AnnuAL rePOrt 2011 - Winchester College

“
I remember it being a really
pleasant occasion – the first one
of these reunions I have been
to and I’ve developed a bit
of a taste for it.”
A fLeMIng BoY
LooKs BACK
John troY
From 1947 to 1974, around 300 talented
state school boys were eligible to attend
public schools, including Winchester,
via a unique government-sponsored
scheme named after the Scottish judge,
Lord Fleming. An exercise in social
mobility, the scheme – championed by
Winston Churchill – also took steps
to address the post-war ‘brain drain’.
A reunion of Old Wykehamist
Fleming Boys was held at Winchester
in March 2011. Charterhouse beak
John Troy (I, 1972-77), a Fleming Boy,
attended the reunion and reflects
on his time at Winchester.
As an exercise in social engineering, the
fleming Boys scheme aimed to provide a number
of intelligent boys from state schools with an elite
private school education, funded by their local
education authority. on paper it seems like an
ambitious task, both in theory and practice,
but how difficult was it for the fleming Boys
to adapt to an exclusive private school
environment such as Winchester?
during his time in hopper’s in the 1970s,
John troy did not detect too great a difference
between himself and his peers. ‘Both my parents
taught. My father had been to private school,
my mother also taught and she’d been to the
north London Collegiate school before going
on to oxford.’ his brother nick joined him two
years later as a fleming Boy in hopper’s, his sister
went to roedean on a scholarship, while his other
two brothers, Martin and tom, also went to
hopper’s, but as fee-paying pupils. John’s family
background was evidently academic and middleclass.
‘I would say that it’s always going to work most
easily with people whose parents feel they are not
out of place. That’s more or less where we fell.’
20 WINCHESTER COLLEGE
ANNUAL REPORT 2011
21