Speech by John Tusa

Speech by John Tusa Historian and former Head of BBC World Service, delivered at CLS Chairman's Dinner

June 27, 2002

Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a particular pleasure to be asked to talk to you this evening. For reasons that your Chairman has mentioned, having had two sons educated at CLS, I feel particularly close to the school. Almost closer, in fact, than I do to my own school of Gresham's, though I do not want to push that faint feeling of disloyalty to my own school too far; they are a Fishmonger's school, and in the City, none should countenance offending the Fishmongers.

However, credit to CLS where it is due and in my family's book it is due a lot of credit. First, there was the prevailing atmosphere of tolerance, an atmosphere like an old type grammar school, in my view, a term of approval. This atmosphere was characterised by a lack of economic or social pretension, a strong but unpretentious commitment to learning, and a refreshing air of upward mobility. Everyone was at CLS - more or less - to learn. No school, of course, is perfect.

We were heavily biased in favour of the school because they admitted one son who had been massively undereducated at a Hampstead state primary school and shoe-horned into the last place in his year because the interviewing teacher, one Roger Haddaway, bothered to talk to him about what books he had read. In those days, admission was still on the basis of personal interview; it became more exam entry-based shortly afterwards.

What that attitude showed was an openness to selection, and a very considered readiness to take a risk. Our own fortunate experiences apart, that seems to be a wise and very unideological way to behave. We never had the impression that CLS was driven by educational theory; good practice, of course, but led by common sense.

The old school at Blackfriars was a very odd place, the playgrounds with their high surrounding walls like Colditz, the impressively daunting Great Hall, and the glorious archaic Victoriana of the Science labs and demonstration theatres with their teak tables stained with years of tears, explosions and experiment. The buildings seemed a living validation of Parkinson's third law; namely, that institutions often do their best work in awful physical conditions.

And of course, there were the staff. Overwhelmingly, they seemed to be rather good. There was Pat Whitmore, who insisted on teaching French as it was spoken and would be used, an assumption that has proved very useful subsequently. There was Dennis Moore, the second master, whose Friday morning coffee breaks with prefects were an important part of the maturing process of taking responsibility in an adult world. There was the much loved

Alan Hart - "a mere bagatelle, dear boy, a mere bagatelle", and of course Jimmy Boyes, the headmaster, who had to authorise the formation of any new school society - which he usually did - but explained on one occasion that sadly he could not support the fledgling natural history society because he had committed the last of his funds to the new origami society.
The school, too, had an assumption that all boys should be taught properly, not as obvious as it sounds. What I mean is that both our sons got a good maths grounding in particular, even though both were reading history. All boys had to take part in music in some form or another. It was utterly unlike UCS," said one son. "Their attitude was that if you weren't going to make it, then they wouldn't bother to teach you. "And they had friends to prove it.
And talking of history, what a pleasure to see Lionel Knight here, who not only taught both boys superbly with wit and humour, but left them with a life long love of the subject. The point is that Governors and committees are important; but it is the staff that really count.
There were the eccentrics among the staff, of course. When I observed that there had been no bullying at the school, and no corporal punishment, I was reminded of 'Monty the Bat'. It was, apparently, normal practice for the PE staff to punish individual misdemeanours by applying 'Monty the bat' to the entire class. This was accepted cheerfully and without bitterness as part of life but if the deeper intention was to get the non-offenders to stop the offenders from further misbehaviour, it was entirely ineffective.
The school bred a certain worldly air about it too. One son observed that its great advantage was that there were 32 pubs within a 15 minute crawl of the gates. They all knew where the staff drank and it wasn't hard to avoid them. The Sixth Formers - and some non Sixth Formers - used to gather at the 'Witness Box'. A tacitly acknowledged 'green line' meant that staff didn't venture there and the boys didn't intrude on the staffs watering hole.
Another observation was that CLS was a social barometer school, reinforcing my earlier point about upward mobility: many boys were the children of second generation immigrants. At about the time our younger son left, the first children of Ugandan Asians expelled by ldi Amin were coming into the school. I always thought of the school as a stepping stone in social integration and upward mobility and this was one of its most attractive aspects.
And because everyone travels to get to the school, it did not become hermetic. The house system did not work, but the compensation was that boys were fully engaged in the world around them as they went to and from school. It also meant that there was little of that incestuous 'school spirit' for which the English public school system is famous.
A final thought. CLS makes individuals. "You can spot an Etonian or Wykehamist or Westminsterian at a glance," said one son. I don't think you can spot an Old Cit!' That is high praise in my book, and I hope in yours.
My family count the money spent on educating two sons at CLS as money well spent. So do they. I have no doubt that today's parents feel the same. Long may the school continue to do what it does well.

John Tusa is Managing Director of the Barbican Centre