I went to a public school that has a strong claim to being the oldest school in the world.
It will almost certainly remain the most miserable period of my life, partly due to external factors, but partly also due to the Bullingdon-variant lad culture I encountered there, where 'banter' was the justification for far too much.
I remember a conversation in which the social pecking order was rejoiced at and every member of my boarding house openly ranked according to social status. Of course they weren't all bad eggs by any means.
Forcing a scrawny, pre-pubescent five-foot-nothing to compete in rugby matches against the lumbering hulks that made up the rest of his cohort surely warrants investigation by a human rights commission.
On charity mufty days I donated but wore my portentous uniform proudly because I would have otherwise looked like a tramp wearing rags in a sea of Superdry and Jack Wills.
It is a conspiracy with the worst of nature to house ten thirteen-year-old boys in the same dorm room for a year.
One of the unpleasant aspects of being in the youngest year group was the assignment of chores in our houses. This included the daily distribution of newspapers and weekly distribution of milk and juices to twenty-odd rooms across three floors. One year 9er on a rota including all 10 in the house would be required for newspapers, two for milk and juices. The milk duty was the short straw and heaving heavy cartons to each floor's kitchen milk dispenser at 7 am while the oldest and strongest snoozed was probably what sowed the seeds for my flirtation with far-left politics.
As far as education goes, it was very good. For my subjects, class sizes for GCSE ranged from around 7/8 to 11/12, while A-Level ranged from around 6 to 9. I don't recall much spoon-feeding going on, contrary to popular perception. The teaching was interesting in that arts subjects seemed to almost universally have noticeably better teachers than maths/sciences. During my GCSEs I went through no fewer than three chemistry teachers, and they were all pretty dreadful by the standards of the school.
The personal tutor system was one of the finest aspects of the school, but then I was blessed with a very fine tutor. They acted as pastoral guardians and liasons, as well as teaching and once a week monitoring the house during prep time and seeing everyone to bed. They were charged with monitoring our progress and well-being with weekly meetings, were assigned in houses and had roughly 7 students. I don't know how common this is elsewhere. Houses were made up of around fifty boys or girls. Except for the small number of day pupil houses, the housemaster and a matron lived in-house with the boys.
Fortnightly, teachers would rate our effort and attainment in a 'traffic light system' made up of red, yellow, green, light blue and dark blue in ascending order. I remember once, in a difficult time during A-Level, getting two reds and three or four yellows and crying in front of my disappointed tutor in shame.
Boarders who were 17+ could, after paying a small membership fee, drink with dinner in an enclosed bar section of the pupils' social centre.
Missing a lesson, among other offences, bought you three hours Headmaster's detention on Saturday night. Being late for three lessons in a term bought you weekday detention. Detentions were split into 30 mins, 1h and 1hr30mins. One essay was to be written in response to set questions per 30 minute slot. I remember in my final year being at this almost every week, mostly for missing games. My superiors never caught on to the fact that I was much happier writing essays in comfort and stillness than I was wondering during cross-country whether my autopsy would reveal suffocation in sinking mud or cardiac arrest to have been my cause of death.
We had a highly legalistic rulebook written by my tutor. Smoking and alcohol were highly prohibited and if I recall correctly parents were to be informed for a first offence by formal letter and suspension followed for a second. Kissing was prohibited in plain sight, but frequently engaged in throughout the grounds at night. An open door policy was eventually taken on members of the opposite sex visiting each other's rooms, in addition to having to sign in and out of the house they were visiting in a visitor book.
Though I was miserable, I am glad I went there. I doubt I would have been much happier anywhere else and I did well enough academically.
I apologise for exploiting this opportunity to relate my school experiences.
Before anyone lambasts me for having had more than others, I was there on a hefty bursary and a music scholarship which I worked bloody hard for.