Schools Guide

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Having played a lot of sport at school, with mixed success, physical recreation was already an important factor in my life when I joined the Royal Navy. It became more so and, as well as participating myself in as many sporting activities as I could, I also gained a great deal of satisfaction from encouraging others to play and watching them do so.

I have been fortunate that the last 14 years of my working life have been entirely dedicated to the encouragement and promotion of sport. Good fun, yes, but sport has an important role to play in the operational effectiveness of the Services, as well as being a major contributor to morale. The development of personal qualities such as fitness, leadership, coordination, self-confidence, self-awareness, determination, resilience, teamwork, esprit de corps and camaraderie are among the many benefits that sport has to bring to the Services. This is why ‘time for sport’ is an important factor in the life of successful units, notwithstanding the operational pressures on today’s Armed Forces.

As Commander of the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth I was able to see at first hand that those who had started to develop those qualities while at school were much more easily able to adapt to the necessary changes in their lifestyle as they embarked on their chosen careers. In watching their careers since, I have not been surprised to see most of them continuing to flourish. Of course, such personal qualities have wider application than contributing to the operational effectiveness of the Armed Forces. In this increasingly competitive world, no one really needs telling personal qaulities are becoming more and more important in almost any walk of life.

As part of my current role, I find myself a member of the General Council of the Central Council of Physical Recreation, which brings together as ‘one voice’ the National Governing Bodies of Sport and the many organisations responsible for the organisation and development of sport and recreation within the UK. Within this forum I hear discussion of the struggles with which these organisations and individuals have to cope in order to provide the time and facilities for sport and recreation for the UK population as a whole but the young in particular. I am thus keenly reminded of the huge advantage I had in my life in having gone to boarding schools from the age of 11 rather than staying at day school. It was the very best decision my parents ever made! Not for me having to waste time and energy travelling twice a day.

Instead, for me easy access to all the schools’ excellent facilities, the opportunity to learn independence, tolerance, self-sufficiency and self-discipline, in addition to the chance to acquire all the benefits of sport mentioned above. Finding out about other people and learning to live and work with them was another advantage that I learned to value as time went on. Furthermore to have been given opportunities to take on responsibilities, within clear boundaries, as part of the schools’ sports structures as a team captain, team secretary, and competition organiser and other nonsporting posts was a real bonus for later life.

Thus when it came to choose the type of education for our two sons, my wife and I were heavily swayed by the opportunities that boarding had to offer compared with day school. And that was before we took into account the disruption that might be caused by the two-yearly changes in my Service appointment. We opted for the boarding option and, while our younger son started slightly earlier than we and he (aged just eight) would have liked, in hindsight we would have made the same decision.