What I've learnt during my first year at Bedales Prep

By Clare Kirkham, Head of Bedales Prep

Fifteen months ago, I arrived at Bedales Prep believing I knew what made a great school.

Twenty two years in education, and the success we achieved at Downsend Junior School, had already convinced me that high standards, ambitious curriculums, strong outcomes and well-prepared children are fundamental to educational excellence. I still believe they are.

But I had long suspected something else counted just as much, even if it isn't always recognised across our sector.

Childhood is not simply preparation for life; it is life.

It isn't a stepping stone to something more important. It isn't a waiting room before exams, university or adulthood.

It matters in its own right.

Once you start looking at education through that lens, you begin to question assumptions that have long been accepted without challenge.

For example, and I never imagined I'd write this, but I increasingly think uniforms are completely pointless.

Actually, worse than pointless. They can be harmful. They turn so many interactions between teachers and students into corrective ones. Walk around most schools and listen to the conversations adults have with children – they’re mostly to do with how students have got their uniform wrong. By lunchtime, how many interactions have been about learning? About curiosity? About relationships?

Here, where there are no uniforms, and students call teachers by their first names, these conversations simply don’t happen. Instead, children stop me in the morning and ask what I did at the weekend. They tell me about a book they're reading, or their football match, or that they've finally convinced their parents to get another dog. (Another thing I’ve learnt - dogs matter here a lot!).

My perspective has also shifted on curriculum. For years I've talked about it in terms of what we put in.

Now I'm much more interested in what we leave out.

Or perhaps more accurately, what space we leave. Because it is so incredibly clear what children gain in their learning when adults stop over-leading them.

When you don't answer the question immediately. When you don't tell them exactly how the finished piece should look. When you don't assume every child needs to arrive at exactly the same destination in exactly the same way.

For example, one of our Block 2 (Year 8) boys decided he wanted to abolish Saturday school here. Now, in most schools, that conversation would probably last about 30 seconds. Instead, we asked him to research it.

So he looked at other schools. He analysed our timetable. He looked at lesson changeovers and staffing. Then he presented a proposal as though he were pitching to a board.

Whether his idea was right almost became irrelevant. Look at what he'd learnt: research, analysis, public speaking, persuasion, problem solving, resilience.

That's curriculum. Not because it appeared on a scheme of work, but because somebody trusted him enough to think. And I've realised that's one of the biggest gifts we can give children.

Agency counts in childhood.

I’m not talking about the token sort where we ask students what colour beanbags they want in the library. Real agency. The sort where they learn that if something is important, they have the ability to build a case, persuade people and make change happen. It’s why we support our older students to fundraise for the RSPCA, for example. Or give students from the age of four the option of creating their own fundraising stalls for the charities of their choice.

Most recently we've seen it with our student-led enhancement grant bids with the Bedales Parents’ Association, where students stood in front of governors, parent representatives, the Head of the Senior School, Will Goldsmith, and myself, to defend their ideas.

Children successfully arguing for a Lego Library because not everyone wants to spend break time outside. Asking for laser cutters and silent disco headphones. Our younger students at Pre-prep asking for electronic magnifiers to study wildlife without disturbing it.

If we're serious about preparing young people for the future, the development of agency has to be a fundamental part of the curriculum, not a bolt-on.

The importance of space.

Of course, I knew about this before. But here, in a school of 120 acres, I have seen what is available to children when we give them the physical freedom to explore, create, connect and simply be themselves.

On any given day, that could mean building dens, walking a dog, reading under a tree, feeding pigs, or sitting quietly with one friend.

We've confused play with sport.

They are not the same thing. Sport teaches skills and teamwork. Play teaches children how to be human.

In traditional education we've become remarkably comfortable with children spending breaktime in fenced rectangles because they're easy to supervise. Then we wonder why behaviour deteriorates. It is about communication; children in fenced spaces don't talk! They avoid balls if they aren't playing with one and if they are they don't speak.

Sport is about skills, shared interest and exercise. Play is about connections, imagination, creativity and social learning. Children were never designed to spend every minute moving from one controlled environment to another. But play isn't something that gets in the way of learning - all the research shows that children’s ability to play is crucial to their ability to learn.

And then there are the staff…

I have always been incredibly fortunate with my colleagues, but this one genuinely caught me off guard! I simply wasn't prepared for how generous people are here. Not performatively generous, but quietly, authentically so. The teacher who leaves on Friday still thinking about a child’s question, an idea they want to explore, or a way they can make learning better.

The colleague who stays late because they want children's artwork on the walls before Monday morning. The Drama teacher who squeezes in yet another production because every child deserves a chance to perform. The Design teacher who starts up a puppetry club, just because one or two children ask.

Our children absorb these small acts of generosity as a matter of course. They grow up believing people will help them, and they are worthy of adults’ time.

Childhood isn’t a GCSE pitstop

One of the great privileges of prep education is that Years 7 and 8 are still allowed to learn without everything being filtered through future grades. The curriculum is about understanding the how, why and what, not whether a child is currently a 7, 8 or 9.

Here children are given space to get things wrong, follow ideas and develop interests rather than having their potential defined by a single measure. Instead of saying, ‘There isn’t time for that because you’re only working at this level,’ we can say, ‘That’s an interesting thought, explore it further.’

The focus is not on capping potential, but on creating the conditions for it to grow.

And finally…

If this year has taught me anything, it's that so much of education – including my own experience beforehand - focuses on the wrong thing. We keep asking, ‘How do we prepare children for the future?’. But perhaps the question we need to ask is, ‘How do we give children the kind of childhood that helps them thrive when that future arrives?’

Because childhood isn't something children have to get through before the real stuff starts.

This is the real stuff.

And we should treat it that way.