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 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 portraits · Croydon, London
A Croydon school club gave up on sewing machines and found its way to wool. I bought a sewing machine in 2019, and I know exactly how that goes.
School portraits · Winchester, Hampshire
Winchester College’s new guide to its private language runs to fifteen pages. I went looking for the entry on parents and found out what the bollards are called first.
School portraits · Belfast, Northern Ireland
A Belfast school greets its new Year 8s with pipes and drums. Our youngest had asked me for a quiet drop-off, and I had just been reading about Belfast.
School portraits · Bolton and Scotland
Bolton School pupils built a sailing ketch out of steel, concrete and chicken wire. Its later crews had their own plans for the voyage.
School portraits · St Donat’s, south Wales
At a sixth-form college in south Wales, the students run a restaurant with a full kitchen brigade. I tried the model at home on a Sunday.
School portraits · Norwich, Norfolk
Budge is not a pupil at Norwich School. Nobody seems to have told the Christmas card competition, the music department or the Royal Geographical Society.
