The Most Famous School in the World,Part 1 My Life

James, Fara and me, Theo,

have just finished school for the summer, but we're not going back.

So that's it, really - I've finished Westcliff.

Everything's about to change.

Because I found out in February, I had to wait,

and I think that's what makes it special, because, like,

it is like a Christmas present!

We're leaving behind all we know,

and moving miles away from our friends and family.

I'm not going to act like something that I'm not, I'm able to

tell them who I am, where I've come from.

We've won places at a really famous school...

..where pupils wear a uniform of tailcoats and pinstriped trousers.

Perfect.

It feels quite heavy back here, but it's not too bad.

I can't describe it, it just feels so good.

It's a bit stuffy!

The school where the Prime Minister

and Princes William and Harry were educated.

We're off to Eton College, the most famous school in the world,

-for this My Life two-part special.

-SCHOOL BELL RINGS

My name's Fara and I live with my family in London.

Well, my mum wanted me to go to Eton ever since I was born, really.

She just liked the idea of me going to

one of the best schools in the country.

We applied last summer, went and sat the exam,

the interviews... Then eventually, I got through, and I'm here today.

The new foundation scholarship is a scholarship aimed at boys

who have attended a state school

for in excess of seven or eight years.

Normally, it would cost more than £33,000 a year to study at Eton.

That's a lot of money.

We don't pay that, and we don't even pay for our uniforms.

Another Eton boy. There you go.

MUSIC IN STYLE OF GANGNAM STYLE: # Ya, ya, ya, ya!

# Ya, we've got Eton Style! #

# I don't know

# Why we all wear these clothes

# But baby, baby, just come on

# And watch me row

-# We got Eton style...

-We got Eton style...! #

Hopefully I'll be able to send MY child to the school,

and I wouldn't have to put them through the scholarship process,

I could just apply through common entrance, because I would have

made use of the opportunities given to me.

Hello. My name is James.

I'm from Leigh. My parents run this takeaway,

and I live above the shop.

-PHONE RINGS

-Hello, Hong Kong Takeaway?

Yeah, so, one chicken, and one chicken balls, yeah...

OK. Thank you, bye.

The Eton application really came about

when I was, erm, bored in one of my lessons -

you know, I was daydreaming.

And I just thought, I could really get a...

a lot out of Eton, if I did go there.

My parents, you know, my mum comes from China,

my dad comes from a different background.

They wouldn't have at all thought of this.

It was just me, because I knew a bit more about what was happening.

And I found the new foundation scholarship,

which was, in a way, just right.

If I didn't take the scholarship, I would be in a financial crisis.

My name's Theo, and I live with my mum, dad and sister Chloe.

I've been county champion three years in a row.

I train 6-9 times a week.

I just love it!

So, what's swimming got to do with how I got into Eton, Dad?

I was sitting, one of the many times I sit on the poolside,

at stupid o'clock in the morning,

watching Theo go up and down and talking to another parent,

who had a son a year older than Theo, and I hadn't seen him around.

And we got into conversation, and she said, "Yeah, he's at Eton."

And I thought, "Oh, my God, how did he get there?!"

My foundation for a lot of my achievements has been my dad,

because he's been my pusher.

Without him, I wouldn't be going to Eton.

I loved my old school, but I needed more.

I felt... I felt like a big fish in a small pond.

When I go to Eton, I'll be back to the small fish again.

Just...delving into new depths!

Now you know how we got into Eton,

we've got to prep for a totally new subject - Latin -

to catch up to the same level as our classmates.

So, how much Latin have you done?

Erm, Latin-wise, erm, I've only done a bit, I haven't done...too much.

So, don't you want to catch up to Theo and I?

You just want to be a long ranger?

No, I'm not like... You know, I'm not trying to catch up

for anyone, I'm just doing what I think is comfortable for me.

-I have to go now, James.

-OK, see ya.

See you at school. Bye.

Eton's a full-time boarding school.

We'll be living there, so we're packing almost everything we own.

# Oh, look at me

# So ordinary... #

My suitcase is right here,

and also you've got here, which is another, smaller,

which is just with most of my clothes in.

Compared to some other people, I'm definitely a bit lighter.

Yesterday, erm, I went and did my

school shopping.

Peace!

'It's my last night at home.'

I don't like it.

I don't like fish and I don't like Chinese chicken.

What I really like is a pie - hearty pie.

I like pies.

I've been really the only child in this family for a long time,

you see. Having other boys to be with, is, you know,

it's great, because I get to, you know,

put the virtual world in the bin and start a new, real-life world.

I'll definitely miss home.

Yeah, everything's all packed up, tidied up.

Goodbye.

After eight months of waiting, the big day is finally here.

I'm feeling nervous.

I never thought I'd say it,

but I actually do feel nervous today.

It's such a big thing.

I've joined a secondary school, I've joined a primary school,

but when it's something like this scale,

it's kind of scary.

Theo, You've forgotten something really important?

What?

Your wand.

We're all packed up and we're off.

Boys come to Eton from all over the world,

but lucky for me it's only a two hour train ride from Essex.

I thought Eton was only on St Trinians.

LAUGHTER

Mum, what did you say?

I said I didn't think they'd have people like us.

That's absolutely nothing to do with it.

But that's a bad stereotype, isn't it?

Because they are really accepting of us.

-I know that now.

-Yeah, I know. I was only saying.

-But we all had our preconceptions.

-I thought it was above our station.

Yeah, same.

We're really close to Eton.

I think we're about three to four miles away now.

I'm really getting excited now, I'm not far away.

Across the bridge now.

We're here. We're here.

Dad, I'm going to Eton.

You are going to Eton.

Eton's been around since 1440.

Not the time the year!

Lots of famous people and 19 prime ministers

have come here.

Today, around 1,300 boys study at Eton.

It's the biggest boarding school in the country,

with 250 on scholarships or bursaries like us.

Even the headmaster was once a scholarship boy here.

To see him on his way,

I see three underlying things from your son's education at Eton.

We will expect him in the first place

to set himself the highest standards.

Second, we will expect your son to celebrate

the breadth of his school education.

And that brings me to my third theme -

we will expect your son to celebrate his own individuality

and to respect the differentness of others

and to learn to work with them.

Fara, James and I will live in different boarding houses,

each with around 50 boys in total.

These will be our homes for the next five years.

Some things are like a normal house -

we each have our own bedroom, a kitchen -

although we never really cook -

and shared bathrooms.

But in some ways, it's different -

we have a boot room, place to hang our tails and pigeon holes.

It's my first day. I've been here about...

..three hours. This is my room here.

This is the view from my window.

I don't feel nervous any more, now.

It's the first day of the rest of my life, I guess.

It's going to be good.

MUSIC: "Lightning Bolt" by Jake Bugg

SCHOOL BELL RINGS

It's half past seven in the morning,

so I'm just going to go and wake the boys up.

Morning, Hamish.

Each house has a Master and a Dame who are in charge.

Come on, Phillip.

The dame is bit like our mum. She makes sure we get up on time.

Oh my goodness, Theo.

Theo's up, but he's working and his room's a mess.

The school day starts as soon as we wake up.

We can't stay in our PJs,

we have to put on our uniforms before breakfast.

Hiya.

I'm about to get changed now and go to Bekynton,

which is where half the houses go and eat their meals.

Breakfast for me and Fara is at the school canteen.

Meal times are different for me because I eat in my house,

so I don't need to be fully dressed before I walk downstairs

for my favourite meal of the day - breakfast!

I hope the toast isn't burnt.

The school canteen has a lot of choice.

And our dames sit with us at breakfast

to make sure we've eaten properly...

just like our mums.

We start at Eton at 13, so year 9,

but here it's called F block.

All F and E block boys attend lower chapel

six times a week with a break on Thursdays.

Ever since Eton started,

boys have always started the day with chapel.

It's tradition.

-Do you enjoy chapel?

-No, boring.

But you know what?

It might be turning into a better person morally.

Good morning. We begin our Monday service with the hymn 211.

We've only been here a short while,

but there are so many things to get used to.

Some things are the same as my old school,

but often they do things Eton style, like the language.

Beaks, Divs, EWs, Masters,

Chambers, Messing.

I don't know. It's kind of... It's kind of weird.

But once you get used to it it's not really too bad.

Most of the boys here have been to private school, but we haven't.

We've been placed in lower sets for our first term.

At the end of term we have exams at Eton.

They're called Trials,

and depending on how we do, we'll be moved up or down.

Even though we've won scholarships,

we've got to work really hard to prove ourselves. It's scary.

Why is the alliance system going to be making more and more likely?

Look at the big map, the big picture? Fara?

Is that where most of their military bases were?

Theo?

Paris is in quite a central place.

There's quite a lot of tension going on.

Yeah. And it's a British government document.

Let's go, get to your next Div.

It's just the same, really.

The school doesn't feel that much different,

apart from the teaching, the boarding,

the lessons and everything.

Come on, folks. Quickly, quickly, quickly.

Just got into the Eton life with all these rich people.

It's not a bad thing, it's not a good thing.

I think cos everyone's at similar level or higher than me,

the moment I turn off I fall back from the rest.

It's chambers time, so I've just had some potato soup for chambers.

And now I'm going off to my next Div.

During Chambers, the masters have a staff meeting in Upper School -

no playground duty for them!

BELL DINGS

We have up to seven lessons a day, 40 minutes long.

And as Eton is so big, we have ten minutes to get between lessons,

but sometimes even that's not enough.

I could do with a car, but I can't drive.

THEY SPEAK RUSSIAN

-Other way. To your left.

-Oh.

-Your other left.

-Oh, your left.

-Your left.

THEY SPEAK RUSSIAN

Try not to karate chop the person next to you.

SCHOOL BELL RINGS Ah, that'll be lunch.

Lunch is a formal affair for boys, like me, who eat in their houses.

Whilst James and Fara head to the school canteen,

I must assemble for 1.30 and wait for the house master to arrive

before we start eating.

Must remember my table manners.

You wouldn't really expect it but I've had quite continental foods.

In the past week I've had Thai noodles, a beef curry.

We had Mexican.

It's not as everybody would think,

like we have tea every single day and scones and all that.

We just eat normal food like regular people.

Come on, James. Brisk pace.

We have sports every other afternoon,

which is different from our old schools.

WHISTLE SOUNDS

What's really cool is that we get to try loads of different sports,

like water polo.

It's a bit different to swimming lengths,

but I still love it because I'm in the water.

And I scored three goals but the film crew missed them.

Keep up, film crew.

I've had my wash today.

I'm pretty happy at our water polo score,

but doubly happy because I found out earlier

I aced my Latin homework,

which was surprising because I don't really like Latin.

Every time we get a good mark for our EW,

we get a rewarded.

-Hi, James.

-Hi.

-These are show ups.

-Good. Bit of Latin.

-Yep.

-Are you enjoying the Latin?

-Not really.

-MASTER LAUGHS

And now it's messing -

our fourth food break of the day.

I'll never go hungry at Eton.

-Sorry?

-Parade Ground.

Parade Ground.

'If you're wondering why we're sitting on the floor,

'we just do. It's Eton style.'

We're not together for all of our lessons, but most of them.

In total there are 15 academic sets.

For now, we are in the lower sets,

but we'll move up or down depending on our results

at the end of year trials.

No pressure then.

Divinity and the philosophy of religion.

I mean I like it, but...pretty deep.

What we want to do today

is we want to look at the idea of the design argument

and how the design argument works.

Come on, guys, hurry up.

When I said "Be prompt,"

the idea was to try and be prompt, rather than turn up late.

So we've already got the idea that there was the big bang.

How would you then advance through that

towards some sort of conclusion that it was God? Fara?

Also in the big bang, the matter couldn't have created itself.

Theo?

If there's one designer he's got a lot to think about

to make everything that there is.

Why did you arrive late?

Oh, I don't know.

You didn't.

Making friends has been pretty easy.

Everybody is similar and they're not similar in the same way

because they've all from different places,

but we all enjoy the same things.

I think James is more of a friend

and Fara is more of a competitive friend,

because when two hard-working people look at each other

and see the other person's hard-working,

they want to work even harder.

SCHOOL BELL RINGS

It's quiet hour - time to do our homework,

and we've got divinity to hand in tomorrow.

My divinity EW is to do some exercise,

which I don't even know what it is.

I haven't started it yet, I'll probably do it later or never.

Geography - yep, doing good. History - doing good,

Latin - rubbish.

Well, I'm actually doing good but it's still just rubbish.

French and Spanish are really, really hard, but I like it still.

I'm not a thinking person, I'm not philosopher.

I'm more logically logical.

I like straightforward thinking.

After long, jam packed day, we can finally chill out.

I'm not really missing home.

This feels like home.

Well, that's the reason it's called a house,

because it's where we live.

So it's a home away from home and it's quite welcoming.

It's a good job we're kept busy

so we don't think about missing our mums and dad.

I don't have a maid.

Having said that, my mum does do a lot for me.

But making the bed is the one she's adamant that I do.

There we go.

The first couple of weeks of the Michaelmas term

has been a whirlwind - we haven't stopped.

We have 35 lessons a week, sports every other day,

society meetings every night, including debating...

I'm going to start with my side's rebuttal

and then go into some key points made.

..and bags of EW.

I was told the average Etonian walks four miles a day.

You have to be organised.

At Eton every minute does matter.

As soon as you've finished, it's on to the next thing

and to the next thing...

and on to the next thing.

Everybody is their own person,

nobody fits into this certain posh category.

Once you do work, you do your homework,

you always have to reward yourself, because that's how you stay sane.

I am a really fully-fledged Etonian, not really that much of a bother.

The more I am settling in, the more I need to worry about.

And there's one thing we all have to worry about -

there's an unusual event we all have take part in.

Tonight we have to rehearse for the inter-house singing competition

known as the House Shout.

It's a massive Eton tradition and it's a fun icebreaker.

All 25 houses take part.

Each house performs a song in front of the headmaster

the night before half term,

or long leave as we call it here.

CHEERING

Sounds straightforward, but it's the older boys

and not the Masters who pick the song,

which probably explains why we're forced to sing ABBA songs!

Personally, I think we'll come up trumps.

We've got a decent squad. Dmitri over here - class singer.

I'm not too bad myself

ALL: # Oh, yeah

# You can dance... #

Good job's there's still a whole week of practice before the final.

We need it.

ALL: # Time goes by

# So slowly

# Time goes by

# So slowly

# Time goes by

# So slowly... #

# Best of both worlds

# Chillin' out, take it slow

# Then you rock out the show

# You get the best of both worlds... #

I think that might need a bit of work,

but, you know, we get there.

Whilst we're rehearsing for the house shout,

Mr Stewart's working hard marking our EW to hand back tomorrow.

James, If I give yours back first,

one thing I would say

is this is much, much better than your last couple of EWs,

so you got a good mark there out of 20, 16,

that's really encouraging.

Fara, this is excellent.

15. What did James...?

James beat me.

James beat me.

He's beaten me in French and divinity now.

Yes, 18!

'We might be good friends, but we're competitive too.'

Everyone here's expected to get like 5 A stars.

This is definitely...

The standard here is a lot higher.

The majority of my life, for five more years,

is going to spent here.

It's quite weird.

And as I've got five years of this,

I need to improve on my punctuality

as I've been put on tardy book -

punishment for being late to lessons.

But I'm not the only one.

So this is what happens.

Basically if you're late for something, then you have to...

Either late or be bad,

you have to go to school office three times.

I had to get up about 20 minutes earlier than usual,

so I have to be in full dress by half seven.

I'll wake up in a minute.

But, you know, like those first ten minutes after you get out of bed

and you're just, like... You don't want to get up.

But then once you make those ten minutes you're fine.

-How many minutes were you late?

-Eh, one.

-And for what?

-Maths.

Right, young man. I think we're going to have words.

What have you not got on?

Oh, I haven't got my collar on.

You haven't got your collar on, you haven't got your stud on,

you haven't got your tie on.

So you know what that means, go back and try again.

I didn't think he'd do that in front of the camera.

-Morning, Sir.

-Morning.

3491.

-3491.

-Yep.

-Thank you very much. Thank you.

-Thank you.

You have to go to Tardy with the full dress,

so when you forgot things you get sent back and try again.

I'm not actually organised myself my dad organises everything for me.

Right that's better now, isn't it? Thank you.

I'm glad Tardy book's over because it was hard getting up on time.

Today's pretty important and a bit scary,

as Fara, James and I are meeting with the Head Master.

We definitely can't be late for this.

Welcome, come in.

One of the things that I really like about this place,

it's been around a long time, almost 600 years,

is there's been all kinds of boys

who have gone on to do remarkable things in later life.

So go on, let's put you on the spot.

What's been the single best thing so far?

Beating Hampton 5-2.

I don't really know. The breakfast is really nice.

So what's been the worst thing or the toughest thing?

Walking around.

Too much walking, we're keeping you trim.

Let's talk about ambitions.

If we think about you at the end of this year,

your first year at Eton, and imagine you looking back,

what will you hoped to have achieved, do you think?

One of things that I really want to do,

non-academically, is to try everything really.

Because I'm definitely not good at football or rugby

or many other sports.

It doesn't matter if you're not good at it.

One of the lines in my old school song was,

"Sentiment is more than skill."

So if you try things that you're not good at,

it builds your character.

One of things we need to get good at is Latin, we're having

Extra Latin classes cos we weren't taught it at our old schools.

Yeah, he's quite late. He's late.

But he's remembered, which is good.

Lovely to see you. Better late than never. Come on.

I've got to admit, I am struggling with organising my day,

but not my wardrobe.

We can wear what we want to extra Latin

because it's outside of normal divs.

Theo and I have been grouped together as

we are doing quite well,

but James still has some catching up to do.

I was talking with Miss Alitt at the end of last session

and, basically, we both agreed that you are quite capable

of doing really well in this subject if you sit down and learn it.

It's quite interesting, I suppose,

but maybe not the best, like, very fun subject.

It's the night before we break up for half term

and the final of the house shout. This is what happened.

ALL: # Every little thing that you say or do

# I'm hung up

# I'm hung up on you... #

# You can dance

# You can jive

# Having the time of your life... #

# You have the best of both worlds

# Mix it all together

# Oh, yeah

# It's so much better

# Cos you know that it's the best of both worlds

# Ah. #

We don't hang around after we've sung

because the school hall not big enough for 1,300 boys

So we head back to the house and wait for the results.

As predicted, Fara's Dancing Queen beat 24 other songs,

winning this year's House Shout!

CHEERING

We won house shout, it's pretty great!

That's it - end of the first half of Michaelmas.

Nine days off.

So I actually need nine pairs of pants.

-Is that everything?

-Yeah.

I've only got eight.

I'm going to have to wear one pair two nights in a row.

I'm looking forward to not walking as much.

I feel like I'm an Etonian now, not just someone learning how to be.

Ah, it really stinks.

-Have a good time in China.

-Thanks, man.

See you. Good long leave.

Next time, our new life at Eton continues.

SCREAMING

We'll be having fun - Eton style.

I think it might be twins.

But the game is changing and things are get serious.

We've got big exams at the end of term.

Will the pressure get too much?

Nervous. Very nervous.

Or will we become fully fledged Etonians?