Bradfield College experiments with mixed-ability teaching - FT.com
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Bradfield College experiments with mixed-ability teaching By Miranda Green
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The damning phrase “educational apartheid” has often been used to describe England’s postwar divide between state schools, particularly comprehensives, and their private sector rivals. But for Peter Roberts, headmaster of Bradfield College in Berkshire, the divisions are all too apparent across and within both sectors, with one set of customs and privileges for the highly selective public schools and grammars (those that dominate our Top 1,000 ranking) and another for those with less of an academically selective intake, both state-funded and independent. “Parents are being asked to choose between the academic hothouse and the broader approach to education, particularly in London,” says Mr Roberts. “But a good school is one where you have all sorts of children – it’s more like real life. It’s much more interesting to teach. And it should not be just the academically outstanding who benefit from academic excellence.” Mr Roberts, himself the product of an elite education at Tiffin Boys grammar school and Merton College Oxford, spent most of his teaching career at Winchester, where he was housemaster to the scholars – the crème de la crème of an already fiercely selective single-sex institution. He calls it “one of the great jobs in education”, but now evangelises about a very different approach, introducing mixed-ability admissions and teaching groups and co-education throughout to Bradfield College, an £8,700 ($12,352) a term boarding school in the Thames valley where he has been in charge since 2003. Berkshire is crowded with academically excellent schools, both grammars and independents, but this experimental approach has kept Bradfield’s position in the FT rankings stable for the last three years, and offers parents something different.
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Bradfield College experiments with mixed-ability teaching - FT.com
03/11/2015 15:58
Of the 119 boys and girls in this year’s lower sixth, only a handful scored above 70 per cent in their Common Entrance exams, and some 15 per cent of the year group having actually achieved less than half marks. The bulk of the pupils scores were in a broad range between 50 and 70 per cent. Although nine out of 10 of them had been through the tests, Roberts is against selecting on the basis of IQ tests taken at 11 or 13, which, he believes, give “bogus” indications of future success. “We trust the views of the prep schools, we interview each child, and we’ll always take a chance on someone who is a fantastic artist or a great sportsman or actor.” The resulting mix he likens to a “magic cauldron” in which all ability levels can prosper. Mr Roberts vigorously defends the so-called “soft” exam subjects, which are as popular at Bradfield as the core academic courses. Even the most able will enhance their academic performance and university entrance because of the extra emphasis on drama, arts, sports and music, he insists: “I observed this at Winchester too – paradoxically, they then do better academically too.” The exam results show that a considerable divergence in student ability does persist throughout the school, but according to Mr Roberts, 72 per cent of his A-level candidates gained A or B grades in 2008, up from 52 per cent in 2000. There has been a rise in the number of A-level examinations taken, mostly in the less academic subjects, but without damaging the quality of results in core subjects. Some pupils take three or four core academic subjects, and others obtain good grades in the ‘soft’ subjects, while a few perform much less well. English and the humanities, as well as the non-academic courses and projects, are taught in mixed groups. But maths, science and languages are streamed by ability, so that everyone moves at the pace appropriate to them. This means that Mr Roberts can defend his approach to parents who might be concerned about the all-important question of university entrance. About half the sixth form head off to undergraduate courses at the elite Russell Group of universities and they and their families share with those at more traditionally selective schools the obsession with making a successful jump to the next stage. “That’s the way of the world,” Mr Roberts observes philosophically.
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Bradfield College experiments with mixed-ability teaching - FT.com
03/11/2015 15:58
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