The Interview

Professor Mark Bailey

Journalist Mark Lobel (1992-97) talks to High Master Mark Bailey who returns to the University of East Anglia later this year.

We are sitting in an executive portacabin currently parked on the school’s tennis courts – in a makeshift room masquerading as his study – overlooking the river. It is the High Master’s last day holed up here before moving back into his newly renovated office. Bags full of waste – the fallout of any office move – surround us.

I was keen to hear Mark’s views on Sally-Anne Huang, the next person to occupy his chair. She will be the School’s first-ever female High Master in its 510-year history when she steps down as Head of James Allen’s Girls’ School in Dulwich.

I was originally meant to be interviewing her until she was hit by the flu. Atrium has been assured that Sally-Anne will speak to us when her feet are firmly under her new desk.

The current High Master stepped up and quickly explained why her arrival is so keenly anticipated by the School. “Staff and parents have said that the relative under-representation of senior female role models in the senior school is one area for improvement. Also, she has significant experience of a number of schools to draw upon.”

Mark also thinks Sally-Anne’s media profile and upcoming role as Chair of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference will help put St Paul’s “back onto the national platform in educational debate” – a move he concedes is now “overdue”. He also expects her to focus on “academic provision” within the school, having spent less time on it himself than he would have wished to over the past nine years, alongside continuing the focus on “rebuilding, bursaries, safeguarding and pastoral welfare”.

As we now know, it may only be three years until we see the first female students at St Paul’s too. Mark says it can not come too soon. But plans have yet to been signed off. Some parents and boys remain concerned about the “cultural change” that it may bring.

The entrance of girls is likely to be restricted to the 8th form but there is also a desire for a “critical mass so that girls make up to a third of the pupils in those years, so that they feel an integral part of the senior school and not just an afterthought”.

But for many future parents of sons – or daughters – who are at the School, the biggest hurdle remains the cost of an education.

In 2016, the High Master famously set alarm bells ringing by saying it had become “unaffordable”. What he actually said was the fees – which were over £22,000 then and for the Senior School are now over £25,000 a year – were “increasingly unaffordable” for middle-class parents.

He says he would still describe current fees as “certainly unaffordable to certain groups of people” but is pleased that fees at St Paul’s have increased at a lower rate than the peer group London average over the past four years.

But now he thinks that the School needs to “flatline” fees as much as possible over the next decade.

“We’re going to have to promote commercial revenues to keep those fees flatlining and raise other money for bursaries and building projects.”

As a bursary student himself, Mark Bailey could not be more in favour of expanding them at St Paul’s and is delighted to have seen more bursaries over the past few years, which includes children of parents with a joint income of £120,000.

Perhaps Mark’s legacy will be having turned a school that was previously focused on excelling in sport and academic studies into one that puts the safety of pupils above all else.

The aim is to increase the current 115 bursaries initially to 153. There is a debate about whether fundraising efforts should focus solely on bursaries now and omit building work (see Letters page 03). Simply put, to prioritise poorer people over grand construction projects. But, according to Mark, there are issues with this for a number of reasons.

A recent confidential survey of donors found a “sizeable minority” would prefer their money goes towards buildings and not bursaries. That is why buildings are part of the ‘Shaping Our Future’ campaign.

From an ex-pupil’s perspective, speaking for myself, one of the things I most remember from the 1990s was in fact the buildings – such as the boathouse. Perhaps this is simply sentimentality and that is what explains our fascination with buildings.

A thought with which I appreciate many readers may disagree.

The High Master makes an even simpler point.

“The school does not have any provision for replacing the boat house or cricket pavilion, both of which will have to happen sooner or later.”

He concedes that a new boathouse could, for example, be built for less than seven million pounds, but at that cost it reflects the sensitivity of building on a river-front and also provides for a new hospitality suite on the second floor, which opens up any number of commercial possibilities that would then bring in regular income. Much needed if fees are to be fixed given continued cost pressures.

How does one respond to historic abuse in a way that is right for everyone within a school community? This is an impossible question, but it is hard to imagine how anyone could have faced up to this challenge more assiduously than Mark.

When the High Master was finally allowed to meet with a sexually abused former student face-to-face, years after the allegations of historic abuse at St Paul’s surfaced, he was so shaken by what he heard that he had to step outside his own office.

I ask if that meant he had shed a tear. “Yes,” he says, looking in my direction but not quite at me, rather through me, as he fell silent.

As Mark eventually regains his voice, it is clear that the past few years of having to deal unexpectedly with the worst scandal in the history of the School (much of which was spent without knowing the identities of the victims) has taken its toll.

“I had to remove myself from the room for ten minutes. I think it was just seeing the impact on the victim, the enormity of it and also coming to terms with the responsibility of dealing with it on behalf of the community.”

He speaks highly of the “typically Pauline” response of the victims he met. They were “brisk, open and analytical” about their “life-changing” events, as they bravely described to him the “distressing, moving, excoriating” effect the abuse had on them and their families. It proved “invaluable” in helping senior staff actually understand how grooming can happen at school and how to best prevent it ever happening again.

Our interview falls on the day the American film producer Harvey Weinstein’s grim face adorns the newspaper front pages. It is the moment the man, whose grotesque actions

QUICKFIRE

Did you watch the Brits? No – what are they?

Did you vote Leave or Remain? Remain.

What can Later Medieval History teach us about exiting the EU? (Laughs) Do it.

Is Boris Johnson good for Yorkshire? Yorkshire is convinced that he is good for it.

Would you prefer a Canada or Australia-style trade deal? Canada.

Greggs or Pret? Ugh, grief. Greggs.

Should mobile phones be banned in schools? No.

Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump? Bernie.

Who should lead the Labour Party? Keir.

Have you met Boris Johnson? No.

What’s the last thing you saw on TikTok? On what?

Will you miss Harry and Meghan? No.

What attracted you to Later Medieval History? The Black Death. Mortality. Read my book!

unwittingly gave many victims of abuse the strength to come forward and sparked the #MeToo movement, is finally charged for his sexual crimes.

One lesson from the Weinstein case was not just that he was bad, but that those around him let it happen.

After reading through Richmond Council’s report on St Paul’s dark past – that heard from 59 ex-pupils – I wonder out loud, in front of the current High Master, whether that same lesson, that others who should have known better but instead fell silent, has been addressed.

The SCR reported that one unnamed High Master destroyed pages of a diary detailing abuse and quoted a view that teachers had a “licence to terrorise” and that things were “Darwinian in that the weak and frail were preyed upon the most”.

I pressed Mark on whether former High Masters and Heads of the Junior School should have been found culpable, in addition to the five former members of staff so far convicted of sexual offences.

“If there was any criminal responsibility, even by the laws of the time, the police would have picked that up.” He suggests there may have been a culture of “incredulity” at the time, adding, “I just don’t know how much information was passing up to senior members of staff.”

Looking back, it seems like teachers were woefully unpoliced.

“My sense is that the school permitted autonomy in highly-able teachers, both as pedagogues – what they taught, how they taught – and how they interacted with pupils. With close interaction, then the boundaries become blurred and that’s where there were dangers, particularly for the charismatic who sought to abuse.”

Now that the school has publicly apologised and taken full responsibility for all past abuse, Mark’s sense is that after all the “publicity, passage of time and openness” will have encouraged people to come forward, although two former staff members are still under investigation. He thinks parents are reassured with the “multiple levels of deterrents” and specialist training for teachers now in place.

As we continue our conversation in the temporary office, through the windows I can see a row of elegant but rare black poplar trees – once a staple of the British landscape – now difficult to find. At one point it looked like private schools could go the same way. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour was intent on scrapping them.

“The debate isn’t over,” Mark insists.

“It’s linked to the societal shift against elitism,” he warns, adding, “it would be better if we could engage in a more informed and empathetic way in what we mean by elitism, because at the moment the debate seems to be dominated by crude stereotyping.”

Regarding this “threat” as an opportunity, Mark thinks independent schools need to make themselves more “relevant” and to engage with wider society through bursaries and state school partnerships.

But if independent schools become a token target for anti-elite sentiment or the cost takes it out of the reach of more parents, he predicts the “future of British independent education is, ironically, abroad,” where it will thrive among increasingly affluent middleincome families, especially in Asia, and thus make British education “exportonly”.

As for what to teach pupils in the future, Mark thinks the School needs to refine its skill sets to ensure the “employability” of its pupils, with more emphasis on “social awareness and more collaborative ways of working”.

“it was just seeing the impact on the victim, the enormity of it and also coming to terms with the responsibility of dealing with it on behalf of the community.”

While St Paul’s thrives with small classes and the “dialectical and disputatious element of discussion” he would like to see improvements in “community engagement and utility” by enabling boys to undertake voluntary activities, such as the current work helping the homeless with their literacy skills and applying for credit. “If we promote good citizenship and boys with a social conscience then I think we are going to be preparing them well for what on earth the mid-21st Century employment market throws at them.”

There is also the issue of “identity” to grasp.

“A small number of pupils have expressed a desire for a different identity and we’ve accommodated that. We have systems and a culture that is sympathetic. Those boys have continued to be integrated into the life of the School. I attended an LGBT meeting last term, there are posters around the school encouraging boys to attend societies which promote discussion of these issues and access to appropriate changing rooms and toilets is made available.”

But soon Mark will have to leave all these issues to his successor.

Next for him, is a return to the University of East Anglia as a Professor of Late Medieval History. There, he is to launch a new course for first year students and improve the University’s pastoral side.

“I’m greatly looking forward to teaching Medieval History and trying to persuade first year undergraduates reared on the 20th Century and 19th Century revolutions that there is something really worth understanding about modernity from the Middle Ages. It is a passion and for as long as I can read and write I will be lecturing and writing on Medieval History.”

He has a book entitled “After the Black Death: Society, Economy and Law in 14th Century England” coming out at the end of the year.

“If that doesn’t cure insomnia, nothing will.” His words, not mine.

Does that leave a gap for anything else, a new hobby or sporting challenge for the former rugby union international winger? “The last nine years have been exhausting. I’ve now been 21 years a head teacher. I’m not immediately looking for new avenues and opportunities. I just need to take stock.”

When the interview is over, the School’s 34th High Master is asked whether he would have taken the job in the first place, if he had known what was coming.

“Absolutely,” he says without blinking. “It’s made me a much better person. I won’t live as long now, that’s for sure, but I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“it would be better if we could engage in a more informed and empathetic way in what we mean by elitism, because at the moment the debate seems to be dominated by crude stereotyping.”

 Autumn’s THE INTERVIEW will be with Sally-Anne Huang, the next High Master of St Paul’s.