Inside Scoop 2019

INSIDE SCOOP
Etonians on their way to class, Windsor
PHOTOGRAPHY: © SHUTTERSTOCK
circumstance. The vast majority of children won’t be
affected either way.”
The interaction between the state and independent
sector has changed dramatically too, according to
Little: “For example, when I started [as a head] in
1989, one of the first letters I received was from the
headmaster of the comprehensive school down the
road. His opening line was words to the effect: ‘I’d
like to let you know that you will not be welcome on
our school site at any time.’ That’s what it was like.
Them and us.”
“If I fast forward 26 years, towards the end of my
time at Eton, we had a huge number of positive,
friendly contacts with state schools. We helped set
up two free schools. So schools like Eton are doing
a great deal in terms of collaborative relationships.
To me [this] is the future as all the evidence shows
that schooling systems are at their best when they
are collaborative.”
Indeed, collaboration is one of three invaluable
lessons that Little says he has taken away from his
decades as a headmaster. “The best heads I’ve known
have clearly been identified as the leader but they’ve
also talked, listened, sought the common view.”
Another is to stay level-headed as a head at all
times because “in the maelstrom and intensity of
relationships in a school community things can
appear to be one thing, but with a little delving it’s
not that way at all”.
And the last is to trust people. “Almost always
when I look back and things have gone wrong it’s
been down to a lack of trust, manifest in different
ways,” he explains. “You can only run a boarding
school with 1,300 teenage males in the year 2019
if the teenagers want to be there and trust you. If
they don’t, it’s not going to happen. Same in any
school. You have to have trust. And be prepared to
be let down. One of the functions of dealing with
adolescents is being let down.
Once you understand that, you
understand adolescence better.”
Adolescence: How to Survive It,
£16.99 (Hardback) is available
from 27th June at bloomsbury.com
2019 ★ schoolnotices.co.uk 93