Prep school chairman: "Education needs risks"

24 September 2003

An education that contains no risks may leave children unable to assess risk for themselves, said a leading independent school head today.

Simon Carder, chairman of the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools (IAPS), told members at the opening of their annual conference in York, that in trying to protect children, schools may become increasingly reluctant to expose them to risk. Resourcefulness was one of "10 Rs" which he suggested should replace the traditional three.

Mr Carder, headmaster of Eagle House School, Sandhurst, Berks, acknowledged that excellent academic performance was expected of independent schools. But, he said: "In the relentless drive for better and better academic results we have to take great care not to abandon everything else that most of us in independent schools would consider at least as important.

"I am thinking of creativity in all its forms, genuine intellectual challenges (not just acquiring skills to pass exams or complete coursework), physical development, teamwork and leadership skills, moral, social, cultural and spiritual development, service to the community and to the world at large."

After the traditional three Rs, said Mr Carder, the fourth R was resourcefulness. "There is an increasing tendency towards giving people, especially young people, everything on a plate. Things are ready-made, ready-cooked, fail-safe and foolproof. Is there enough room to show initiative, to make do with what you have got, to plan, to think, to experiment and to learn from making mistakes?

"There is a danger too that in trying, commendably, to protect children we become increasingly reluctant to expose them to anything which might possibly constitute a challenge. We run the risk of so protecting our children in cotton wool that we shall end up smothering them with it.

"If they do not learn to take risks, how can they learn to assess risks? If they do not take risks how can they stretch themselves, how will they ever know what their limits are? At a more fundamental level, how can the human race make any progress if nobody is willing or able to take a risk?

"Resourcefulness flourishes when things are not easy, when there is danger and where there is need. Necessity is the mother of invention. So let us not make things so easy and so comfortable that resourcefulness has no place in the learning and growing up process."

Mr Carder outlined the remainder of his ten Rs - resolve, reliability, responsibility, restraint, remorse and respect - and added: "If we can arm children with these ten Rs and provide them with a very broad curriculum that encourages creativity and challenges pupils physically, morally and spiritually, we can send them out into the world proud in the knowledge that we have educated a whole new generation."

The Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools represents more than 500 junior independent schools and is the largest of the heads' associations within the Independent Schools Council. IAPS schools, which range in size from under 50 to more than 800, educate nearly 132,000  pupils of whom 12,000 are boarders.