LD: Hello Mark. Thank you for inviting me to UCS Senior school. I forget how special this school is, the buildings, the facilities, the site is phenomenal. How many acres do you have here?
MB: It’s about six acres of land, and we have nearly 30 acres down the road at our sports playing fields.
Have the renovation works at the fields been completed?
They will be finishing in the next few weeks.
What did they entail?
We’ve installed full drainage to the main playing fields, which involved pulling off all the old grass on the pitches, levelling the area and re-seeding the grass, so we should have nice grassy, draining fields for many years to come. The completion of the new pavilion including a large refectory, lounge and magnificent viewing balconies is nearly finished too, so the whole playing fields facility should be up and running very soon.
To have 30 acres of football and rugby pitches five minutes down the road from school is phenomenal and a great asset for the school.
Yes, and there are astro turfs there too! We seek to offer a super facility for not only our own pupils but also opposition teams and supporters who will often not visit the main school campus at Frognal. It is also a resource to continue to share with partner schools too.
So will you be hosting lots more tournaments?
Yes, and we will be able to host nearly 200 people so we can have proper match teas and other such functions as well.
Here at the main site, I know you are always adding new modern facilities that are incredibly beneficial to the pupils. Can you talk me through exactly what you have to offer potential applicants?
The school was opened in 1907 by King Edward VII and originally comprised three main blocks: the south block for the sciences, the north block for social sciences, creative learning centre and refectory, and centre block for maths, humanities, offices and housing the Great Hall – the physical and spiritual heart of the school where we all regularly meet as a whole-school community.
We also have a brand-new library, which opened last week. It’s more than a library really; it’s also a creative learning centre, so it has the traditional elements of a library but also breakout rooms for seminars and presentations and different areas for different kinds of study and collaboration. There’s also a new classroom where for brain storming activities, creative thinking and group work; it’s trendy, you can write on the walls and the desks and things like that. Along with extending different ways to learn, it offers our pupils some elements of the working world they will one day enter.
How many pupils do you currently have in the school?
From Year 7 – Year 13, we have around 880 with entry points at Yr 7, Yr 9 and Yr 12 (where we are co-ed).
Would you please explain what your exams entail for each entry point?
Both the 11+ and 13+ are similar in the sense that we are testing for maths, English comprehension, English creative writing, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning. The difference between the two is that for the 11+ the boys come in and sit our tailor-made exam, whereas for 13+, we use the ISEB Common Pre Test which usually takes place mid-November and is sat by the boys in their current prep school, on a computer which adapts the questions to their answers. In both cases a large proportion of boys are invited back for an interview day, where they have some group work with teachers; a group discussion with a senior member of staff, and a short interview one on one to find out a bit more about them.
At 16+ we do have some boys who join but most applicants are girls who want to come into our particular style of co-educational Sixth Form. They come in for an aptitude test which is to do with logic and critical thinking rather than any syllabus-specific content, meaning no preparation needed, after which a good proportion are invited in for an interview. The 16+ exam is currently sourced from a company.
When are boys sitting the 13+ invited for an interview?
Early January, and depending on that interview, they will be offered a place, which is generally conditional upon what we call a “good performance” at Common Entrance.
I read a newspaper article recently indicating major changes may occur in the boys’ entrance exam process, similar to the radical changes made to the girls entrance exam.
It’s certainly the case that a number of children end up applying to a number of senior schools and can face a number of different admissions criteria that vary from one school to the next. If there are ways of simplifying the process for the families, whilst allowing the independent schools to have enough autonomy over their own admission process, then there might be a way forward.
As I parent, I believe the system works quite well. However, I also appreciate and understand as a parent it can be quite stressful, due to there being less choice of schools for boys as for girls.
Yes, I think this is alleviated best when the advice of the feeder schools is followed by the parents. Good schools will propose a sensible array of schools that the children could apply to, so that the parents can be vigilant as to the amount of stress they are putting their sons and daughters through by being mindful of the number of schools applied to.
Would you agree, a lot of the time, the additional stress is from us the parents and our expectations of what we want and where we want them to go as opposed to the child’s?
There are three factors at work, you have the feeder school and its ambition for its children, then the parents’ ambitions for their children, and then the children themselves. The most harmonious outcome is when those three factors are all overlapping perfectly. Tension arises when they deviate, and that’s where a proper conversation with the parents and feeder school can help alleviate some of the stress.
Once the children are at the school, you have some amazing facilities to allow them to be incredibly creative and disburse any remaining stresses. Can you tell me about this?
We spend a good deal of time helping new pupils orientate and settle, much of that through the pastoral team organising activities and events [such as taking their form ten pin bowling] and helping to form friendships through form time.
As well as the play areas, gardens and sports facilities on site, which do help children play together and let off steam, we have a state-of-the-art Art, Design and Technology department where the children like to express themselves. Indeed, every year we have a number of students who graduate to art college and, equally, Design Technology is a popular subject, especially where it connects to electronics, computing and robotics.
There is also a huge theatre block. What happens there?
The Lund Theatre is fully equipped for ambitious productions of all kinds and we have a number of productions that go up every year, often directed by the students.
We have a musical every other year, the most recent being West Side Story which was particularly outstanding through the work of our new Dance Department. Each summer we have a company who go to the Edinburgh Fringe and put on one or two productions at the festival there too.
One of my sons has attended and supported UCS boys at this event, he said the atmosphere was brilliant, a wonderful experience.
On this site you also have your own music department, a football pitch and 3 tennis courts, do you have any other brilliant facilities here?
From the roadside, you really only see the three original buildings, not even the swimming pool which is in the bottom corner of the site, so it is very deceptive when you come through the school gates and see what lies behind. We have a war memorial, gardens, allotment, bee hives and UCS honey, and there is even space to expand in the future as well.
The sports centre contains a full size swimming pool, sports hall, dance studio, aerobic and cardio vascular suite, along with free weights and stretching area and physiotherapy room, so there is a lot on offer here.
If you had to describe a sentence that best describes a UCS pupil, what would that be?
A UCS pupil develops into the best possible version of his or herself, through evolving as an individual. The thrust of this school is to help young people be themselves, be comfortable in their own skin and understand who they are, and to use the opportunities we offer inside and outside the classroom to develop both personally and academically, so that as a civilised, diverse and interesting group of adults when they go through the school gates, they will make positive contributions to the global society they go on to join.
Where do UCS students go to when they leave here at 18 years old?
The actual destinations are fairly traditional for academic schools, so it’s the Russell Group, including 20-something offers every year from Oxford & Cambridge; and we are also seeing increasing numbers going to the Ivy League in the US.
What’s nice about the courses our students often choose, however, is that they are a mixture of connected disciplines rather than just pure subjects. So it’s not just physics, it’s physics and philosophy, or liberal arts programmes. This reflects their interests in a broad curriculum and the nature of how subjects relate to one another. This harks back to one purpose of a liberal education providing opportunity and allowing choice, resulting in the students here developing intellectual curiosity and a love of learning.
Yes, I agree, this I believe is given throughout the education here at UCS. Do community service and charity work also plays a huge part of the school life?
Yes, we now have a Friday afternoon programme for the 6th formers where they visit local institutions in the community, be it primary schools, secondary schools, care homes, charity shops, the medical world etc, so all 160 of the year group will be out and about doing that sort of work. Every November we have what is called Community Action, which is where the whole school puts on a number of activities to raise money for the school’s chosen charities, and it’s the Houses (or Demes as we call them) that select what charity they want their Deme to support.
Usually we raise in excess of £30,000 a year for those causes and, in addition to this, we have long running connections working with children in Goa, Romania and Uganda whereby a number of 6th formers will go out and visit these countries to experience life changing situations in their quest to help children who are underprivileged.
My son was incredibly fortunate to be picked and attended the Romania experience. It was a life changing experience, that he wouldn’t have missed for the world.
It really is amazing to see them wear their hearts on their sleeve when they come back and talk about their experiences to the school, and which makes the younger pupils also want to do it.
Thank you for inviting me, Mark.
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