Destination Education
00:11:42 · Ruth Benny, Scott Crawford
[00:11:42] S0: make that announcement yet? Did I miss it? [00:11:44] S1: Come out, so we've committed to investing £6,500,000 in our sporting estate at the College. We've just finished a £2,500,000 refurbishment of our swimming pool which looks amazing, it's a great resource. And we want to make a new covered space for hockey and tennis all year round. The Sussex weather is lovely but it's not always. If we have an extra covered space we can do more high quality sport all the way through the year. [00:12:12] S0: But you're developing that internally, what do you think, you hadn't gone down the pathway of doing a partnership with another branded sports team of some sort? I thought that's what you were going to say. Did you consider that? [00:12:25] S1: That might be [00:12:26] S0: Okay. Something in the Watch this space. Yeah, I mean the CapEx situation, tried, I mean it's very complicated, we won't go into that, but I'd be interested in the parent version. Because it's a very complicated structure of the school. Let me ask you more about your, you've taken a year, if I'd gone back to your old school, that was Magdalen College in Oxford, and asked them what's your leadership style, what would they say?
00:12:26 · Ruth Benny, Scott Crawford
[00:12:26] S0: Okay. Something in the Watch this space. Yeah, I mean the CapEx situation, tried, I mean it's very complicated, we won't go into that, but I'd be interested in the parent version. Because it's a very complicated structure of the school. Let me ask you more about your, you've taken a year, if I'd gone back to your old school, that was Magdalen College in Oxford, and asked them what's your leadership style, what would they say? [00:13:00] S1: I think they'd say that I'm consultative, too many T's in that, I think they would say I'm consultative but clear. So think I'm very keen to work with good teams to get their input, to take some time to understand a problem and then make a decision. Very quickly, as you know in any kind of leadership position, realise that you can't please everybody all the time. But maybe you can please most of the people most of the time by trying to find a way through. And I'll only consult on things that I'm genuinely consulting on. I think if you know what you're going to do then just do it. I think that's something I've become more confident about as a leader in school over the management experience I've had. [00:13:49] S0: Good job you weren't a politician. What was I gonna ask? I've completely lost my train of thought to about your leadership style. I don't remember. Do you, okay How Lancing College, what is a Lancing student, how do you define a student who will be successful in your school? [00:14:17] S1: I think we don't. [00:14:19] S0: Okay, fair enough.
00:14:19 · Ruth Benny, Scott Crawford
[00:14:19] S0: Okay, fair enough. [00:14:20] S1: By that I mean there's not a particular mould that we want a Lancing student to occupy. It is a school, this is a biological reference again, it is a school where you can find your own niche and there's a lot of ways in which you can have a journey through Lancing. We don't have tribes and cliques within the school. I'm delighted to see that some of our top first to live in hockey players and football players are also on the stage and they're also in the choir and they're also doing really well academically. We have 150 different clubs and societies every week and the number particularly isn't important, but the idea is that there is a lot there to help you self discover what you are interested in and what you want to do. We don't prescribe what that's going to be. When I went on my interview, when I was applying for the job, I had a tour from a prefect who was in the Upper Sixth right at the end of their time at the College, a very polished, very assured young man and at the end of the tour he said to me Lancing identified something in me which I didn't know myself. And I thought wow, this is such an amazing thing to say, But it speaks to the idea of the school helping young people to work out who they are and what they want to do and where they're going to go. And you can't funnel children in a particular path if you want [00:15:52] S0: to do that.
00:15:52 · Ruth Benny, Scott Crawford
[00:15:52] S0: to do that. [00:15:54] S1: That said, if I may, they do need to enjoy being busy because it is a busy school and we pack a lot in. I think if you're a naturally curious child who enjoys being busy and getting stuck in, then you'll have a great time at Lancing. [00:16:08] S0: They definitely keep them busy. They're exhausted when they come home for the holidays and that's a good thing. [00:16:16] S1: So are the teachers. [00:16:17] S0: Yes, right. Oh, was the question I was going ask you a moment ago. Changes. Did you look at the staffing and make any changes? [00:16:26] S1: So just before I arrived my predecessor Dominic appointed a new Senior Deputy Head who is absolutely fantastic, her name is Emma Kate Henry, hugely experienced and she is a key member of my team, obviously as the senior deputy. I appointed over the last year a new Director of External Relations for the top exec team, that's Victoria, and she leads on everything outward facing that the School does, including our alumni network and working with OALs across the world and our communications and our marketing strategy. It's a really key role to get right, and we've appointed a new development director too in the last year. At the top some key appointments and we've recruited over the last year maybe five or six new teachers. Teachers tend to stay at Lancing because they have a great time, so we don't have a large turnover each year. But we've recruited half a dozen or so outstanding new teachers across the subjects this year and they're settling in well. [00:17:36] S0: Do you have children?
00:17:36 · Ruth Benny, Scott Crawford
[00:17:36] S0: Do you have children? [00:17:37] S1: No I don't. Often say to people when they ask me that I've got 600 and they're in school and they keep me busy. [00:17:45] S0: I want to go back to this, you raised it earlier and it comes up often that don't want to be a school that you're solely focused on grades. Yet in 2026, UK universities are still very much about A level scores. So as parents writing enormous figurative checks for boarding school, how do you talk to parents about this idea that you want to develop the whole child, which is a bit of a cliche, and they do need to get those grades, obviously. What are the conversations you're having with parents around this?
00:18:24 · Scott Crawford
[00:18:24] S1: Parents, they absolutely need to be thinking about the academic profile of the school because that's the fundamental aspect of education and we certainly do deliver on academics. We're not at the pointy end of academic selection at Lancing, but we have kids at the college who get four A Stars and go off to Oxford. We've also got kids who arrive with maybe C, B grade predictions and we turn them into A's and they go off and have great careers too. So I think that sense that the College can add value is a really important one. I think the landscape that these young people are going to be entering into in terms of the workplace over the next decade or so, no one can really predict. But what you can predict is that those who are going to succeed are those who are adaptable and agile and good communicators and able to convince and work with people. All those what we used to call soft skills when I was a kid, but are now fundamental. Everything that the school offers in terms of extracurriculars, sport, music, drama, pastoral, all those things are geared up to developing those skills which are going to be such important attributes in addition to the exam grades when they leave us. So that's the way in which I try and square