because they have lived and worked here and absorbed our culture, not because they took school and university examinations.

Which brings me to the second reason for valuing language learning, a less obvious but equally important one. Yes, we need to be far better at the practical business of communicating in other languages, but what about the hidden benefits of language learning, beyond the obvious ones?

Language learning has multiple subtle benefits, way beyond the straightforward business of communicating. Thanks to the previous successes of our education system, the highest levels of every profession here in the UK are massively enriched by the presence of linguists, who benefit enormously from the subtle transferred skills derived from their knowledge of another language. Among my ex-students of A-Level French are numerous doctors, engineers, scientists, business people and teachers, as well as actors and media journalists, all of whom probably seldom if ever use their A-Level French, yet still benefit from it every day. Modern linguists, and their close counterparts classicists, are everywhere in the professions, but I fear that they will become fewer in number over time, and those professions will be the poorer for it. It came as no surprise to me when I discovered recently through my post-retirement work in the diabetes community that the Chief Executives of the two main diabetes charities in the UK, JDRF and Diabetes UK are, respectively, a Cambridge linguist and an Oxford classicist.

I took a degree in French and German at Oxford University, yet my ability to speak fluent and colloquial French comes not from my studies at Oxford, but from a year spent living and working in a small town in rural France where nobody spoke English, and playing for a non-league football team there. However, this is not to belittle my Oxford languages degree, far from it: studying for a traditional university degree in Modern Languages, with its emphasis on detailed translation of literary texts, and above all the reading and critical analysis of vast quantities of literature in the original language has given me skills such as absorbing and processing information, understanding a variety of viewpoints, and writing concise and focused English which served me well throughout my professional career and continue to do so in my post-retirement work in healthcare advocacy.

I very much hope that we can arrest the decline in language learning before it gets too late, but at the risk of concluding on a gloomy note, I fear the damage has already been done. I am loathe to politicise this issue, but it is difficult not to see a connection between the mentality of Brexit and that of our unwillingness to prioritise and promote language learning. Perhaps we are at the darkest hour just before dawn, and if a post-Brexit Britain is left marginalised, as well as culturally and materially impoverished by the short-sighted and misguided decision of a particular generation, perhaps future generations can right this wrong. I hope so.

Oh, so what's the song title for this post, as is my wont? It’s almost impossible to find a song about languages, so I’ve settled for a wonderful Simon and Garfunkel song whose lyrics I profoundly disagree with, yet whose title sums up where we seem to be heading. 

Great song, shame about the meaning: I am a Rock

Do Anything You Wanna Do: DAFNE and me

Well, I finally got to meet DAFNE! After 20 years of living with Type One Diabetes, I have, better late than never, received the “education” to which we are all entitled to help us live with a condition which demands so much of us in terms of self-care, self-monitoring and self-treatment. Just in case you don't know, DAFNE stands for Dose Adjustment for Normal Eating, and is the recognised education course for people with Type One Diabetes. I'm now a DAFNE graduate, and I've got the certificate to prove it:-

My DAFNE Certificate 

Those readers who follow me on Twitter, or who have read my previous blog posts, will perhaps know that I had to fight quite hard to be allowed onto a DAFNE course. Fourteen years after diagnosis, I was discharged from hospital care back in 2011 because of my “good control” and lack of complications, and my D-care had been reduced to an annual check-up with my GP. It was only when I started associating with other Type Ones, thanks to the GBDOC, that I came to realise how minimal my input from the health service had become, and with retirement from work and a twenty year diaversary occurring at around the same time, I asked to attend a DAFNE course, only to be told I was ineligible because I was not under hospital care.

So I referred myself back to the hospital, only to be told there that my HbA1c was “too good” and that I “didn’t need” a DAFNE course. I politely insisted, citing a wish to be better informed in my judgements of insulin dose, rather than relying on semi-educated guesswork, and eventually found myself at the start of 2018 on a course. It was the 5 x 1 format, rather than a full five day week - apparently more popular due to peoples’ work commitments.

So how was it?

Well, most importantly there have been many positives:

I have come home every week like a new boy at school, clutching a shiny ring binder increasingly full of paper, and the information both on paper and presented during the course is detailed and useful. I have achieved my basic aim, namely to learn more about the complex relationship between food, insulin and activity. The pocket-sized Carbohydrate Portion List alone is a wonderful thing, and I have been genuinely surprised and enlightened to learn of the carb content of some foods which are a regular part of my diet. Some puzzling highs and lows over the years now make much more sense!

DAFNE Swag

The presenters, a dietitian and DSN, have been thorough, attentive and caring in their approach to the diverse group of participants on my course, and display detailed knowledge of both diabetes and the principles of DAFNE approach to its management. I cannot fault them for their knowledge of their material and their belief in it.

The opportunity to devote time and mental space to my condition has been most welcome and useful. I developed Type One at a time in my life when I was extremely busy both professionally and personally, and so I have to say that I didn’t really give diabetes the attention it warranted until quite recently. I just wanted to carry on as normal, and indeed I was pretty successful in so doing. But looking back, I can see moments when the cracks were starting to show, and I should perhaps have given the condition a little more of my time. So being forced to “study” diabetes, to note food intake and injection doses in minute detail and to discuss outcomes has been good for me. Nobody has ever mastered diabetes.

My colleagues on the course have proved to be very good company, as fellow PWD invariably are. Prior to this course, I had never met any fellow Type Ones in my local area other than pupils at my school, so it has been interesting to meet a small group who share the condition. As always, it serves as a reminder of the completely random nature of Type One to meet people who are a diverse group of individuals with different backgrounds, lifestyles, tastes and experiences, yet with such a big thing in common. We have had many laughs together, as well as sharing in our difficulties.

What of the negatives?

Well, I am loathe to criticise, not least having had to fight to get on the course. And in overall terms I feel better-informed and therefore more confident for having done the course. However, in all areas of life, I am not a fan of absolute rules and principles. I prefer guidelines, and my experience of diabetes has taught me that it is a condition where absolutes seldom work.

So the somewhat evangelistic application of “DAFNE principles” that pervades every aspect of the course does not sit comfortably with me. To be told to follow "rules", as if it is a matter of life and death, such as do not pre-bolus, do not test after meals, change your lancet every time, wash your hands before every blood test, and to apply rigid mathematical formulae to doses and corrections seems to me to run counter to the very nature of diabetes. It’s a mercurial condition which defies logic a lot of the time. The same food, the same activity on two apparently similar days can produce startlingly different outcomes for no good reason. The same BG reading can feel very different to different people. The same insulin works for some and not for others. My favourite acronym from the online community is YDMV: Your Diabetes May Vary. How very true, yet DAFNE somehow appears to suggest otherwise.

In personal terms, I was more than a little dismayed to have a radical change of dose imposed on me at the start of the course, a massive reduction in insulin intake (both long and short acting) compared to that which had served me well for many years and given me an Hba1c of 46 (6.4). It was inevitable that such a striking reduction would lead to uncomfortable highs, and it did, such that over the five weeks, we gradually returned to the previous levels. Having said that, an adjustment to the balance between basal and bolus has been the most useful and significant outcome for me, but that could have been achieved by less dramatic changes, as to reduce both at the same time didn’t give the opportunity for true evaluation of cause and effect. I intend to persist with experiments with these levels.

Now I fully recognise and understand the difficulty of delivering a course to participants of varying degrees of knowledge and experience of diabetes, and I repeat my admiration and respect for those who have researched, devised and present such a valuable body of knowledge to patients who need it. I also realise and accept that rules and principles have to err on the side of safety, not least in our risk-averse age and culture.

However, I do wonder whether a limited dose of peer input might be helpful, to both the course presenters and participants alike. My own experience of diabetes has been that in 20 years, all the most useful hints, tips and knowledge has come in the past few years thanks to the GBDOC. Perhaps some of that expertise and experience could be brought to education courses such as DAFNE. I would willingly offer my time to meet fellow PWD, provide a little real-life experience and above all assure them that it is possible to live well with Type One. I would love to have met my 60 year old self when I was newly diagnosed at 40.

In more general terms, I wonder whether some thought should be given to the timing, nature and delivery of diabetes education. What is the best timing for effective education following diagnosis? Is it the best use of scarce resources to run five day courses delivered by two busy HCPs? I wonder whether two or more shorter courses might be more effective. Perhaps one 6 - 12 months after diagnosis then another after around 5 years. These could be as little as one day in duration, with additional content available in print/online. And could they be delivered by HCPs with volunteer peer support?

And in the meantime, I’ll watch, listen and observe, but when it comes to self-management, I’ll be as stroppy as Eddie and the Hot Rods were in this classic of rebellion back in 1977: 

Do Anything you Wanna Do.

And here’s my DAFNE playlist:

DAFNE Songs

Disclaimer: I am very aware that I am not an expert, and have no qualifications other than experience and common sense. Please be aware that what works for me in managing my diabetes may not work for you. 

Follow you, Follow me: role models and ivory towers

It's not been a good week for Oxford University. A damming response to a freedom of information request by Labour MP David Lammy revealed a shocking and growing lack of social and ethnic diversity in their undergraduate intake, suggesting that an institution that has always been seen as a bastion of the privileged establishment is becoming increasingly just that. The university, along with its counterpart Cambridge, and indeed other top universities, appears to be helping those already in the upper echelons of society to tighten their grip on the top jobs, to the exclusion of those less fortunate than themselves. Click here for the story.

Of course this is nothing new. Reports condemning Oxbridge and its self-evident lack of social and ethnic diversity appear with depressing regularity, giving ammunition to those who wish to snipe at these ancient universities, so admired and respected throughout the world, yet so often the subject of criticism or ridicule at home. This saddens me: I am a proud Oxford graduate, yet feel that I earned the right to that status rather than being born to it, and I am also proud that a small number of students whom I taught over a 36 year career followed in my footsteps, not because they were privileged and educated at a good school, but because they were highly intelligent and well-motivated students who were encouraged and, I hope, inspired by a teacher who believed that they would enjoy and benefit from such a uniquely challenging education. More of that later.

Now of course I am biased, so if you think that Oxbridge is a self-serving ivory tower, perpetuating the injustices and inequalities of society, you might as well stop reading here and resent me.

My alma mater: Exeter College Oxford

But if you can bear with me, let me defend my alma mater. (“There he goes, spouting Latin, point proved....”)

I honestly believe that to attack Oxbridge is to miss the point. Oxford and Cambridge are elite universities, now more than ever. They compete at an international level with other leading universities and can only sustain their position and reputation if they recruit the best students from the UK and beyond. And if the best students (albeit judged on narrow academic criteria) come from a very limited sector of society, arguably that's society's fault, not Oxbridge’s. They can only select from those who apply, and it is a self-evident truth that high achievers are more likely to come from well-to-do families, top schools, and very often both.

That doesn't make it right, and it doesn't mean there isn't a problem, which could, to an extent, be tackled - for example by continued investment in imaginative outreach work. However, I feel that to criticise Oxbridge is easy but unfair. They are academically highly selective, and there are far more applicants than places. So they choose the best applicants, wherever they come from. But in my view, they do so without prejudice or favouritism: they pick the best, who all-too-often are not from lower socio-economic groups or ethnic minorities. Therein lies the real problem, and we shouldn't blame Oxbridge for that.

My feeling - and it's no more than a feeling, so I will willingly stand corrected if others want to counter with hard facts – is that Oxford has become far more socially exclusive than it was in the 1970s when I was there. I was at Exeter College, one of the university's oldest, a college which visually fulfils every cliché: the honey coloured walls, the manicured quadrangle, the ornate chapel, the hogwartsesque dining hall. Yet in the 70s it was a pretty down-to-earth place, and for this lad from “oop North” it was challenging, mind-broadening but not intimidating. My friends and fellow undergraduates there spoke with accents from places like Bradford, Manchester, Oldham, Devon, Wiltshire, London, and Wolverhampton and were mainly state educated. Posh public schoolboys were there, but seemed like an endangered species, a harmless source of amusement to those of us who were of the real world.

So if I am right, why has this happened over the past forty years? Why has Oxford become more socially exclusive over a period in which, to some extent at least, society at large has quite rightly become more meritocratic and egalitarian and less deferential to the old school tie?

I fear that the answer lies much further back in the educational system. Oxbridge is not recruiting young people from less privileged backgrounds because those young people are left behind way before they get near applying to university. The fault lies in a system which does not support and inspire young people from all backgrounds to aim high and reach for the glittering prizes. The quest to raise standards for the many over recent decades has arguably meant that the interests of the most talented get neglected. For all their faults, the free state grammar schools which flourished in the mid twentieth century, not least in the industrial North, gave some children from all backgrounds a ladder and the encouragement to climb it.

No, I am not calling for a return to grammar schools. They had many faults, serving only a relative few based on a harsh and imperfect selection method and left many on the scrapheap. However, one of the great features of the grammar school that I and many others attended was the influence of the many talented, charismatic and inspirational teachers who served as role models for the likes of me. And guess what, many of them were Oxbridge educated: I recently came across a staff list from the early seventies from my old school, and was struck by how many of my teachers were Oxbridge graduates. Highly intelligent yet grounded men, who taught entertainingly and intuitively, each in his own style, free from the need to follow detailed schemes of work, to meet aims and objectives and to meet performance criteria. The best lessons were the ones that digressed wildly from the matter in hand, stretching the mind and arousing true intellectual curiosity. I applied to Oxford for a lot of reasons, but strongest among them was that I had a really good and inspirational French teacher at my (free, state) grammar school who was an Oxford graduate. He was clearly very clever, but also very funny, and he used to regale us with stories of his university days. I wanted to be like him, and was lucky enough to be able to fulfil that ambition. I know several of my friends from those days who applied to university for the same sort of reason. 

I fear that such people do not come into teaching these days, and if they do their talent is subjugated to the need to tick boxes in pursuit of Ofsted criteria. Why would an Oxbridge graduate come into teaching, where pay is capped, professional freedom and common sense is constantly undermined by policy and bureaucracy, when they could earn far more for less intellectual effort in another profession?

Perhaps instead of demanding that Oxbridge fiddle with their selection procedures and entry requirements, we should look at ways of encouraging more Oxbridge and other high-calibre graduates into teaching, where perhaps they can demystify Oxbridge life and act as mentors and role models. And when they become teachers, perhaps we could allow them rather more freedom and respect. If we must have academies, how about an Oxbridge sponsored academy?

Follow You, Follow Me, as Genesis said in 1978. Role models can be very powerful. 

"Die heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik"

What's this about? What's with the German title?

Well, these words have been in my mind over another wonderfully successful meet-up of the three  twin towns, Kirkham, Ancenis and Bad Brückenau over last weekend, May 15th - 17th. "Die heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik" is the title of a short story by the  18th/19th century German writer Heinrich von Kleist. I studied his work as part of my degree at university many years ago. It's a weird and disturbing tale: I can't remember much detail, but the title refers to St Cecilia, traditionally the patron saint of music and "the power of music", and it's that idea that is my blog post theme.

It's not a remotely original idea, but music is a truly powerful thing. This has been vibrantly apparent over this past weekend in Ancenis, as I have had the pleasure of  being present at the meet-up between the bands of our French and German twin towns. Each of these towns, small provincial communities of around 8000 inhabitants like Kirkham, has a municipal band consisting of ordinary people, who share a love of making music. The two bands are both what we would call "concert bands" - brass, woodwind, and percussion  - and crucially, their members are a mix of genders, ages and social classes. Both bands are directed by young men, and both sets of players give every indication that they simply love making music. When these two bands come together (and like their towns, they are  formally "twinned"), it illustrates very powerfully that music is a common language with the power to transcend boundaries of language and culture. Their repertoire is in both cases mixed, but very much drawn from international common culture, notably from popular classics and anglo-american light music. The two bands clearly enjoy and appreciate each others' work, and frequently play joint concerts, led by one or other conductor, and to witness their work at such times is truly life-enhancing. The common language of music means that they have so much more in common than what divides them.

There is, however, a sad side to this: the lack of an English equivalent. Kirkham has no town band and is frankly unlikely to have one in the foreseeable future. Why is it that a country with our love of music, our artistic talent and creativity, does not foster a culture of music-making in our communities? I don't know the answer, but I have to wonder whether it is a consequence of our education system, which does so much to encourage and value the arts and other extracurricular activities as a big part of how we educate our children. Every British school, primary or secondary, state or private, prides itself on the breadth and quality of what it offers its pupils - look at the website of any school and you will see as much about sport, music and drama as you will about the academic curriculum and exam results. French and German schools pay lip service to the arts and sport, but do not boast anything like the provision that even a poorly resourced school in the UK can demonstrate, and this means, I suspect, that it is outside of school that young people in those countries pursue such activities. Difficult to say which way is better, but I would point out that a crucial disadvantage of the UK model is that it limits severely what people can do after leaving school, and just perhaps fosters an attitude that music, drama and sport is something that kids do at school, watched and admired by their parents, but then "outgrow" as they move on to do more adult things.

I feel really bad saying that, because I work in school which has a wonderful tradition of  sporting, dramatic and musical excellence, and I cannot imagine my school without these excellent activities, but I do wonder whether we in Britain are too dependent on our schools to foster artistic and sporting talent. Like so much else in life, I guess there must be a happy medium, because everything I see and hear about schools in France and Germany makes me value and cherish the "educating the whole person" culture which is so central to the British system. I remember a French national whose son was at my school praising the "polyvalent" nature of the English system which had given his son the chance to sing a Haydn mass, play rugby and act Shakespeare all in one year at the age of 12. Perhaps we in the UK should look at how we encourage  our young people to move on from what they do at school. And especially in music, maybe we should encourage parents and other adults to play with and alongside their children, rather than just standing and watching.