King’s Wimbledon: scholarship before the league tables

1958: scholarship and breadth were already present

Historical account · May and October 1958

The very first newsletter, in May 1958, sets a new Science Building beside Oxford and Cambridge scholarships and exhibitions won in scientific subjects and the humanities alike, which is how schools like to be seen. By October the societies ran from astronomy and natural history to film, jazz and ship study. Two aimed well beyond a hobby: the Leonardo Society set itself explicitly against the narrowing effects of specialisation, and P.E.S.T.S. – one hopes the initials were deliberate – took on political, ethical, social and theological questions. Neither list counts heads. An award isn’t a university place, still less a degree, and a list of societies doesn’t say who came.

Old King’s Club Newsletter 1 · May 1958 · PDF page 3

Old King’s Club Newsletter 2 · October 1958 · PDF page 4

1964: a teacher’s work, remembered by a headmaster

Historical account · October 1964 retirement tribute

Tributes to a retiring master are written to praise. The headmaster’s farewell to Hubert Greenwood, the history master, in October 1964 duly does, but it is precise about what for, naming scholarly standards, of course, and with them balanced judgement and the careful assessment of sources, and putting the department’s good name at the universities down to his work as teacher and organiser. Those last two virtues carry a small irony, since they are exactly what one needs to read a tribute like this, a form not famous for either. It can’t speak for every pupil he taught, but it shows, without slogans, what the school valued in a teacher.

Old King’s Club Newsletter 20 · October 1964 · PDF page 7

1970: continuity of care as an organisational proposal

Historical account · January 1970 announcement

In January 1970 the School News pages announce a tutor system, under which comparatively small groups would stay with one member of staff throughout their school careers. It is a humane idea, arranging on purpose what schools usually leave to luck, that some adult should know a particular child from one year to the next. Like most January promises, the notice is written in the future tense. The passages we read never return to it in the past, so they describe a plan and say nothing of what came of it. A family might fairly ask who at King’s now knows a pupil from year to year, and how they would notice a difficulty.

Old King’s Club Newsletter 35 · January 1970 · PDF page 6

1993: public results without making results the whole purpose

Historical account · April 1993 publication of the headmaster’s account

Robin Reeve, the headmaster, writes about results in April 1993 with more candour than the subject usually gets. King’s, he says, had published summary examination results since 1980 and been noticed more after Financial Times coverage in 1990, which suggests that publishing one’s own figures counts for less than being written about. Results fluctuate, he concedes. No results table ever says that about itself. The school’s reputation, he argues, should rest on a stimulating education, inside lessons and out, and for a parent with a league table open in another window that makes this the most useful passage in the archive, since it gives the table its place and stops it there.

Old King’s Club Newsletter 82 · April 1993 · PDF page 6

A building can test the remembered chronology

Historical account · October 1978 report and November 1997 retrospective

Four years later a retirement appreciation, in the newsletter for November 1997, lists a Music School among the buildings erected during Robin Reeve’s headship. Pieces of that kind round a career off, and dates can get rounded with them, so an older notice is worth fetching. In October 1978 the newsletter had reported a newly opened Music School, with teaching and rehearsal rooms, and beside that report the 1997 list can’t be taken quite as it stands. Whether it folded separate projects together or meant some later work, the passages alone don’t say, and it would take further building records to settle.

Old King’s Club Newsletter 54 · October 1978 · PDF page 2

Old King’s Club Newsletter 91 · November 1997 · PDF page 4Open the original ↗

2001–2008: breadth becomes a curriculum decision

Historical account · October 2001, October 2006 and December 2008 publications

In October 2001 the newsletter sets out a choice between A levels and the International Baccalaureate, and its account of the IB ties subject breadth to Theory of Knowledge, an extended research essay and creative, physical and service activities. In October 2006 the governors describe a commitment to replace A levels from September 2007, and the December 2008 issue still reports the final A-level candidates beside the IB cohort, which is less odd than it looks, since starting a course and finishing an examination cohort are different events. Nor does a policy announced in 2006 describe what King’s offers now; our reading of the qualification mix keeps the later A-level and IB records apart.

It is tempting to draw a straight line from the Leonardo Society to the IB, and the two do look alike. The line, though, is ours. Nothing in the newsletters shows that one led to the other, and a school that wanted breadth in 1958 may simply have gone on wanting it, a duller story that asks less of the record.

Old King’s Club Newsletter 99 · October 2001 · PDF page 5Open the original ↗

Old King’s Club Newsletter 99 · October 2001 · PDF page 6Open the original ↗

Old King’s Club Newsletter 109 · October 2006 · PDF page 7Open the original ↗

Old King’s Club Newsletter 114 · December 2008 · PDF page 6Open the original ↗

When school news moves, an apparent gap changes meaning

Historical account · July 2007, May 2008 and December 2008 publications

In July 2007 the archive’s plumbing changes. The Club explains that its newsletter will now travel with a wider community publication and leave school news out; by May 2008 KCSNEWS and JUNIOR VIEWS, capitals and all, have replaced that publication. The December 2008 newsletter prints the school’s exam results anyway, as school news will in a former pupils’ magazine whatever the editors intend. If you counted the school’s appearances in these years you would partly be counting the plumbing, since a thin year might just mean a different magazine. An archive built from good news and tributes can’t speak equally for those who drifted away or were unhappy, and what it leaves out proves nothing.

Old King’s Club Newsletter 111 · July 2007 · PDF page 2

Old King’s Club Newsletter 113 · May 2008 · PDF page 3

Old King’s Club Newsletter 114 · December 2008 · PDF page 6Open the original ↗

What the archive leaves a family to ask

Editorial interpretation · Questions arising from the dated accounts above

For a family reading this now, the archive narrows to one child and two things to ask the school: who will help that pupil make work of their own and keep it broad, and how a pupil who doesn’t push will find the opportunities these pages describe. The newsletters can’t answer for 2026. Our other readings follow the later results, the alumni network and the inspectors, who recorded what they saw at one particular time. Each keeps part of the score, and no publication, this one included, keeps all of it.

Sources and limits

• The current publication remains the authority for examination and destination figures. No number from the supplied synthesis has been added to the statistical record, or substituted for one already in it.
• This reading checks selected original passages. It does not take on the supplied research’s claims about retrieval across the whole archive, nor its rankings, its counts of subject visibility or its causal interpretations.
• Historical self-description and commemorative praise can’t tell you what every pupil experienced, how safe the school is now, its social composition or how its teaching compared with other schools’.