An Intelligent Person's Guide to Education

Description

Tony Little is The Head Master of Eton. One of the most progressive and imaginative people in British education today he has hitherto kept a low profile. This book, published to coincide with his retirement, sets out his educational fundamentals. There is a crisis in the British education system. Year on year GCSE and A Level pupils post better exam results, with more students achieving top grades. Yet business leaders and employers complain bitterly that our schools are not producing people fit for purpose. Far from being locked in an ivory tower, a bastion of privilege, Mr Little has used his time as a teacher and headmaster to get to grips with fundamental questions concerning education. He wants to produce people fit to work in the modern world. How do children absorb information? What kind of people does society need? What is education for? Not only is the author one of the great reforming headmasters of our time but he has planted Academies in the East end of London, founded a state boarding school near Windsor and yet is a passionate advocate of single sex schools. This book is not a text book for colleges of education - it is a book to enlighten the teaching profession and just as much for anxious parents. The book is simply arranged under topics such as authority, expectations, progress, self-confidence, sex, crises and creativity. Tony Little thinks it is time to ask some fundamental questions, and to make brave decisions about how we make our schools and our schoolchildren fit for purpose.

Tony Little was educated at Eton College and has taught at various schools in the UK. He has led three schools over the past 25 years and was appointed Head Master of Eton in 2002. Working with state and independent institutions at home and abroad he has become a passionate believer in the transformative effect of good, modern boarding schools.

Here is a man who has spent a lifetime getting to know children well, and has been thinking as hard about what they need as their parents have ... [An Intelligent Person's Guide to Education] is a humane and committed introduction to how the rest of us, parents and teachers alike, can use our own common sense * Daily Telegraph * A hugely reassuring, common-sense guide no parent of teenage boys should be without. Little's 10 top tips for dealing with adolescents are alone worth the cover price. -- Sian Griffiths * Sunday Times * This is a work of reflection, humility and insight ... Brisk, well-written and warm ... [an] intelligent account of a lifetime spent teaching, learning and leading in the smartest echelons of the English education system -- Tristram Hunt MP * New Statesman * Enlightening and enriching ... full of common sense * Daily Mail * This is a wonderful book. Tony Little captures the magic, the surprising alchemy that makes things work in an outstanding school, and offers hope and inspiration to people elsewhere. -- Carey Schofield * Spectator *