Chapter 5: Latymer Upper School: ‘Inspiring Minds’
Generating Genius. We have 1,500 applicants from 77 feeder schools, of which about half are independent junior schools and half are state junior schools. Of those 1,500 applicants, between 300 and 500 are bursary applicants. So we are getting our message out and attracting a lot of very good candidates. I have just appointed a new director of outreach and we aim to bring all aspects of what we are doing closer together, not least because we are going to have a growing number of bursaries available. One thing we have found is that teachers at the state schools are not, as some have suggested, hostile to our approaches. They, too, want to raise aspirations and are ambitious for their pupils, so that is very helpful. The availability of bursaries is, in fact, aligned with the other things that we are trying to do. However, there is a problem in generating high demand for bursaries because you potentially generate disappointment. You end up with more bursary candidates passing your exam than can be funded so you do end up sending sad letters: ”Your son has passed to get in but we haven’t got the funds to support him.“ These letters will only disappear if we become fully needs-blind and, at Latymer, that would probably involve funding 50% of the students and that’s going to need an endowment of £400m. JC: Your marketing material has a strong sense of history in it and I assume that is important to you and the way in which you relate to alumni and the current school community. DG: There is a balance to be struck. Our parents and pupils don’t much like something that is too much to do with heritage and ‘posh’ schools. However, by saying to them that the school was founded as an act of philanthropy for eight poor boys in Hammersmith, you can also say that this was the original social mobility school. That’s a very modern message. By connecting them with the values of that time, we are going ‘back to the future’. Then stuff emerges which people hadn’t noticed. Ironically, the land I grew up on – my tower block was opposite Grenfell Tower – was called Freston Road and it was named after the Latymer estates in Ipswich. This land was part of the bequest that set up the foundation school in 1627. JC: And there is a Latimer [sic] Road Station. DG: The sense of continuity matters. As I said earlier, some stuff changes, some stuff stays the same. And there is a lot to be gained by saying that we are making the school the best and truest version of itself. We are not trying to turn it into something that it never was and we are not trying to turn the clock back. Just the best and truest version of itself. JC: Well, there you have it.
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