Interview
He explains how the bus is surprisingly easy to drive, not that he will be doing so— he’s too busy learning to ride a scramble bike. He’s had a course made with leftover spoil from building the new music school. ‘As I won’t ask pupils to do something I won’t do, I’ve been trying it out. At Sherbourne, I learnt to windsurf when I was master in charge of windsurfing, and at Tonbridge, I learnt to ride when I was in charge of that activity.’ He adds: ‘This is a career in which you
constantly morph into other things. I started as a history teacher, then, at Tonbridge, 50% of my teaching was of English. I’ve taught art history, General Studies, PSHE’—he realises I don’t recognise the acronym—‘Personal Social Heath Education, which is sex and drugs and rock and roll, all the fun stuff. So you can keep on reinventing yourself.’
what made the school original and exciting and to re-create that
‘ I want to find out We pass a pupil who flashes the head-
master a broad smile, which he returns. Dr Wallersteiner’s height gives him presence; his features suggest kindness and under- standing. ‘That was one of my daughters,’ he explains. Oh. My next question was to be on Stowe’s (now undeserved) reputation as a place to send your children if you’re rich and they’re ‘academically lightweight’ as another magazine once put it. I bottle it, and remark instead that it must be tricky having your children at your school. ‘It gives me a different perspective, certainly. But I think it helps that I’m seen as a liberal headmaster, not a martinet.’ When I do pluck up courage, he replies:
’
‘Oh gosh, right, all the old stereotypes coming out here.’ But he also confides that that was also the image he held before coming here nearly 10 years ago. ‘I didn’t actually know many Stoics. I didn’t meet any at Cambridge,’ he says wryly. Like many of his answers, this one is fulsome and starts at a tangent. All Stowe’s old boys were of fighting age
for the Second World War and one in seven of them died, leaving the school lacking support. Postwar austerity and an uncer- tain reaction to the changing society of the 1960s lead to the school ‘moving from the first tier to the second’. A ‘reforming’ head- master was ‘ousted by an insurrection of the housemasters’ and his successor ‘steadied
8 School Life, Spring 2013
the ship and did some good things, but the leadership was over-cautious and very conservative. Stowe was no longer being distinctive but copying other schools’. He continues: ‘When league tables were
introduced, they were dismissed as com- paring apples and oranges, as Stowe wasn’t all about academic achievement, but about producing well-rounded individuals. But if you don’t pay attention to academic league tables, you won’t survive economically. I think the position was always exagger- ated, however, and I suspect the school just wasn’t very good at PR.’ When Dr Wallersteiner arrived, Stowe’s
fees were higher than any other school. Now, ‘lower-than-inflation increases each year means about 20 schools are now more expensive than us’, and 87% of pupils get into their first-choice university. ‘What I love about it and why I think it is
a great school is that you can’t define Stoics. There is no typical product marked “made in Stowe”. That’s something to be celebrated.’ He’s keen to break down ‘trad- itional hierarchies’ in public schools that put sportsmen at the top, and to promote music and drama as sport’s equal. All pupils are encouraged to play sport, but this could be flyfishing, clay-pigeon shooting, beagling—Stowe, like Eton and Radley, has its own beagle pack—or golf. ‘It’s our job to find what enthuses pupils and help them take it to the next level.’ About 40% of Stowe’s pupils receive
financial assistance through bursaries and scholarships. Dr Wallersteiner hopes that a voucher or pupil-premium system will one day open up private education. ‘When has the State managed anything better in terms of the family than we can do for ourselves? It is the most extraordinary thing about this country that our educational system pro- motes social division, yet there’s a tacit acceptance on both sides politically that this should continue.’ He dreams that, one day, ‘a visionary government—and it may not be a Conservative one—will say “wouldn’t it be amazing if everyone could access these wonderful schools?” Good schools could then export their DNA; we could set up more Stowes, Etons, Wellingtons. Our independent schools are the best in the world for literacy and mathematics.’ Dr Wallersteiner is looking to set up
another Stowe, in Qatar. Meanwhile, in the Buckinghamshire countryside, he’s trying to go back to what it was like there in the 1920s and 1930s. ‘I want to find out what made the school original and exciting and to re-create that. I want to put the fizz back into Stowe.’ He seems to be succeeding.
Anthony Wallersteiner in the Marble Saloon
www.countrylife.co.uk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64