Back to School for the Race Industry

So there I was, sitting outside the headmaster’s office, waiting to be seen – yet I wasn’t nervous in the slightest. More than once I had been called to answer for some transgression, yet this time was different … probably because it was eighteen years after I had actually left the school (St. Olave’s Grammar School, Orpington) and here I was, visiting my alma mater for the first time since leaving, 3 A-levels in hand, to venture into the big wide world.

As I am now a governor of the St. Olave’s and St. Saviours Schools’ Foundation, I had taken it upon myself to tag along with Bob Neill MP, and former Chislehurst MP and Old Olavian Sir Roger Sims, to the old place. In some ways it was like I’d only left yesterday, except I’d occasionally come across a point where there should have been a door, or a classroom had suddenly grown in size. Olave’s though is fortunate in that it is backed in capital by the Foundation which has enabled it to grow in size – both physically and in pupil roll – and a new science block, sports pavilion and sixth form block have appeared where once was grass or tennis courts.

And they now have girls. Not just a few Newstead Wood lasses visiting from across the valley, but a full cohort in the Sixth Form – which prepares both sexes for co-ed life at University, apparently.

And as with most Grammar Schools – as opposed to good comprehensives (of which there are many good examples in Bromley, of course) – entry is not dependent on parents’ ability to afford to move into the catchment area. And the egalitarianism doesn’t stop there (someone tell the Left, please):

A visitor from the Commission for Racial Equality asked once about the impressive performance of Afro-Caribbean boys at the school compared to the average for that racial pigeonhole group (in fact, around a third of the intake is from an ethnic minority). “What compensatory courses do you run then?” they asked innocently. “What do you mean?” was the reply, “we just treat them the same as everyone else.”

Quaint though the “colour blind” view may be in current race-relations groupthink (albeit held by the majority of people outside the professional equality industry), this school is an example, among many, of how you don’t need to pander to the victimhood culture that too many people are earning a salary on the back of. It’s not the colour of your skin that counts, but your attitude to life and those around you.

And fellow Old Olavians may not be surprised to learn that the swimming pool was temporarily out of order! (One for the Foundation’s “to do” list, methinks.)