I am penning these Notes from the annual IAPS Conference held this year in Brighton. This annual jamboree of prep school Heads is an opportunity to discuss the educational topics through Keynote addresses and seminars, one of the most interesting of which looked at how prep schools can introduce independence and enquiry into the curriculum. Teaching in private schools often results in pupils possessing deep knowledge in subjects such as history or science; I’ve written before about the importance of memorising facts in order to present as academically credible whilst at the same time recognising that pupils of today will need to be creative and versatile in order to make their way in the world of tomorrow. At its core is the age-old debate between knowledge and skills. Creativity and curiosity ought to be integral to any prep school curriculum worth its salt, as indeed it is at St Anthony’s, wrapped up as it is in what we call the Socratic approach to teaching and learning. Time after time, lesson observations at St Anthony’s reveal that pupils are asking just as many questions as the teacher. This type of engagement is really exciting and I witnessed it myself the other week, when teaching Year 6 senior school prep, when the boys ingeniously steered the conversation onto the politics of the Middle East. I was little more than an adjudicator as the arguments flew back and forth.

I would like us to do more at St Anthony’s with peer-on-peer feedback because almost nothing works more effectively than pupils learning from each other. Of course, this has to be managed carefully by the teacher but research does show that children become better students when they are trained to give empathetic feedback and use constructive language. Examples might be, ‘I noticed that…’, or ‘This surprised me because…’ Set in this context, rote learning provides the foundations for analysis and reflection, which are deemed higher-order skills. Tracking of pupils’ progress is also being given greater emphasis with Georgina Lunn, the school’s Data Lead, training staff to identify and intervene with those (bright) pupils not yet reaching their potential. It is this middle-tier that can drift along under radar that will be the focus of our attention. This falls neatly into the school’s ‘Teaching to the Top’ agenda, which is about expecting excellence for all pupils.

There was some gloom around conference colleagues as we all begin to understand the effects of VAT on school fees. Stand-alone prep schools, notably those situated in the countryside, are under enormous pressure. Since January 2025, nearly 95 independent schools from the prep and senior sectors have closed their doors, and even long-standing Catholic schools such as Mount St Mary and Our Lady’s Abingdon have gone to the wall. I think the best way for us to tackle the challenges is to continue to offer a premium service in all aspects of education and to give the boys the moral and intellectual wherewithal to succeed at St Anthony’s and beyond. There can be no room for complacency in any aspect of what we offer boys and parents. That is my ‘take away’ from conference this year.