EDUCATION SCHOOL PROFILE
and over this period of time many of the staff have been
incredibly supportive,” says Dru. “The school was fantastic
in its response. Sister Michaela, the only nun still on the
staff, immediately reassured me that nothing mattered –
only that Veronica should feel at ease in her new school.
I was terrified that because she could not sit exams easily,
owing to pain and her drug regime, she would be seen as
a potential liability to the school’s academic standards so
long as her illness persisted – but they were insistent that the
school was more than just about studies.”
Chris Beirne, head at Beaulieu Convent School in Jersey,
agrees: “We would feel that we’ve carried out our mission if we
help a girl of limited ability, or one with particular challenges,
get one A level – just as much as if we help a brilliant one get
Grounds of Our Lady’s
A’s on four A levels.” Beirne’s ambition, for the 750 girls who
Convent School in
Loughborough.
attend his school, is to “reach their fullest potential”.
Mary Breen has been headmistress at St Mary’s Ascot
for the past three years. She is the first lay head in the
✒ held regularly, as are night prayers. In addition to school’s history, and sees her 370 pupils as part of a “family”.
acknowledging the church’s liturgical life, the girls at A family with a long and still lively Catholic tradition
St Mary’s benefit from a resident priest as well as a manifested in prayers, genuflections and spiritual retreats.
full-time lay chaplain. Discipline, in this Catholic family, is not rooted in the terror
This sense of “specialness”, of pupils being treated generated by the “God can see what you’re doing!” warnings
as individuals rather than merely as testing machines, familiar to convent school girls of my generation. “I have
emerges as a unifying theme. Jan Palmer, who teaches never used the word ‘sin’ in this school, never tried to rein in
psychology and sociology at Our Lady’s Convent School in the girls by using religion over ethics,” she says.
Loughborough, finds that non-Catholic parents rate this just For Breen, the very clear boundaries she and her staff
as highly: the school attracts a number of Muslim students draw for the St Mary’s girls bestow a sense of identity rather
whose parents see the strong spiritual traditions at Our Lady than erect a cocoon. “They walk out into our multi-cultural
as a welcome counterpoint to the value- society knowing who they are, respecting the role of faith in
“T_he sense of
free, uber-consumerist culture which has their lives and therefore in that of others. When I was asked
become common in playgrounds from by an old girl whether we still had a nun at the end of every
‘specialness’, of
state to independent schools. corridor to watch over and protect the girls, I had to say no.
pupils being treated
Catherine Dru, who has two daughters But actually she seemed relieved at that – we know that kind
at St Mary’s Ascot, finds the school, and of world is no longer possible.”
as individuals
those with a similar ethos, “immensely By the time they’re 16, some girls feel that they’ve
rather than merely
liberating”. “It keeps the neurosis of today’s outgrown convent school, even one without nuns at the end
world at bay – the political correctness, of every corridor. “Today’s 16-year-olds are as mature as
as testing machines,
the fear of clear and dearly-held values, the we were at 18,’ says Marie Claire Agnew, whose daughter
paranoia about any kind of tribalism,” she Clarissa left St Mary’s Ascot to finish her schooling in
emerges as a
says. Not to mention the overwhelming London. “Clarissa loved the school, in particular the nuns
unifying theme”
materialism: “Many of these independent who still taught her the first years she was at St Mary’s. But
schools have a number of children from a by 16 she found the school felt like a ‘shielded oasis and that
very moneyed background,” she continues. was not necessarily a good thing’.”
“It is all too easy for them to compete on who’s got the Still, Clarissa Agnew says if she has a daughter, she’ll
most pairs of Ray-Bans.” definitely be sent to a convent school – until the sixth form.
St Mary’s, on the other hand, has a strong ethos of And John Shinkwin, who heads the Catholic Independent
pastoral care which she experienced first hand. When her Schools Conference, claims that his 140 members, including
daughter Veronica, 16, had just started at the school, she a dozen convent schools, are attracting a growing interest
began to experience excruciating pain in her foot. The from parents – Catholic and non-Catholic alike. “For many
diagnosis was devastating – she suffered from Complex of those hankering for something beyond material success,
Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), which made any pressure the convent school seems to hold the answer,” he says. It’s
on her foot, including walking, unbearable. Routine true: as I look at my daughter Isabella, aged six and a half, I
activities, like PE, and reaching the more distant classrooms, can’t help think that she’d look sweet in a navy blue cardigan
were out of the question. ‘We are now in the third year and tartan skirt, a mantilla to hand. Once a convent girl…%
20 FIRST ELEVEN SPRING 2010 WWW.FIRSTELEVENMAGAZINE.CO.UK
pp18-20FE_SPR10 Convent FINAL.indd 20 28/1/10 17:32:05
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