Posh Kids Go To State School | School Swap: The Class Divide E1 | Our Stories

[Music] warminster in wiltshire an exclusive 300 year old boarding school with 400 pupils and a 9 million pound budget i have no doubt that ms ward and her pupils will be made welcome we have two education systems in this country state and independence and there's an element of never the twain shall meet the memro school in derby a state-run comprehensive for over 700 pupils and a 5 million pound budget i can't recall ever having any connection with any private education at all private and state for generations the educational gulf dividing britain's school system hello now in a unique experiment these two head teachers have agreed to swap sides hello very nice to meet you what we deliver at this school is rightly regarded as just about the best education in the world they could pay me 500 000 pounds a week i would never be the headmistress of warminster joining them will be three teenage pupils from each school they're likely probably the stereotype of me is some like posh kid who has a mansion [Music] does private school really give you a first-class education i don't think you would get the same level of help if you went to a state school why do i get everything handed to me but a lot of luck and does a state education really means second rate no i finished this bowl the bottle is finished well i'm after the sheets being finished this might sound crazy i want to go to oxford or like cambridge somewhere big if i don't get my head down to school i'll probably end up doing nothing in my life [Music] this building is very important this is the original school building started work on it in 1705 finished in 1707 and the doorway was designed by sir christopher wren [Music] mark mortimer is headmaster of warminster school in wiltshire been a teacher for 15 years and took on his first headship at the school in 2014 lord weymouth founded the school in 1707 with the purpose of educating for free the sons of his estate workers obviously in the intervening 300 years we've moved away from that purpose particularly we are a fee paying school mormons to school is a boarding and day school set on a 60 acre site costing more than 27 000 pounds a year to board the school has 64 teachers a dozen tennis courts and a tudor chair has been with us at least 200 years and we know that because on the back is some graffiti that dates from 1826 1827 lots of my predecessors had their portrait painted sitting in this chair private school educated himself teaching isn't mark's first career he went to sandhurst and then spent eight years as an army officer [Music] have you looked at the website it's all your thoughts having looked at it now mark is heading 150 miles north to bemro's comprehensive and derby on the first leg of the school swap have you been to darwin no with him our borders john and katie and dayboy xander who has never experienced state school it's only one week and i've got thick skin so i don't i don't need to worry about all that uh sort of teasing the likely probably to have a stereotype of me is some like posh kid who has a mansion and 50 cars or something but hey let's break a few stereotypes i think i will get to see a new sort of culture effectively a new set up a new environment i'll probably therefore realize how unfortunate i am i generally feel like i've always been in this bubble of private school and so i'm hoping to get out of the swap a deeper understanding of what state school is actually like because it's such a mystery to me like i don't want to just go there be like oh hi i'm katie okay i'm judging your school okay goodbye um i want to be able to like just get on there joining katie and zanda on the week-long swap is john [Music] morrison he went to a state primary but his parents felt warminster would be the best senior school for him i'm not particularly good at maths so i have a math learning support lesson when i first came to orminster they did a test as soon as it becomes five it's close to four thousand they found out that it would probably be a good idea if i got a little extra help i don't think you would get the same level of help if you went to a state school waiting to meet their private school guests are memro's head teacher joe ward and three of her students naz kasim and brett nice how are you feeling nervous are you act anxious i wanted to come quickly as possible yeah i just want to meet them [Music] benrose was built in 1930 and was originally a grammar school it's been a comprehensive for 40 years joe ward has been head here for over a decade [Music] i think this is probably my favorite part of the school one of the things which i've always been struck by is how the building creates an atmosphere and a sense of presence but also a warmth so that the place feels as though it's friendly and inclusive and and people will want to be here i went to a girls grammar school in derby and my first time standing in this school hall was as a 12 year old singing my heart out the songs from the mercado [Music] joe took over at benrose after it was classed as failing in 2003 the longer that i have been in education the more convinced i've been that education is the key to unlocking the inequalities in society okay guys have we got any questions so far about what's going on if we are going to make society a fairer place for future citizens then the place in which you can begin to make those changes is in the school i'm interested to have the discussion with my opposite number at the school about what they regard as an excellent education i think that if every school in the country focused on what the independent sector focuses on then i think we frankly would be sorted just seven percent of us have been educated at a private school but those who have disproportionately dominate the country's top jobs [Music] i'm really interested in what it is in the private school which is leading to those more high prestige careers because if it's something that i can replicate here i'd like to do that and if it isn't then at least we know don't we i've got this horrible sinking feeling that it's not what you know it's who you know but we'll see here we are [Music] headmaster of warminster private school is spending a week at bemros comprehensive in derby i miss ward to you joining him in the school swap are three of his pupils katie john and xander and it's a lovely morning thank goodness i see you've all got your white shirts and your black trousers on ready excellent you'll soon look just like we do memro's head teacher joe ward and three of her pupils to show the way other guides for the week [Music] how many children have you got here about 700 and something right i can't tell you exactly because we do get extras most every two or three weeks we'll get another batch of children arriving and then maybe a couple will drift off so over the last year we've probably gone up about 150 children arriving from where slovakia syria iran right doncaster yeah we get we get our new arrivals are usually direct from overseas and usually don't speak english or don't speak english very much at all okay good morning my name is mr wilkinson welcome to you today this morning you're going to do some tests we all don't like tests the worst things in the world but we use these tests to be able to put you in the correct groups okay and we look at your ability in english maths and science this morning 30 new pupils are being admitted to benrose and our private school students are joining the latest intake the school is a very old school has a lot of history to it it's a school we are all very proud of okay what struck me about the admissions process is children arriving at odd times of the school year i try to meet every set of parents of pupils before they come to the school i think it's very difficult for joe and her team to meet the parents here before the children have started in the tests the private pupils score average reading ages of over 18. the new bemrose children score an average reading age of a seven-year-old all of them have english as a second language [Music] in fact that's the case for over half of benro students and a third have special educational needs like dyslexia and autism once they're in every pupil is assigned to one of four school houses each with its own distinctive coloured tie just have three sweatshirts with um badges and we need three ties um we need one green one red and one blue wearing the new uniforms the warminster pupils are shown to class by the memro students [Music] xander joins brett in art class so yeah do you take it we're actually going to do work or every what do you think it's fun to like mess about it's just laughing it's just it's freedom but you have to know when to stop and like do your work as well though you can't just keep like going all the way for a lesson actually not going to be any work done again trouble yeah do you think that affect you in the future by like messing around lessons well yeah if you mess around you're not going to get the grades you need are you so why are you messing around though for fun i would do like a little bit then stop i didn't carry on like all the way through your lesson right that's crazy i think my behavior is good most of the time but then it can go a little bit dodgy i think education is important because if you don't have it you've got less of a chance of getting a job if you don't get a job you're not gonna be able to pay for a house pay for you food pay for your family and like personally i wouldn't really want that if i don't get my head down at school i'll probably end up doing nothing in my life i'm sorry man something that private schools i find are very good at are giving people's confidence confidence in who they are and confidence in the in who they are is a good thing grind your foot into the back and to be proud of it and not to be shy or worried about what other people think [Music] i really love engineering so i've decided that engineering will be the thing that i'll go into [Music] what time do you start i wake up at 6 30 in the morning i can't do something the the actual day starts at sort of 20 to 9ish yeah that's registration i grew up at eight this morning i guess eight everybody i miss breakfast every day you go home at five five five holy wow i don't know it's like it's like it's kind of alien yeah alien eater that's a word yeah yeah it doesn't suit your lip mate what do you think of this scoops what is it i think they teach you to do well the lessons are good mr lately i found it quite difficult seeing it still but i think it's difficult for actually quite a lot of kids to pick which side of the fence they go whether they're joining with silliness or whether to go against that and say look this is my future this is my learning you only use this school for five years and you're out in the world for 60 years so i know which way i'm going nearly all private school pupils pass five gcses including english and maths for state school pupils it's just over half benrose has the same number of teachers as warminster but double the number of pupils so is teaching at private schools superior to the state sector the private school headmaster mark mortimer agreed to teach a lesson mark is a history teacher and took on a first year gcse group from a memrose teacher [Music] they clearly got a fantastic history teacher anyway uh i guess i'm slightly nervous of not measuring up to her high standards and obviously i'm hoping i get some interaction because otherwise it's going to be a long hour has anybody got any questions about what's happening today no okay okay as mrs golding said what we're going to look at is the vietnam war we're going to watch a video clip and it's from a film called apocalypse now which some of you may have seen this is a sea of american helicopters coming in to attack in terms of the quality of private education i have mixed feelings some of the weakest teachers i've ever known have been recruited into the private sector to teach and therefore i'm thinking do they teach to the quality that that my teachers teach or is it the case that because the children perhaps are more compliant you can be more lazy imagine you came into this classroom and i was lying on the floor in a pool of blood and there was a great big knife sticking out of my chest what are you going to deduct what are you going to think what did you say it was a murder but there's no sign saying murder you have made a deduction based on the evidence right okay sharma can you give me the rules of connect four please well mark is teaching memro students you need two players that's a good start yep private school pupil john is getting his first taste of maths in the state sector right um just give me a minute of your time please one of the questions is there's a lighthouse now guys i'm going to tell you something random i'm scared of lighthouses i actually have a phobia about lighthouses and it's called batophobia all right mr thomas has been teaching at benrose for eight years he's constantly um helping you he's walking around he's being interactive it's maths which is one of my less enjoyable lessons but i really enjoy maths when i'm being taught by with thomas which is a really good thing what about if we look outside and the client of the clouds are really black what do you think is going to happen sorry do this it's going to rain that's a deduction he doesn't leave other people out so like let's see if i sit or less and quiet and i don't want to give feedback he still invites you to the lesson right boys what have you got so far i think the self-esteem of the student goes up as well when he actually talks to you personally and gives you his own opinion to ask for yours as well 15.5 over 24.7 can we just do that one please over 30 pupils in that lesson so they actually had to move a couple to another classroom if you have a class full of lots of other students then there's more people to talk to i think that's the thing that most people get distracted by if i was there for a long time then yeah i might not work as hard at warminster john has been entered for foundation level maths that means the top grade he can get is a c i haven't done trigonometry before but i did it today it's pretty easy um i had a bit of fun yeah it's good it's nice there's a different assessment of his potential without being too contentious to me if john was in this school he would be in a set one we'd be looking for a grade eight at least when someone like that says something like that it makes you feel so good a seat it's great it's a really nice feeling inside it just shows that state education doesn't necessarily mean worse education just means different and different sound can sometimes be good which is obviously in the case of mr thomas has anybody got any questions that they'd like to answer okay i was struck by some of the children in the history class to talk this morning we were good you know but they lacked confidence but i could see that they surprised themselves when they answered the questions bye-bye what are you good stuff it's clear that there are a lot of socio-economic factors that clearly have an impact on the children's well-being and how they perform at [Music] school benrose's catchment area includes some of the most deprived parts of derby with more than half of all students receiving free school meals [Music] but some thrive despite extreme adversity i'm from syria i lived in a city called aleppo and i'm originally kurdish my dad had to leave syria in 2004 for political reasons and our family was split for seven really long sad years [Music] in 2011 we got the chance to reunite with my dad in the uk which was a dream come true since then we've been trying to adjust to the life in the uk nas lives in the normanton area of derby this week she's partnered with private school pupil katie and has invited her home for dinner it's a bit garlicky food thank you all right yeah my parents tried the hardest to find me the best school and the best place for me to live so for my future and i want to prove them right i don't want like all the hard work going for nothing i came here the only way that's where i was like thank you very much and then yeah i would like i would get laughter yeah more your parents pay for education you feel like if you don't do well then yeah it's like a waste of money or you're disappointing them like in my case i want to finish uni i don't want to be just like some random person working in an office like that's not something for me so you want to be like where do you want to be so i enjoy baking i enjoy music and like enjoy messing around so i still think if like a primary school teacher might be quite cool so that's like your dream job that'd be like a really cool job yeah oh are you gonna like work in private school or like state school i actually i don't thought about yeah actually you want a big job when you're older yeah maybe let's be a prime minister you can borrow from that when you see people like naz like really determine like she knows what she wants to do whilst i'm sort of more drifting around like oh seems like a nice possibility oh that might be quite nice peter i feel like having a warm and stir it sort of gives you a chance to try everything but if your memories and you have a clear idea of what you want to be then that's fine but if you don't i feel like you can sort of get washed away with the rest of the other pupils there right you all need to have a book and we all need to read so if you've not done so already please there's some students who don't really care what they do and how they succeed and if they're going to be successful or not because there's that one switch in the head just turned off and that's basically because they have they've given up they've given up on being successful they don't believe in themselves the headmaster of mormons to private school and three of his pupils are spending a week at benrose a comprehensive state school in derby [Music] thank you this morning the private head mark mortimer is on duty with state head teacher joe ward they are responding to a call for assistance from a teacher in a classroom every teacher has got a computer and they've got a link to the central uh system so they will press a button on their computer and that will alert us to which room it is and there's always a senior member of staff on duty and at the moment it's us the system enables intervention to stop disruptive behavior by students right have they got books that they need to get out some children had been playing up in a lesson taken by a supply teacher but joe quickly resolves the situation if pupils need to be removed from class they are taken to a designated room where they are permanently monitored hello hi mark nice to meet you what sort of numbers do you get in here in a typical day well it can vary i think over the the 11 years i've been here i've probably had about four days when there hasn't been any students in here at all right normally isolations you're looking a figure of about 10 10 to 12 a day right sometimes that can be absolutely rambling and what sort of things typically are children in here for low level disruption uniform issues uh fighting in the classroom you name it lots of things lots and lots of things yeah a lot of it comes from family backgrounds uh irrespective of where they're from but some of some of the students don't know how to behave so they have no boundaries at home i would suspect your numbers are a lot lower than ours or the numbers are a lot lower we have something similar to seclusion we call it internal suspension internal suspension gets used once twice a year at most is your rooms is it staffed by a person we don't actually have a room so it's just it's the same it would probably be that the i don't know we'd the comparison with warminster is pretty stark it's very difficult for children just like adults to do well and to thrive if they've got problems if they're unhappy if there are things distracting them we're extremely lucky almost the children are getting the same messages at home that they are at school and that to me is very very important [Music] ones the finishes are like five o'clock yeah and so today that's normal performance to finish like three o'clock i just have more time to mess around watch tv expect her right now to walk into my next lesson or something or i'll go somewhere where i need to be but i don't really need to be anywhere so it is strange it's not just the longer school day which is different for katie and john like half of all pupils at warminster they both board spending weeks at a time away from their parents [Music] one of the advantages we have at walmart is time we are a seven day a week school so saturday is all about sport but there's often things in the evening sunday we have chapel for the borders and there's plenty of activities there it is a wrap around care while after school clubs are on offer at bem rose most children leave the school by 3 o'clock so what you're doing today kasim heads home with his buddy for the week john so what would you want to do as a job earn millions for doing absolutely nothing that would be a brilliant job but i'm afraid one like that doesn't exist it does what growing up inheriting your parents money making someone else run your business just get the money that sounds like a good job i would love that i was i think anyone would about 3 15 i arrive home and then just eat upstairs get changed play xbox until dinner church i've never had an xbox one controller that's pretty cool only 360s isn't nice i'm a bit jealous because like you guys are in school so early and you don't have any prep so you've got so much free time if you have detentions would you be in school time yeah you're in school time not all the time so there's not really detention it's like lunch times like detentions this kind of sucks think i've had like all one detention this year really i get away with it in women's disturb you've always got something occupying you which means it's less time for you to mess around i think that maybe i wouldn't have the same amount of discipline here [Music] despite its shorter day pemrose invests heavily in pastoral care [Music] come through this is cherry tree deputy head neil wilkinson shows mark around the school's dedicated unit students will come in through the main entrance here they'll come to the window and they'll liaise ideally with the head of house if they're upset about something or something's happened to them or they want to disclose or you know we'll bring them in i always believe that school is the most stable fit thing for many of them in their day and so when they come to school if they know that they're cared for they want to we will provide for their need as much as we possibly can the office is staffed by four full-time heads of house whose job is to offer support to pupils when children arrive unhappy or when something goes wrong for them they need help on that day and not to the second but very quickly after the need arises so if your support mechanism is a teacher then they're going to say to you oh i'm ever so sorry but i'm teaching so i can't actually help you until four hours time one of the ways cherrytree helps pupils is restorative justice hi girls mark joins head of house and dakin as she oversees a session right now um you want to start chanel can you tell me what happened then chanel please we were walking out from the dt block yeah and as i was coming out victoria yeah slapped me around the face okay thank you for that you heard what she had to say now can i hear what you have to say what happened out i came with my friend and then there are some yeah they are small space and lots of chat people yeah okay so you felt like that you'd been pushed and shoved and that you then so you slapped her back yeah okay how do we sort this out between the two of you what do you think needs to happen like if you don't tell me like that or two so you wanted to stop saying making comments to you in lessons okay fair enough and what about you chanel maybe you could think about what you're saying yeah yeah is that fair from what victoria said to you yeah is that okay yeah yeah yeah good thank you chanel so what's the threshold for coming to you for anything um this just happened yeah if there's an instant in the lesson and the teachers want to get us involved in that they'll let us know and then we will do it later it is dealing with conflict and it's teaching them the skills of how to do that and it's actually re-educating them in certain areas how you can empathize with somebody and not have to talk in that way to somebody else it has had a massive effect and it spread throughout the school so behaviors calm everywhere is calm and you're more likely to look i think it's a great idea i think it's a great idea that you're not always sanctioning children and punishing them and that they understand the consequences of their action it's definitely something that we can take from from here and and implement at warminster the school spends almost a million pounds a year on additional support for its pupils a fifth of its annual budget there are clearly a number of children here who face significant challenges just in terms of coming to school understanding how to learn speaking english having enough clothes to keep warm enough food to thrive when i'm back at walmart getting worked up about whether i'm going to have asparagus or beans for lunch remembering back to some of the challenges that benrose faces will be helpful in me and putting some of the problems we deal with at walmart to perspective i hope i don't forget that [Music] come on move man private school headmaster mark mortimer is spending a week at pemrose comprehensive school in derby i think there's a misconception that success or achievement in independent schools it's about who you know well that's nonsense that might have been relevant years ago i don't think that's relevant anymore i think that the answer is that many pupils leave independent schools genuinely believing that they can achieve anything they like if they set their mind to it they have high self-esteem and they have self-confidence at benrose that very self-esteem and self-confidence are lacking for some students of particular concern are white british boys wednesday brett riley gets up early to attend a breakfast club targeting this group in 2012 the memro school received a good ofsted rating but the need to improve the achievement of white british boys was highlighted all right mr carl nice to meet you all right here yes that's fine teacher mustang khan has been running these weekly meetings before school for the last year okay we'll make a start because uh times are already with us today we're going to be talking about investing in yourselves so joining brett is private school pupil zander oh anybody heard of that kind of phrase investing in yourself right all right make sure we go to after school lessons and stuff like that make sure we get basically make sure we push ourselves okay and talk about in a general level so there's different areas eating the right food cheap tasty food okay which is unhealthy what kind of foods am i talking about kebab okay kebab you can get a burger and chips for 1.50 what happens if we eat this type of food once a month is a big deal not as much as having it every day can we all agree that it's not good for us okay in the long run these are your own decisions that you need to be making okay under achievement by white working class pupils is a national issue they are consistently the lowest performing group of pupils in the country there's millions of people out there who have conditioned themselves that it's not worth it you've gone a lesson you've tried the teachers i don't know said it's not very good and you actually believe that you're not very good as well so you condition yourself to say you know what i'm not very good we'll carry on with this uh next week okay make sure you finish this take this food as we're going to be making our way to the team we are doing homework because schools for work homes for my time i i i've just never done it it just doesn't really appeal to me some of the reasons i don't do it is because i kind of share room never have time for myself to do it i want to concentrate properly and that kind of stuff but it's actually saving the teacher's time they'd have to go home and mark it so the kids are quite truthful they say themselves you know some of them don't like coming to school because they don't enjoy it because they don't see the point both i've said to them again and again i said lads you physically come to school but you're not present yeah they find it hard to kind of understand that you know i've got the uniform on time you know what do you mean and you know switching the on switch on yeah that's it isn't it i mean they're going through the motions they're going through the motions so i was just trying to give them a take a little bit of ownership yeah what we're trying to do at my school is really very similar to what you're trying to do but it's this idea that you can get there look there will be knocks along the way there will be obstacles but don't worry about that and it needs to be i think a sort of relentless focus on this across the school so at every opportunity those standards are reinforced [Music] mark's a big believer in developing character building qualities outside the classroom you enjoy boxing good stuff i'm looking forward to it nice to meet you you too can you tell me what this is what this is about just teases a bit of discipline and it gets them out of school for an hour to everyone it's open right the way from year seven to nine are you taking part yeah really i've got some kids over there thank you all right come on guys let's go stan runs boxing sessions for bem rose pupils twice a week this is just one of a variety of non-academic activities and classes the school pays for troy stretches mate do it as you walk around just look at troy we're sort of 10 minutes from school yeah and so the school pays to hire the gym here they've just got all the facilities that we haven't got at the school and what benefit do you think they get from it ones that lack self-esteem just builds that confidence and gives them something to do out of school [Applause] research has linked social mobility to school leavers confidence and self-discipline hitting one of these bags for a minute on a minute off quite physically quite quite tiring you know you've got to stick with that absolutely you've got to clock in the corner counting down you've got to keep going in terms of learning that actually you can do it you can keep going is a good important lesson it's about the importance of children looking at things and thinking well i've not done that before so rather than therefore shy away from it actually i'm going to engage with it and given it give it a go then rose it's got a lot of space but it doesn't have all the facilities but they're just not enough hours in the day i think when you're when your day finishes at ten to three and i know there are after school clubs but uh it's it's more of a challenge just from a logistical point of view the fact i think that at warminster we have the time and the resources facilities to do that but it puts us at an advantage [Music] as the week draws to a close private school pupil xander visits the home of penrose student brett i didn't clean it today that's fine come on do you share us with who troy all right cool it's cool how much pressure is there for you to fit in with everyone else and what they're doing i always feel like if i don't fit in with people i won't have friends and stuff like that but i'm not sure really it's just a bit weird you know my advice to you be like stick around the kids who are nice if you hang around with them a bit i think you'll start like maybe learning like a lot more and starting to enjoy it a bit more yeah that was really awesome you're really good at giving advice aren't you so you when you the peer pressure and that sort of attitude of not wanting to learn that is definitely something which sort of starts to break down confidence because suddenly you're being being judged a lot more 36 equals six times six what is the smallest i don't know pizza which i found the first couple of days of memories i can feel people judging me i can feel that it's confidence zapping if i'd been at memories for my whole school life i think i wouldn't be so driven i would be so determined they look amazing i mean some of us got out in the middle of the night to get themselves ready on the private school visitors last day there's a party for students leaving memrose this year back at walmart i've outlined my views on what makes a first class education i suppose where i was slightly naive is how easy it might be to implement that at benrose it is easier in the context of warmister but my idea of what comprises a first class education hasn't changed [Music] for marx pupils it's been an education of a different kind this week thank you it's been great very welcome it's been absolutely wonderful i think i would say i was sort of the classic quite right-wing private school boy when i of walked in here and i'm walking out with more understanding of the world around me why do my parents send me to women's day and the other kids parents can't do that [Music] it's lucky that i'm past that seven percent which go to private school on you get got a lot of luck got the right three yeah i find it really fun it's been a real eye-opener to what school life is like in state schools it's also reassured me that it's actually better than i thought it was going to be a stage [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Our Stories

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Keywords: Our Stories, Documentary, Observational Documentary, Real Stories, Full Episode, Full Length Episodes, Full Documentary, Fly On The Wall, Yearbook, Real Life, Documentaries, Real Lives, Behind The Scenes, school swap, school swap the class divide, the class divide, school swap class divide, education, school, educating, school documentary, posh kids, public school, state school, private school

Id: qXvaGrZINl4

Length: 44min 49sec (2689 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 12 2021