School life, between the linesBy Eleven Plus Diary
School stories, admissions adventures, and the things parents talk about on the way home.
School portraits · Marlborough, Wiltshire
Marlborough College’s GCSE astronomers have to draw what they see. I once helped with a Moon homework, and I drew what I did not.
School portraits · Eton, Berkshire
Eton’s research journal shows pupils surveying classmates about how they are taught. I read it out at dinner as an example of initiative, which was a mistake.
School life · British careers rooms
The careers quiz told our daughter she should be a florist. I had other plans, her school login and a whole night.
Parent life · British DofE households
Every Duke of Edinburgh expedition starts on a landing, with a rucksack and a parent taking things out. I was the parent. I was also, it emerged, the excess weight.
School portraits · Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Robin Stevens went back to Cheltenham Ladies’ College to read the scene with the body in the gym. Our daughter has been reading her too, and now she keeps a notebook.
School portraits · Highgate, London
Channing’s junior head invited her Year 6 leavers to tea to hear what they had loved. The girls, weeks from senior school, arrived with a policy proposal.
School portraits · Sandbach, Cheshire
A Cheshire school’s electric racing team named itself Complete and Utter Chaos. Then it started practising pit stops at lunchtime.
School portraits · Highgate, London
Highgate School added a quickfire head-dress contest to its house calendar and called it lower stakes. I brought the idea home for half-term.
School life · British exam halls
An East Sussex academy wants an exams invigilator who can patrol a hall unheard. I have never entered a room unheard in my life.
Parent life · Cambridge, Dorset and the GCSE forum
At one Dorset prom the grand arrivals lasted the length of the school drive. My son’s school is a seven-minute walk away, and I still had a budget.
School life · Britain and beyond
A Devon school has more French pupils wanting to write than English pupils willing to answer. I have something to confess about 1993.
School history · England and Wales
For a century, schools with panoramic photographs have told the legend of the boy who sprinted behind the back row and appeared at both ends. Then I tried it on Boxing Day.
