Bradfield College experiments with mixed-ability teaching - FT.com
03/11/2015 15:58
Total is the world's 2nd largest solar company with SunPower
March 20, 2009 5:07 pm
Bradfield College experiments with mixed-ability teaching By Miranda Green
Share
Author alerts
Print
Clip
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.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a07b9920-140e-11de-9e32-0000779fd2ac.html#axzz3qRd5zheL
Page 1 of 3