How exciting to get to know you – just a little – with so much more to learn about your deep culture, your long history, your bright and exciting future. And to be a small part of that future as we move towards the opening of Shrewsbury International School India in August 2025. A co-educational, full boarding school in Madhya Pradesh, in Bhopal, the city of lakes, right in the heart of India.
My first visit to India in February 2025 coincided with the birthday of Charles Darwin and the 473rd anniversary of the founding of Shrewsbury School by Royal Charter in 1552. Shrewsbury International India has embraced the long heritage of Shrewsbury School. Our partners, the Jagran Social Welfare Society, have great expertise in opening schools and universities in India. Our shared educational values and close alignment provide a wonderful foundation for the adventure ahead.
During my visit, I enjoyed the legendary warmth of hospitality – as well as the numerous culinary delights on offer. Most importantly, it was abundantly clear that India is a nation that loves and values education. Shrewsbury International School India will bring Salopian whole person education, our unique Floreat model, and day-to-day ‘serious fun’ to India.
With a population of almost 1.5 billion, an entrepreneurial spirit, combined with a profound and vibrant culture, India is a nation on the move. We are excited to be part of this journey of growth.
Set in a beautiful 150 acre site, world class facilities will provide inspiration for pupils and staff. Over 500,000 trees have been planted. The ambition and commitment to excellence of our partners is astonishing. This will be a wonderful environment in which to live and learn.
As the days tick by towards the formal opening in August 2025, we wish all our friends in India well as the journey begins.
A unique highlight of the Salopian cultural calendar is the McEachran Prize. This unashamedly scholarly yet playful competition is named after iconic Shrewsbury teacher Frank McEachran – or ‘Kek’ as he was known to all.
Kek taught at Shrewsbury from 1935 to 1976. Deeply eccentric – in all the right ways – Kek invented the idea of teaching from what he called ‘Spells’. Pupils were invited to choose short extracts of poetry or prose and commit them to memory. Standing on a chair, the youngster would recite the Spell, and then spirited and scholarly discussion would follow.
This year’s 20 Spells covered authors as diverse as WB Yeats, Jane Austen, Bob Dylan, Karl Marx, Ocean Vuong, Charlotte Bronte, Echiro Oda, Seneca, George Eliot, Oscar Wilde – and the screenplay of the Barbie movie. Contestants from all five year groups read their Spell – then spoke for four minutes on whatever thoughts and ideas the Spell provoked for them.
The rapt audience was bewitched by the heady mix of intellective mischief and learned commentary. In a sound-bite world, where attention spans have shrunk to a matter of seconds, the exercise of close listening for 20 chunks of four minutes is a solid effort. The reward for the audience was a host of mini-epiphanies and intellectual satori.
Those students of Kek who committed Spells to memory decades ago can very often remember and recite them to this day. What truer testimony could there be to the efficacy of this one-off methodology? The inspiration, allegedly, for Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, Kek taught notable Old Salopians such as Sir Michael Palin, Richard Ingrams and Paul Foot (the creators of Private Eye).
Not one to follow a syllabus, Kek was a maverick whose like is probably no longer at large on the contemporary educational landscape. The teaching profession is certainly more… well, professional now. But, anything that triggers the sparkle of unfettered academic play is surely a great thing?
As the 2024 edition of the McEachran Prize unfolded at Shrewsbury School, it was easy to imagine the spirit of Kek smiling down – twinkly-eyed and approving – on this evening of free-range ‘serious fun’ of a distinctively Salopian kind.
Thank you for shortlisting us in three categories in this year’s national awards for state and independent schools. You’ve made the Shrewsbury School community very happy. It’s fantastic news for our pupils, teaching and support staff, parents, former pupils, governors; and for our state and international partners and friends of Shrewsbury near and far. It’s lovely to be recognised in these national awards for state and independent schools; to be listed alongside great schools from across the national education system of which we are part.
These awards celebrate excellence. And, whilst shortlists must, by definition, be short – there’s so much excellence in UK education. It’s great that these awards now cover state and independent schools together. Excellence happens everywhere across the nation’s schools. It should be celebrated together.
As those colleagues working in state maintained schools are rightly calling for proper investment in the nation’s teachers and schools, awards shortlists and ceremonies may seem like a frothy and indulgent sideshow. However, the TES has been covering education for over 112 years. It can take the long view. It’s important to be reminded that so much excellence exists in state and independent schools. Attacking the excellence in independent schools – as some these days seem so intent on doing – is negative and short-sighted. Instead, we should be finding more ways of leveraging and sharing excellence.
That’s another story… For now, let’s celebrate all the great schools and people – on short-lists, long lists and everywhere across the schools system, who do brilliant things every day in education.
As a full boarding school working on a 24/7 model, with a lively weekend programme and over 600 boarders in school each Saturday night and Sunday, we’re delighted to be shortlisted alongside some other wonderful schools for Boarding School of the Year.
The Creative and Performing Arts are at the heart of our whole person education – Floreat. Not all teenagers want to be on stage, but there are many ways to be creative. Each human being has an expressive side which can be developed through all manner of academic and co-curricular activity. Creativity is one of the power skills that sets humans apart for the machines – for now! And it brings joy and insight to others.
We’re looking forward to 23 June when the winners are announced. Whatever the outcome, being recognised on three shortlists is additional motivation to keep pursuing excellence – for each of our pupils – and for all our partners across the UK and around the world.
So, thank you, TESSA2023 for including Shrewsbury School in your shortlists.
My father once told me the story of the baby camel who kept asking its mother questions.
“Mummy, why do we have these wide, spongey feet?” – Well, dear, it’s so that we can walk over sand dunes without sinking. “And what about these extra-long eye-lashes?” – Those are to protect your eyes during sand storms. “Ah. And why do we have these huge fat lumps on our backs?” – Those are humps, dear. They store energy for extended journeys across the desert.
“Oh. Right….”
“Mummy – what are we doing here in Chester Zoo?”
Zoos are places of containment. Schools are, ultimately, all about escape.
During their time with us, whether it has been a 2, 4 or 5 year stay, I hope that we have enhanced your children’s natural talents and added new passions and experiences. And that they are prepared for life; equipped with the skills and aptitudes – the spongey feet and absorbent humps – with which to cross through life’s undulations. I hope that they will travel the sands of time with inner confidence and a steady set of values. I hope that they seek out oases. And create them for others.
In recent times, we have all felt the confinement of life during a pandemic. The defensive bars of separation have caused isolation. Motivated by a desire to protect, control measures have brought limitations and caused inevitable frustrations. The national policy on isolating children who are close contacts has become monstrously disproportionate. This must surely change.
No community is immune to the insidious impacts of the pandemic. Parents and educators alike worry about the impact of these times on the health and well-being of the young. However, despite – and in some cases because of it all, we applaud the adaptability, the resilience, the sheer luminous brilliance of the young in our school – this year group in particular. This is cause for celebration, hope and expectation.
A full boarding school community is a magnificently intricate, complex and dynamic ecosystem of which to be a part – whether as a pupil or a member of staff. Each individual is important. Each person’s character and behaviour alters and affects the equipoise and flourishing of the whole.
Shrewsbury strives to be an accepting community that embraces individuals on the basis of who they are. All communities need to do more on issues of equality, diversity and inclusion. We have work ahead on this, but I do like to believe that the natural state of Salopia is one of symbiotic co-operation and the celebration of difference.
Although we have been sometimes apart, sometimes at a distance, shared adversity has brought schools, parents and pupils closer together. Recent times have seen artificial constraints and barriers introduced into the system. The very notion of a remote boarding community is oxymoronic: a contradiction in terms. And yet we made it happen together.
When we resumed on-site learning, we embraced creatively and inventively the systems of control that put distances between year groups, houses, pupils and staff. The Salopian spirit filled the gaps. We found a way to connect and make things happen as fully as possible.
The experience of living with COVID has triggered and accelerated positive adaptations and evolutionary step changes. Much more inventive use of technology in teaching and learning, for example. We have also embraced the brave new world of virtual parent consultations. The challenge of balancing cups of tea and maintaining a polite smile whilst trying to keep a place in a queue have been replaced by privacy and the focusing effect of a countdown timer. Virtualisation has been an enlivening challenge for us all.
Despite the significant gains made, concerns over excessive screen-time, and the darker influences of the digital multiverse, have underlined all the more sharply, the deep value and purpose of whole person communal education.
Education is not a transaction; whole person education cannot be done through a screen. The education that you parents chose – this distinctive Shrewsbury education – relies on a community of individuals who share a common spirit. Our kind of education is about co-travelling; shared experience; wide opportunities; inspiration and challenge. It is about serious fun.
A school is a learning community. What have our leavers learned, I wonder? And what have we learned from them?
I hope that we learn, every day, to delight in the uniqueness of each human being. Whilst we live in times of control and civic responsibility, the human spirit leaps up and refuses to be reduced. I hope that our leavers embody the virtues of practical wisdom; courage and kindness. These things are not learned; they are absorbed gradually over time spent on the Salopian Way.
What do I hope for, when I look out at our Upper Sixth? In times when people are quick to outrage, I hope for tolerance and understanding. In times when Government appears to set education policy in an echo chamber, I hope for respectful dialogue across all the professions.
In times that have never been more complicated for our children to grow up, I hope for kindness and places of safety. In times when change is needed, I hope for the righteous indignation and moral purpose of the next generation. In times of isolation and growing nationalism, I hope for a global mindset. Across society, we see evidence of a crisis of identity. We need people who can connect and join; rather that divide and separate. We need people who try to find solutions to local, national and international problems. People with giant ventures in mind.
In times when the waves of a pandemic sweep across the world; I hope that the waves of fellowship follow.
The former Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, suggested that times of crisis identify the hoarders and the sharers. We need to be amongst the sharers. And as we come out of the pandemic and learn to live responsibly with COVID, we have a chance to treasure, enhance and deepen the way we use our returning freedoms.
Our leavers are on the cusp of new adventures. Of course, we will them brilliant futures. When the animals escape from the zoo we want them to be dispersing widely, into new habitats that challenge and inspire them.
So, where are they headed? The Upper Sixth have firm offers to go to 51 different universities worldwide. Three quarters of those offers are at Russell Group universities. All being well, 38 Salopians – that’s a fifth of the year group – will head to one of the World Tops 20 universities in the Autumn. Just over a quarter will be taking a Gap Year, a significant and understandable increase. International destinations are, expectedly, a little down this year but pupils hold offers from University of California (San Diego), Georgia Institute of Technology, Tilburg University in the Netherlands, City University of HK and Florence, Italy.
Salopians will go on to study courses- in order of frequency – in Business; medicine and medical-related courses; Politics and International Relations; History, Geography, Sport, English, Economics, Philosophy (all 7). Four will be studying Architecture; and others hope to study Fashion Journalism and Content Creation; Infection and Immunity; Psychology; Renewable Energy Engineering and Climate Science. Our leavers have offers at the Royal College of Music; scholarships to the Guildhall School of Music; places at the Guildford School of Acting. Four students off to do an Art Foundation Course. One is off to do an Army Gap Year; one to professional sport. What a diversity of destinations!
Incidentally, we were delighted to hear on Thursday that our careers advice and guidance programme – which we call Futures – led superbly Mr Wain and Mr Percival – has been shortlisted for a national Independent school award for best Student Careers. This follows on from being named Independent School of the Year for 2020 and Best Community Outreach programme 2020.
We’re proud of this collective recognition and thank all pupils, teaching and support staff, parents and governors for combining to create an award-winning community.
Today, is the point of departure – a kind of escape. As they depart the friendly confines of Shrewsbury, we celebrate our leavers’ resilience, and brilliance, in times of transilience. (I confess I had to look up the third word in that rhyming trio – transilience means ‘abrupt change or variation‘, apparently. We’ve certainly had plenty of that of late.
For our Upper Sixth leavers – the camels of 2021 with their magnificent spongey feet, their luxurious eye-lashes and their well-stocked humps – this is the day when the gates of the zoo are flung wide open.
As schools in England re-opened for the final weeks of the Easter term, we returned to three-dimensional learning. After seven weeks of screen time – delivered and shared with as much creativity and energy as we could collectively command – it was a joyful relief to be back in person.
Three-dimensional learning is, without doubt, the best way to go. This is particularly the case in boarding schools.
Certainly, we have shown that a boarding school in remote is possible. Indeed, necessity has been the mother of some extraordinary invention. We have shown that whole person education can be re-invented for the screen and much can be achieved through flipped learning; break-out rooms; online challenges; virtual collaboration. Those still not able to be with us here in Shrewsbury have continued to access Online Supported Learning; to take part in house life; to engage in a virtual co-curriculum. It is vital that we find the best ways to stay together when we are apart.
However, what has been evidenced strongly in our most recent return to in-person learning is that the deepest kinds of learning happen best when we a real community. That is not to say that great learning cannot happen virtually: it can. But, personal development is a multi-aspect process. Some things can be done by remote control; some things are best down hands-on – albeit at a social distance.
What we know, though, is that a Shrewsbury Education has one-off elements that achieve full colour and depth when it happens in three dimensions. Our culture, our educational philosophy, our unique brand of ‘whole person education’ – these are rooted in a sense of belonging to a distinctive community in a real place.
Some of the craft of teaching and learning can be transferred to the screen: we have seen this. Teachers and learners have undergone a paradigm shift of capability over the past year. We have seen significant gains in two-dimensional mode. But a virtual boarding school is, fundamentally, a contradiction in terms.
We knew it before, and we know it even more deeply now: a boarding school community is three-dimensional. As we pass the one-year milestone of lockdowns in England, it is clearer than ever that learning in person gives the broadest range of opportunity. In person, we are constantly connecting, sharing, challenging, transforming, enjoying, celebrating within a real community of real individuals.
It has been profoundly affirming to have you – the three-dimensional learner – back in person. Back, we hope, for good.
Leo Winkley: Letters From Shrewsbury 