The Head Master Of Eton On The Road With...

That is the news. Now it is time for On The Road with that master of

Eton College. Matthew Stadlen sent the day with Tony Little. -- has

spent the day. What is it like to be headmaster of

Eton College? Founded in 1440 by King Henry VI, it is an independent

boarding school for boys. The full fees are around �30,000 a year.

There is an interesting polarity between the Eton I live and work in

and understand, which seems very different sometimes to the word as

it is used in parts of our public life. Robert Walpole, Percy Bysshe

Shelley and Robert Boyle were all educated at Eton. More recently, so

were Prime Minister David Cameron and London mayor Boris Johnson as

well as Princes William and Harry. I spent the day with headmaster

Good morning, Head Master. Matthew, welcome. What does that they have

in store? The usual mixture of things. Fairly busy. We will be on

the move. I have meetings with colleagues and boys. I will be

going out later in the day for some activities. It will be a flavour, a

soupcon of life in a busy boarding school. How long have you been

headmaster here for? Nine years. What is the first thing today?

begin my day every day between 8pm and 8:30am by literally having an

open door so that any boy can have -- can come without an appointment,

no secretaries around. Three,, four, five boys normally come. Some days,

it can be nobody. For boys, what time does the days start? It can be

variable. For most of them, it starts as late as it is possible!

They usually have to be in chapel all Assembly by 8:35am, and they

should have been in breakfast by around 8pm. The day starts not too

early but it runs through pretty late. I have one or two things to

give you. You are the medallist. am. And there is a medal. I

discovered this but yesterday. Here it is. These must be lurking in

some dark place, but it is rather a splendid thing. Do I get to keep

it? You do. It is an image of the Duke of Newcastle. It has a nice

little Latin tag to unravel. For as you know, this prize was founded in

1829. It is the oldest of the Eton prizes. It looks like a recent

casting, but one assumes it is a copy of a medal. That is your place

in a long line. Do you see part of your role as a pastoral one? It is

a very strong element of what we do. Almost entirely the role is that,

my role. I think it is very important. There is the small

matter of managing a large and complex place, one that also is

required to and should have a strong educational vision, in the

broadest sense, but I think the pastoral element is so important.

Without it, the whole business of education loses its heart and

becomes an arid thing. I come across certain institutions which

seemed to be entirely management driven, management speak dominated,

and my heart sinks. What is the best bit about being headmaster of

Eton? The contact that one has with Riddick interesting, intelligent

pupils, by far the and away every teacher would say that. We are

fortunate because we have a very good students. They are pretty

engaging most of the time. Infuriating, frustrating, all the

rest of it, they are teenagers, but it is exhilarating. Where are we

now? This is School Yard, the original heart of the school, and

it still is. It comprises the chapel on this side, which has been

in use since it was completed around 1480. The original school is

that side. Still known as College. The whole of this yard predates

1500, so it is a late medieval academic institution and has been

kept as such. It is quite possible, if you are a tourist, to assume

this is all the school, some kind of historic theme park. The vast

bulk of school life happens the other side of the main road.

comes to chapel? Every boy will go to some kind of service. At any one

time we will have three Chapel services or assemblies, because we

are a big school. College Chapel typically would be used by older

boys, who will be here three or four times a week. During the week,

we have short services, 12-13 minutes, that kind of length. But

it is important and I do insist that the boys come. They can still

a believer in compulsory chapel. Not in any way do I assume that any

boy should be led on the path to religious salvation, that is a

personal matter, but this space resonates over 570 years. It is the

place where every attorney has spent some time, and there is a

powerful sense of being part of a community when you're here. It is

extraordinary, the number of men I meet in the 20s, 30s and 40s to,

when they return after an absence of time, to feel this is a special

place. Do you feel a sense of pride, being Head Master of Eton? I do

take pride in a great deal of what our boys do and achieve and the

people they are. The pride comes in. It is fun, being part of a historic

institution, but this is a living place. The pride comes up of seeing

what is being achieved every day. - - comes out of seeing.

headmaster has a meeting with Gerard Evans, director of

curriculum. I wanted to pick up the on line Academy. I spoke to Percy

yesterday. Heat updated me on it all. I think the issue is the

extent to which we wish to advertise this or, indeed, prompt

engagement in the pubs. Is it on the agenda for Wednesday? It is not.

Should it be? We could deal with it under any other business.

Alternatively, we could make it a major item for the second meeting,

as you wish. Perhaps she would have a word with Percy about that, but I

am pleasantly surprised. He has had a dozen expressed interest in

writing courses already. If we are going to get involved, we must do

it quickly. This is part of the school? It is the original

schoolroom. It is known now as low a school. It is the place where,

since the early 4040s, all the boys were taught. All of them would have

been taught in the one place. -- 1440s. The headmaster would have

lived and worked immediately next door. This, in effect, was the

whole school in the early to mid- 15th century. It is very much

retained the atmosphere of its time, although a lot of its would work is

a lot later, 17th century, I would imagine. It is an important place

for us because it connects us over the best part of six centuries to

continuous teaching and learning. How do you balance academic

learning with other elements of pupils' education? We are an

academic institution and we expect boys to engage and to do well, but

we also believe in a wholeness of the curriculum. We don't think of

the academic life of the school as somehow segregated or cut apart

from everything else. It doesn't matter how clever or academically

minded a boy is, you would also expect him to be engaged in other

activities which he enjoys but will also develop him, or whether it is

music or art or dance or support of various kinds. There is a huge

range of opportunity in a boarding school like this. Pretty much every

boy will find something that aconites him. That is the key thing

in education. Often, you just need to find the one thing which will

inspire a young person, and from that flows success in other areas

of their life. In essence, we are trying to be a great smorgasbord of

opportunity from which boys of different talents, opportunities

and talents will find something to nurture and inspire them. What have

we got here? This is decade's worth of graffiti. Boys chiselling their

name into would work, which you will see throughout the building. I

would like to believe that modern boys can find better ways to

express their identity, their individuality than to carve their

names, but we still have a tradition that boys, if there is

space when they leave the school, may apply to have their names are

It is time for the headmaster to Chambers is the daily meeting where

all the masters gathered together with the headmaster so we can

exchange information. It is a traditional meeting and there may

be those who say, in the age of e- mail, it used not as relevant. It

is hugely important. We gather together face-to-face and do a lot

of business. If you have a particular concern about a

particular boy, you can pull together three or four people who

teach him and get a better appreciation of the situation. It

works. What sort of boy which you like to leave Eton? I would like

and to be someone who has the confidence and ability to stand up

for himself, but also to stand up for the purpose higher than himself,

someone who is active and gets things done. I think, when it works,

we do have a large number of young men who fit that bill and that

description. It is a combination of a variety of things, but there is a

belief in excellence. It is interesting, talking to boys when

they leave, that word comes up time and again, the expectation of

excellence from each other, not just academically but in a range of

things, but also a celebration of the virtue of the Independent

minded, standing up for yourself, arguing your own case. When those

things come together, that sense of the possible, which I think living

and working in the community which has been around for 600 years,

producing quite interesting -- interesting people, implicitly it

is acts -- it is as if people are being asked the question, if these

people have done remarkable things, why not you? That is powerful.

you feel there are stereotypes of Etonians? One certainly reads about

stereotypes of Etonians. Eton is a short and in parts of the press,

particularly the tabloid press. One gets used to that. There was a good

article recently by a journalist to distinguished between what he saw

as Eton College, which he described as a surprisingly meritocratic

school at which you would like to have your child educated and, on

the other hand, "Eton", a byword for a whole set of issues and

social concerns which people like to express. There is an interesting

polarity between the Eton I live and work in and understand, which

seems very different sometimes to the word as it is used in parts of

Before lunch, discipline is one of the things on the agenda. What have

you been doing? I have been taking what is known as the bill. This is

the time of day, usually before lunch, when I call to see any boy

whose house master has brought his name to my attention, because he

has done something wrong. Broken a school rule in some shape or form.

The business is administered by Bob Hutton here. He's the school office

manager. He is pretty much the one person that hold it is together.

that right, Bob? Well, it is nice to hear. My role spans lots of

different areas. From the discipline to the general day-to-

day running of the school. My day usually starts at about 7.45am when

we see the first lot of boys who have committed less minor crimes.

Perhaps been late to a class. And they have a thing called the tardy

book that they have to sign for three days continuously. It gets

them up out of bed early. Hopefully getting them in the right frame of

mind for the day. And properly dressed, so that they look the part.

This is Henry VI, our founder. I can't imagine it looks anything

like him. But the tradition is that we pass on the right side. The

reason is not entirely clear to me, but there we are.

Well, hot footing it from talking about the discipline, I come to one

of the more pleasurable parts of the day. That is having lunch with

some boys. Jenny and I have all the boys in the top year, about 268 18-

year-olds, to lunch at some point in the year. It is always a good

time to catch up. Welcome, one and all. If you

haven't been here before, this is the Audit Room. It is a splendid

mid-Victorian room. The great thing about the images on the wall. All

of them were drawn in 1861. These guys are exactly your age. That is

what you would have looked like in 1861. Would you say that the school

is a formal school? If you see someone dressed the way that I am

at this moment, it is very hard to give an answer other than that we

are formal. It is a mixture of formality and informality. Everyone

in the community gets used to that. It is not just a place of work, it

is where we live. Does the uniform matter to you? In itself, no. I

have not been terribly fussed what people wear. However, within a

community like this, with its traditions and its formalities. The

fact that boys wear a particular school dress and that the teachers

wear something similar is important. To me, it is the ultimate mark of

respect. It is very important to me that the teaching staff, the

masters, do dress in a particular way out of respect for the students.

So it does matter? It matters, but it is not the clothing in itself

which is the issue. It represents what it is saying about

relationships. Here are Leo and Max. I've asked to

see them, because these boys were responsible for putting on a major

charity event a week or so ago. I had three different things I had to

be on the same day and couldn't get there. So I want to hear how it

went. What money you raised. And what you have learned? It went well,

I hear. It did go well, both in terms of money raised, due to the

generosity of parents. We probably raised between �20,000-�21,000.

That is quite something? It was always an aim that Max and I had as

a figure that we wanted to achieve. But we were unsure for the weeks

and the months leading up to the event if we were to hit that figure.

We think, because of the success of some of the auction lots. There is

an auction before the main event, itself. We think that we have

reached that figure. And a good turn out? A very good turnout. With

the exams, it is hard to make the boys come. With the parents, we had

80 guests to come to supper. We were allowed to have a auction that

went very well. We filled the school hall, which was I think

about 550 boys. What for you is the key to a good

school education? Above and beyond anything else? Two things, love and

joy. It doesn't matter what systems, structures, ways of doing things.

If you don't have the love of the people within your community, in

the broadest sense. The desire to see them develop and grow as

interesting, dependant, healthy people. If you don't have that

sheer fun of learning, the fun of achievement, the fun of learning,

then the whole thing, to me, seems soulless. Would you rather that

there were girls as well as boys at Eton? No. I think you could make a

very good co-educational school out of Eton. I have previously been the

head of a co-educational school, which was a very good school. But

Eton works as it is. I think there is a place for boys' schools. I

surprised myself coming from a co- ed school to a single-sex school.

That there is perhaps more merit in a boys' education than perhaps

previously I would have imagined. What, in your experience, are the

big changes between the Eton of when you were a boy at Eton and

now? I think that there have been two distinct differences. One is

that all of the boys now have high academic ambitions and expectations.

When I was a boy here, not so very long ago, considerably less than

half of the year went to any kind of tertiary education. So the

majority of boys went to do other things. A lot to the army.

Businesses of one kind or another and so on. But now every boy

expects to go to a highly- competitive university. So the

academic impetus is strong. The second thing, that is a great

generalisation and reflects how society has changed. I would say,

on the whole, the boys are rather nicer to each other than they were.

What is the full cost of sending a boy to Eton? In financial terms, it

costs around 30,000 a year to have a boy educated here, to live

residentially. Do you think that private education is fair on those

whose parents can't afford to send their children to private schools?

It is an important question. I have to say that the word fair is

difficult in this context. It is pretty loaded. If the question is,

would it be better if everyone had the opportunity to access an

education like Eton's? Well, the answer is yes. That would be a

thoroughly good thing. But would the world be a better or fairer

place if the quality and style of education that a place like Eton

had to offer wasn't available to anyone, I would not agree. The

nation would be poorer as a consequence. We have to take a

balance. What we can seek to do in our school is to try to make,

through the monies we raise, an education available to the parents

of any boy of character and ability, irrespective of his means. That is

a grand ambition. But in our own small way, we can make an effort to

bridge what is a divide. The vast majority of boys at Eton. Their

parents will be paying the full fees. Is that right? That's correct,

yes. According to the headmaster, some 15% of the boys receive

significant means-tested financial help that enables them to attend

Etonians are training on Dorney Lake. It is owned by the school and

will be used by the 2012 Olympics. How can Eton afford to have such a

big lake? Eton College owned the land around here. Quite a large

chunk of land, it was farmland, for many years. It took some 40 years

for the school to make a decision that it was worth building a lake.

There was concern that traditional rowing on the River Thames would

prove impossible in the future, because of the growth in river

traffic. This was a safe environment for boys to be able to

row. But the idea grew and the decision was taken about 10 or 15

years ago. It took ten years to develop this site. How big a part

does sport play at Eton? 1,300 teenage boys? Are you kidding? It

is pretty major. It is a central part of school life for many boys.

But the important thing is that there is a great range of sport to

choose from. It is not the environment where, if you are the

great fly-half, you are the king of the school. There are many who are

not interested in rugby at all. But it is important to me that we have

a school that it is still OK. It is cool not to be a sporty type, but

to be exceptional in some other area. We are standing on the

finishing line of the 2,000 metres that marks the end of the course.

So this is where, in 2012, Olympics medals will be won and lost.

Five, six, seven, eight! Not bad! The headmaster is sitting in on a

rehearsal in one of the school's studio theatres. Yes, beautiful!

Feet down. Fantastic! How would you sum up Eton? It is

distinctive, idiosyncratic. A fascinating place in which to live

and work. But at heart, it is just a very good school. What is your

vision for Eton? I hope Eton will be and continue to be a place that

is unabashed in its belief in the pursuit of excellence. That values

young people growing into self- confident people who are

independent-minded and are going to do something with their lives. Have

a real sense of purpose about it. Not to be buffeted by any current

fad or fashion. Are traditions important to Eton? They are. Eton

is an historic place, therefore its nature is likely to have traditions.

But they are only valuable if they mean something, if they are helpful.

Many traditions are. You dig away, you understand why things are the

way that they are. Traditions that don't have a particular value tend

to die. There is a lot of evidence of that in this place. Do you think

some might think some of the traditions at Eton are strange?

sure they do. I will give you one example of something quirky. When

the masters meet in the morning at chambers, there is an old-fashioned

call waiting system. You are wearing your gown. If you wish to

speak to somebody who is in conversation with somebody else,

the tradition is you don't interrupt. You go up to the person

and take the hem of the sleeve of his gown. It looks odd, it looks

quaint. There you have grown people, standing in a row holding each

other's sleeve. But it is highly effective. You feel a tug. So you

finish your conversation and move on to the next one. It is odd, it

works. That is why it survives. What have you learned from being a

headmaster, not just at Eton, but at other schools? I think, most of

all, that over two decades I have seen a huge amount of complexity in

education. Different ideas, schemes, ways of doing things. Yet the more

I have become involved in schools, the more I appreciate that

education is basically a simple thing. It is down to human

relationships. It is the way that people treat each other. The way

people respond. How they view their lives in years to come. It is a