The Master's Welcome

After their first visit to Wellington, there are three things people often say to me – how distinctive the school is, how pioneering we are and yet also how traditional we are in all the best ways. Imagine, then, how transformative that environment is for the children who study and grow into adults here.

Five years with us is not long. Every experience needs to make a difference, and be part of a wider whole which serves as a framework to shape the lives of these young men and women. It needs to reinforce values and beliefs that will make them good people as well as preparing them for the competitive, dynamic and global workplace of the 21st century.

Yes, we are hugely ambitious academically for our pupils, ensuring that they secure the results to go on to the world’s best universities and on to careers of significance, influence and service. But we also want them to live lives which are personally and socially fulfilling. In those five years, we can develop within them a love for art, music, dance, theatre and culture which will enrich the whole of their lives. Our acclaimed well-being programme helps them to understand themselves, their relationships with others and to become more resilient. Our unique eight aptitudes approach means we see each lesson, each activity, each overseas trip or sports event, through a lens which helps us to see all the developmental potential it can deliver.

These are all bold claims, so the last word should go to the pupils and staff. We asked them to tell us what sort of people Wellingtonians become.  They said they are kind, honest and courageous and they approach the world with a profound sense of integrity and responsibility. They are also great fun to be with.

I hope you will come and see for yourselves.

 

Dr Anthony Seldon Biography

Dr Anthony Seldon MA, PhD, FRSA, MBA, FRHisS, 13th Master, Wellington College

For further biographical information, please go to Dr Seldon’s website.

Anthony Seldon is a leading authority on contemporary British history and headmaster of Wellington College, one of Britain's best-known boarding schools. He is also author or editor of over 30 books on contemporary history, politics and education, and is the biographer of Number 10 and former recent Prime Ministers.

After gaining an MA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Worcester College, Oxford, and a PhD at the London School of Economics, he qualified as a teacher at King’s College, London, where he was awarded the top PGCE prize in his year. He also has an MBA. He taught at Whitgift School, Tonbridge (his old school), and St Dunstan’s, where he was Acting Headmaster. He then became Headmaster of Brighton College until he joined Wellington College in January 2006 as 13th Master. He has honorary doctorates from the Universities of Brighton and Richmond and in 2007 was given a Chair at the College of Teachers as Professor of Education. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Arts, King’s College London and on the board of numerous bodies including the Royal Shakespeare Company.

He founded, with Professor Peter Hennessy, the Institute of Contemporary British History, and the Action For Happiness with Lord Layard and Geoff Mulgan.

Seldon’s books include Churchill’s Indian Summer, which won a Best First Work Prize; The Thatcher Effect; Major, A Political Life, Conservative Century; Number 10: The Illustrated History; Blair; Blair Unbound, Brown at 10 and Trust: How We Lost it and How to Get it Back. He is currently writing a book on the Great War and Public Schools which will be published in November 2013. His education booklets include Public and Private Education: The Divide Must End and Partnership Not Paternalism, and An End To Factory Schools: An education manifesto 2010-2020. His recent lectures include: Why Schools? Why Universities? (Cass Lecture, 2010); and Why the Development of Good Character Matters More Than the Passing of Exams (Priestley Lecture, 2013).

Seldon is regarded as one of the country’s most high profile headmasters and appears regularly on television and radio and in the press, and writes for several national newspapers. His views on education have regularly been sought by the government and political parties. For fifteen years he has organised conferences which have helped set the education agenda, and he founded the Sunday Times Festival of Education. He is a passionate exponent of co-education, the International Baccalaureate, independent education, the teaching of happiness/well-being and the development of the all-round child.

He is married to Joanna, who also teaches and writes, and they have three children. According to ‘Who's Who’, his interests are sport, directing plays, family and old English sports cars.

Innovations and Campaigns

Dr Seldon has a tradition of thinking the unthinkable and thus moving education forward in the country, and has been an innovative force in the UK and international education for 20 years. Among his innovations and campaigns have been the following:

  • Introducing well-being or ‘happiness’ classes, at Wellington College in 2006, including regular ‘stillness’ sessions. The UK government has now introduced well-being as a target for national policy
  • Pioneering work on holistic education in schools, based on the Wellington model of ‘eight aptitudes’ derived from Professor Howard Gardner’s ‘multiple intelligences’
  • A pioneer of building bridges between state and independent sectors, and independent schools sponsoring academies, as Wellington College did when it started Wellington Academy in 2010
  • Introduced ‘leadership education’ for all pupils and is a champion of ‘character education’
  • Establishing parent classes and parent learning, which he introduced over 20 years ago at Tonbridge School in the celebrated Tonbridge Parents’ Arts Society
  • Promoting ‘active learning’, using the ‘Harkness’ teaching approach brought over from the US and the ‘Middle Years’ approach of the IB
  • Setting up the first ‘carbon copy’ schools in China, with Wellington College Tianjin opening in 2011 and Wellington College Shanghai in 2014, and a champion of schools and universities opening in the BRICs
  • A leading advocate of UK students going to US universities as their major higher education destination
  • Champion of ‘restorative justice’, and reduction of rules and punishments in schools
  • Opening the first ‘bookless’ or digital school library at Wellington in 2012, and a champion of digital learning
  • Setting up the first Mandarin Centre in a UK school in 2012 as part of a sustained push on the teaching of Mandarin in UK schools and being (we believe) the first serving head to take Mandarin GCSE (in 2014)
  • Active campaigner against ‘factory schools’ and in favour of personalised schools with personalised education
  • Campaigning for Shakespeare to be studied and acted in all schools in his capacity as a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company
  • A convenor of some ten conferences a year for schools, founder of the Brighton Conference from 1998 and the Sunday Times Festival of Education from 2010.