SCHOOL NOTES

From the Headmaster
By Roger Sinnett

I write this with one sad eye and one smiling eye. Sad because although the past two years have brought me into contact with so many truly good people and provided such a broad canvas upon which to paint a remarkable future for St Bees – it is clear that my new role as Director of Education for Full Circle will take me away.

Smiling, because I will still retain an oversight remit for the school and, through my future work with the St Bees schools in China, I may well be better placed to recruit students to come and sample the delights of a St Bees education.

One thing is sure – that like the Canada geese down by the brook, I will be a regular visitor to these shores. I can assure our new headmaster, Robin Silk, that I will support him as he takes the school on to its next phase of development, but without getting under his feet. Onward and upward.

Before I leave I do believe that one task is still outstanding, which I intend to address.

The tabloids, fuelled by Nigel Farage’s rather inflammatory rhetoric, have reported on some kind of takeover of British schools by the Chinese Communist Party. Allegedly, St Bees is a victim of such an ‘invasion’. At the risk of allowing real facts to cloud the discussion: there are around 2,600 independent schools in the UK, only 17 of which are cross-invested by Chinese finance. Most of this investment is more of a shrewd pursuit of dividends than some kind of ideological take-over. More about this later.

But let’s focus on St Bees. Why did Full Circle choose to bring St Bees back from an ignominious closure? Why create a new future for the school and would Edmund Grindal approve? 

First, some unavoidable realities. Indeed, we have 43 members of staff, of which 13 are part-time or full-time teachers, and this goes to show how many ancillary and support staff are needed to keep a school – even a small school - running efficiently. Catering, cleaning, grounds, maintenance, laundry, boarding, administration…. The list goes on. Indeed the fee income from our students falls well short of the overheads, and it is the Full Circle Education Group which makes up the shortfall until such time as the school can break even. 

Fourteen years ago, a father sent his Chinese son to England for his education and the decision proved successful. This son worked hard and graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in Land Economy, but with something more than just a certificate. He developed a mind-set which saw the advantages when the best of the East was fused with the best of the West. 

He vowed to open up such opportunities to other children by creating a series of schools within a ‘global campus’ concept. Chinese children could spend time in a UK partner school and UK children could visit the partner school in China. Projects could be shared, horizons could be broadened, experience could be enriched. 

In the meantime, the boy’s father - a highly successful businessman back in China - provided the finance for such an educational venture to be realised. Danny Wang (the son) founded Full Circle in 2017 and together he and I started the enterprise, centred upon the heritage and the values of St Bees School. Following its relaunch in 2018 this school became the ‘mothership’ for a fleet of sister schools in China and, eventually, other countries as well. Chinese children have great strengths and also great weaknesses. UK children have different strengths and different weaknesses. By integrating the strengths from both educational cultures we created a hybrid school at St Bees, which has now produced two sister schools (soon to be three) in China which follow the same educational philosophy. 

In answer to your possible questions as to how I reconcile my involvement with communist China with the Christian ethos of Edmund Grindal I would say two things. First, this is education, not politics. Children’s education should be separated from national politics. Opening up closed minds and fulfilling children’s potential was Edmund Grindal’s vision in establishing St Bees School, and I’d like to believe that in my own small way I am carrying on his holistic mission. Indeed, the Christian mission has always been for outreach and the need for children to receive an enlightened education is as real today as it ever was.

The children of today will be the adults of tomorrow and will inherit a world which we would find hard to recognise – as most of the jobs they will be doing have not yet been invented. We need to prepare them for the world of tomorrow and that means facing up to the challenges of a global world in which China will be a substantive player. Preparing them for this world requires the development of a confidence in operating in both the West and the East, and this is a strong component of what we do at St Bees. All students learn Mandarin and study Chinese-standard ‘fusion’ mathematics. They follow a course in Global Awareness. We purposefully broaden horizons. 

My future remit as Director of Education for Full Circle has no truck with a communist government or politics of any persuasion. It is taking a strong educational vision, hatched and developed at St Bees UK, holistic in its content, global in its scope, and introducing it to the St Bees sister schools in China. The end result is that we will have substantial numbers of students graduating from St Bees schools in the UK and China, having received a first-class education – enlightened, culturally and politically astute, holistically developed, and ready to take their place in society as the movers and shakers of the future.

For the foreseeable future we will be receiving financial support from China, where some of the fees generated from our sister schools flow back to us at St Bees UK. In exchange we provide them with the ‘fusion’ educational framework, a fully-fledged educational philosophy and all the components which go with a quality British education. A very businesslike arrangement, I think you will agree.

Education goes beyond petty politics. It has a higher purpose. Like any business, it takes financial support until it can support itself. As I head off to the other side of the world and bring the quality framework of St Bees to our growing family of sister schools there, I would dearly like our alumni network to stand behind me in establishing St Bees as a proud name for enabling children of whatever nationality to achieve their academic potential, well-rounded, well-supported, well-grounded – free thinkers, entrepreneurs and global leaders of the future.

 

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