restraining hand of Government has emasculated the education system of this country and deprived children of their long accumulated heritage. Only the independence of our schools has kept alive in its fullness that heritage, that hard-accumulated national birth-right. Using the fundamental Cumberland Lodge training principle what are the facts, what are the – issues, and what are we going to do about them this address contains three sections, – which look at the child, our Association, and this Conference. SECTION I: THE CHILD As the letters HMC no longer fit our title since 1996 of and Headmasters’ Headmistresses’ Conference, perhaps they should be reinterpreted as an acronym for Heed and Marvel at the understanding of the child has three parts: the pastoral, the Child. Our association’s historic academic and the extra-curricular. First and most important is the pastoral. Our schools believe that the school is to the child as the parent is to the child. It might surprise viewers of If, to suggest that boarding could in any way be fundamental to the development of this pastoral concept. However the strong boarding tradition in our schools has always innately ensured that the school has to be to the child as the parent is to the child because the school is, for many weeks of the year, to the child its very home. In the revolution of the 1960s boarding had to modernize this ethos if it was to survive. It had to change from devotion to the hearty to responsiveness to the heart. It had, in a very particular sense, to be feminised. Inside the independent sector, pastoral care thus became all the more important, a key, for some schools, to their very survival. Perennial cross fertilisation between day and boarding education has meant that the boarding concept of pastoral care that the school is to the child as the parent is to the child – has been kept alive in the independent day sector whereas the state, beginning with its – unkept promise to introduce widespread boarding after the war, has allowed it largely to disappear. The strong religious element in our schools, as well as the growth, and nature of our junior schools, have also been important factors. Pastoral care is the essence of independent schools. The child is now placed in the midst of all. The contrast with historic developments in Government policy is marked. Labour zeal for egalitarianism, followed by Tory zeal for league table driven academic excellence, means
restraining hand of Government has emasculated the education system of this country and deprived children of their long accumulated heritage. Only the independence of our schools has kept alive in its fullness that heritage, that hard-accumulated national birth-right. Using the fundamental Cumberland Lodge training principle – what are the facts, what are the issues, and what are we going to do about them – this address contains three sections, which look at the child, our Association, and this Conference. SECTION I: THE CHILD As the letters HMC no longer fit our title since 1996 of Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, perhaps they should be reinterpreted as an acronym for Heed and Marvel at the Child. Our association’s historic understanding of the child has three parts: the pastoral, the academic and the extra-curricular. First and most important is the pastoral. Our schools believe that the school is to the child as the parent is to the child. It might surprise viewers of If, to suggest that boarding could in any way be fundamental to the development of this pastoral concept. However the strong boarding tradition in our schools has always innately ensured that the school has to be to the child as the parent is to the child because the school is, for many weeks of the year, to the child its very home. In the revolution of the 1960s boarding had to modernize this ethos if it was to survive. It had to change from devotion to the hearty to responsiveness to the heart. It had, in a very particular sense, to be feminised. Inside the independent sector, pastoral care thus became all the more important, a key, for some schools, to their very survival. Perennial cross fertilisation between day and boarding education has meant that the boarding concept of pastoral care – that the school is to the child as the parent is to the child – has been kept alive in the independent day sector whereas the state, beginning with its unkept promise to introduce widespread boarding after the war, has allowed it largely to disappear. The strong religious element in our schools, as well as the growth, and nature of our junior schools, have also been important factors. Pastoral care is the essence of independent schools. The child is now placed in the midst of all. The contrast with historic developments in Government policy is marked. Labour zeal for egalitarianism, followed by Tory zeal for league table driven academic excellence, means
HMC-Chairmans-Address-2013-Public-Copy.docx