An outstanding education is more than mere training

Guy Ayling, Warden of Llandovery College, says a little deviation from the syllabus is no bad thing...

The definition of education is wide ranging and depends to a large degree on who you ask. The wonderful diversity of the independent sector – surely its greatest strength – reflects varying interpretations and offers something for just about everyone. Broadly speaking however we might reach a consensus that education is systematic learning that develops a sense of analysis, judgment and reasoning; there can be little doubt that our schools address that challenge to great effect. More than occasionally however we hear the word training pop up in discussions on education and school provisions might appear to be simply a loose confederation of training opportunities. Training, imparting a special skill or behaviour, is certainly part of the educational process but it can never express in itself the breadth and richness of a good education and must be seen within a wider more coherent whole.

At Llandovery College in Carmarthenshire, Wales, we embrace passionately an all-round education. Everything that we do must sit on at least one of our three pillars of learning: making better decisions, good citizenship and intellectual rigour and curiosity, through which our pupils learn to tackle a rapidly evolving world with confidence and cheerfulness. These pillars are merely an updating of the great Thomas Arnold’s maxim that education is about ‘first religious and moral principle, second gentlemanly conduct, third academic ability.’

The College’s Combined Cadet Force and Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme of which we are so proud, train our young in specific skills such as weapon handling, map reading and climbing; but learning to approach challenges confidently and positively, to see a project through to completion and overcoming fear when doing something new is the more valuable sum gain of these activities and so much greater than the training parts. Through the training therefore a deeper educational value is nurtured.

Likewise, the training pupils receive in Llandovery College’s vegetable gardens certainly develops the skills to put fresh food on the table, but it is part of a wider curriculum-based experience aimed at developing an appreciation for the harmony of nature and humankind’s responsibility to it, a pressing issue on which I wrote in this publication (Which School?) in 2015. The seven Principles of Harmony – Geometry, Interdependence, Cycles, Diversity, Health, Beauty and Oneness – are now fully embedded in our Prep School curriculum, pupils engage enthusiastically with the work of the Sustainable Food Trust and Llandovery College boasts an internship programme for young adults set on a career in sustainability. Recently hosting an international conference on Harmony in Food and Farming, at which HRH the Prince of Wales (pictured) spoke passionately on issues close to his heart, has provided further encouragement to our efforts to engrain a new way of thinking at the College. Our training in this area then reveals deeper more important truths.

Training is part of the collective educational process and often in itself forgotten but remains relevant for a lifetime in its contribution to the broader experience that develops more profoundly valuable skills and attitudes. If it was all about training, there would be courses on how to leave Europe smoothly, but there are not.

Where training has its greatest and potentially most dangerous impact is in the classroom. League tables and hothouses have produced a pernicious and frenzied atmosphere in education where careers, of staff rather than students, can be broken on a set of results. The temptation then to train our pupils to perform in the examination hall is almost irresistible, a reality all the more curious for the entirely contrived context of these tests. Teachers are forgiven now for discarding all the really ‘interesting stuff’ they might want to share with curious minds and keeping strictly to the examination specification. Our pupils are aware of it too: ‘is this on the syllabus?’ and ‘do we need to know this?’ are telling questions pupils never asked when I started teaching many years ago.

Mark Twain is reputed to have said something along the lines that history does not repeat itself but it often rhymes. If we simply train our young for specific tasks then they will do a job well once but lack adaptability; the exact repeat will not come round again and they will lack the skills to notice the rhyme. The examinations we train for will never happen again, they are fixed both in time and space, but they can be of lifelong use if we do not lose sight of what they should really be teaching us.

I am confident however that the independent sector recognises that this training is not really an education and mitigates against it by allowing, indeed encouraging, occasional deviation from the syllabus, as well as offering a myriad of societies and other enrichment activities and opportunities that lie at the heart of a true education.

Our schools therefore keep the true flame of education burning brightly.