The wheel has come full circle for Rachael Emsley. A pupil at Dunhurst and Bedales for more than a decade she has now served her alma mater as School Counsellor for nearly two years. Here, she talks of her abiding affection for the school where she met her future husband, Nick, her determination to repay the debt of privilege that she still feels for the education she received there in the working world and the importance of the old maxim of ‘work of each, weal of all’ to her life.
“It was while I was still at primary school (Newtown, near Denmead) that it was obvious that I wasn’t going to be as academic as my brother,” says Rachael Emsley. “The main issue, (though unknown at the time), was that I was dyslexic – later I had to repeat a year at Dunhurst – and so my parents, who were both teachers, sat down with the head teacher at Newtown and tried to work out where would be best for me in future.”
Happily, as time would prove, the choice fell on Dunhurst. “I don’t remember too much about a taster day or an entrance exam, but I do have a clear memory of reading William Tell to Alastair Langlands in his study,” Rachael explains. “There was no difficulty about settling into a new school – Dunhurst felt very similar to my previous school in lots of ways and I was very happy there. We even had a school uniform in those days - kilts and an aertex shirt. I guess I was quite a shy girl but still quite sociable, if that makes sense and I remember with great affection people like Bob Perkins, who was head of Group 4, and summer camping weekends where we sang together around a camp-fire. From the early days, I was more of an observer and listener than anything else. My Yorkshire grandfather noticed that about me – ‘Rachael hears all and says nowt’, he used to say.”
At Bedales itself, Rachael’s confidence and sociability began to replace her former shyness. “The recognition from teachers, that gentle encouragement to come out of my comfort zone was the way forward with me, helped to bring out my best,” she says. “There was a lot to love and a lot to get involved in. Practical things were one area that I enjoyed and I was especially keen on pottery with Ian Prendergast and outdoor work with John Rogers. But perhaps most of all I loved the social side of school. I was desperate to become a boarder, persuading my parents to let me start in block 4. I was always very excited about the whole school dances, Merry Evening, Le Mans and the school plays. In 6.1 I was even given free rein to put on a play myself; Fluff, which was great fun.”
In the classroom, Rachael was particularly influenced by her English teachers: “Although my spelling and handwriting were appalling, I always loved literature (although Chaucer was pretty testing!). I did well enough in history, although that was mainly because I was so scared of disappointing Ruth Whiting. And I worked hard generally, knowing that things were often more of a challenge for me because of the dyslexia. But it was in English, with John Batstone and Graham Banks at the forefront, where all that encouragement made the most difference to me. This was very closely followed by the enthusiasm of Jonny Watson and Colin Prowse in Geography and the regular field trips to Snowdonia and notably, Bradford!”
Bedales also happened to be the place where Rachael (then Rachael Knott) met Nick Emsley, a student from the year above, who became her boyfriend and later on, her husband. “It’s such a cheesy Bedales love story,” she says, half with pride and half with a wince. “I think that most of my friends reckoned that we would last the distance just because we were always together at school. I think our names were on the ‘couples list’ for about four years. When he left at the end of my 6.1 year, I felt pretty much bereft; at least I still had my friends to fall back on.”
That ‘work of each, weal of all’ ethos had been stamped through me, as had the lesson that kindness and respect are two sides of the same coin.
So many years as a Bedalian had left their mark on Rachael when she came to consider the career she might follow after school. “I knew that I wanted to do something to help other people,” she reflects. That ‘work of each, weal of all’ ethos had been stamped through me, as had the lesson that kindness and respect are two sides of the same coin.
Respect was definitely earned at Bedales; your age, background or rank was no guarantee of special treatment. Adolescence is a challenging time for most people and no school, however great, can eradicate that challenge, but I have to say that Bedales makes a far better job of it than most places. I think my journey through Bedales led me to understand that it is OK to be different and not to fit the mould.”
“My grandmother was quite keen that I should become a nurse and I did do a bit of nursing on a part-time basis when I was 17 or 18,” Rachael continues. “In the end, I went to Exeter University to study psychology, which won out over English because it was something that was new to me.”
Seeking the ‘Bedales feel’, Rachael chose to be in a small hall of residence, hoping to find a more personal experience than the one the large, more popular halls seemed to offer. “In large group situations I might come across as shy and reserved but this doesn’t mean that you’re not an integral part of the group,” she reflects. “Being quiet doesn’t necessarily make you an outsider.” At university Rachael realised that she was a problem-solver who was also a good listener and communicator: “With that knowledge, I thought about how to use the education that I’d been so privileged to enjoy as a tool for helping others.”
A Master’s degree in social work at the University of North Wales followed as Rachael entered the profession herself, taking a break when she and Nick started their family. “It was while I was on maternity leave that I joined the Surrey branch of the NSPCC as a children’s services practitioner and later as acting team manager. This was an amazing place to work and I stayed for 11 years,” Rachael explains. “That only finished when the NSPCC re-organised itself and closed the Surrey branch. We were living in Horsham at the time and I didn’t much fancy re-locating to Croydon.”
Rachael’s next project was to set up STARS (Sexual Trauma Assessment, Recovery and Support), a specialist team under the aegis of the Surrey Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS). Working as lead clinician, Rachael and her team provided therapy for children and young people who had been affected by sexual abuse. “This was the dawn of the 21st Century and issues relating to sexual trauma and mental health were still largely being swept under the carpet as something a bit shameful,” Rachael observes. “Young people, in particular, were often made to feel so self-conscious about the business of opening up about their mental health to others. It has only really been since lockdown and the global pandemic that attention has focused on how important and how widespread these issues really are.”
Just a year before the pandemic emerged to imprint itself on an unsuspecting world, Rachael had started work as a School Counsellor at RGS, Guildford. “The role of a School Counsellor is extremely wide-ranging,” she says. “It was also very different from anything that I had done before. For example, I had always used group therapy as an essential part of my work before because it can be a good way of identifying common problems, reducing stigma and building self-confidence. That approach is much harder to establish in a school, where some people do need privacy in order to talk freely. My priority was always to ensure that seeking support from a counsellor in a safe and secure environment should be seen as an everyday thing. It should not be stigmatising or even a particularly big deal. It really helps to get support as soon as possible. Life is never perfect in any generation, but young people learn so much from things that don’t quite go according to plan. They can also become stronger and more resilient.”
There are plenty of potential bear-traps of which the experienced counsellor must always be aware. “Counsellors have their own issues, of course, and we need to take care that we don’t over-identify with those who come to us for help,” Rachael notes. “I think over time as a therapist, I have developed a system that allows me to compartmentalise all the different conversations and issues which keeps them separate from my personal life.”
School counsellors have an informal network through which they tend to share all sorts of useful information. It was through this that Rachael first became aware of an imminent job vacancy that she would not be able to resist. “I had got to know Katy Wilson, who was the School Counsellor at Bedales, and she told me that she would be stepping down in 2021,” she says. “Well, I obviously had to apply for the role and I was lucky enough to get it, once we had agreed that I could continue with one of my outside pursuits. Good therapists have to take care of their own mental well-being and in that spirit I volunteer for the Bhopal charity as part of the Glastonbury Re-cycling crew. Clearing up the site and re-cycling the rubbish after the festival not only fits with the desire to do my bit for the environment but also helps to improve things for others. It’s the working as part of a team that I find so attractive once again. It’s very Bedalian as a concept – ‘work of each, weal of all’, remember?”
It is still a place that allows you to find out who you are and to begin to discover how to think independently and come to morally sound conclusions,
Being back at Bedales has been an enormous source of pleasure to Rachael. "It is still a place that allows you to find out who you are and to begin to discover how to think independently and come to morally sound conclusions,"
she says. “I have days here when I wish we were back in 1987 and I was a Bedales student again! Bedales remains special to me – I’m only sorry that they built the A3 bypass and I can now hear traffic, which I never did before. Otherwise it’s still the place of which I hold so many rosy – but never rose-tinted – memories.”
Rachael was interviewed by James Fairweather in Autumn 2022.