Headmaster's Newsletter Friday 16 January 2026
Dear Parents,
You know how much I absolutely hate being right, but forgive me my victory lap when a recent headline in the press ran ‘Is the 11-plus making your child stupid?’. Just to clarify at the outset, the answer at NCS – where our senior schools use 11+ assessments for 13+ entry – is a resolute ‘no!’ (and we wouldn’t use such words), but I can’t be so sure elsewhere. I have spent the best part of the last two decades warning people, sometimes not so subtly, about the unintended consequences of certain types of assessment. So imagine my joy now it seems that the rest of the world is finally catching up.
The article makes the following points: the exams, especially Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning tests, ‘turn children into bots, making them less intellectually curious’. They hinder curiosity and a love of learning. They are (in places) ‘taught intensely at the expense of wider reading and learning’. They could therefore also actually hamper children’s intelligence. Even the founder of one of the country’s largest tutoring agencies – such agencies, it should be added, are arguably complicit in this – has noted that the top years of a prep school should be ‘an educationally fruitful time’ but the obsessive VR/NVR approach is ‘actually counterproductive’. He says ‘we love teaching maths and English, History and other subjects that have genuine educational value’. But the focus on the narrow stuff makes children ‘less intellectually curious, more instrumentalist’ so they become ‘less educated, less intelligent’.
A few years ago I asked a governor at a big VR-obsessed secondary school why they put so much emphasis on such a narrow approach. ‘Because’, he said, ‘VR has the closest correlation to GCSE results’. But, I protested, everyone knows that GCSEs are flawed ways of assessing anything as well. ‘I know’, he said. But if you set your school up as needing to show off in GCSE-obsessed league tables, then you need to work backwards to see who will achieve the right GCSE results, whether or not those results denote true intelligence. You can imagine how loudly I sighed.
The aforementioned tutoring agency founder agrees, noting that ‘It’s what educationalists always decry at GCSEs: cramming short-term knowledge, which is then forgotten the hour after the exam’. No one is saying that there are easy alternative answers, especially when the juggernaut hurtles at such a speed, and it is understandable when it picks up anxious parents and pupils along the way. But if we are serious about education being proper education – and I think it’s rather clear that we are indeed serious about this at NCS – then the wider educational world does need to start some serious rethinking. Reading School, for example, has rethought its admissions process, to take into account broader curiosity and creativity in subjects like History and Geography, alongside the important elements of English and Maths. They are working to undo the ‘functional view of education’, opening up their school to those who have interesting ideas beyond the quick-processing reasoning-crunchers who can be easily placed on a spreadsheet.
I was one of those children, and in my previous incarnation at NCS I was Deputy Head Academic, so perhaps I’m well placed to observe the dangers of such a system. We also need to be honest: we do have Thinking and Reasoning lessons in the middle years at NCS, we send home pre-test preparation packs with reasoning books in them, we keep VR and NVR ticking over as they get older – all because we have to do well by our pupils, and to ensure they are comfortably prepared for what is coming next in their 11+ papers for 13+ senior school entry. By which I mean we do have a duty to exist within the system that has been bestowed on us by some senior schools. But – and this is an enormous BUT – we have not, and never will, sacrifice proper education on the altar of Verbal Reasoning-obsessed pre-tests. True education, real education, is broad, creative, interesting, curious, inspiring. It places reasoning questions in a much broader context. I am tired of hearing of more and more schools narrowing their offering at the most wonderfully creative and inspiring time of pupils’ lives. One school in London recently replaced a whole afternoon of sport with, you guessed it, Verbal Reasoning; I recently heard of another that doesn’t do Art or DTE because it would take time away from, you guessed it, subjects assessed in pre-tests. I can’t think of a more corrosive way to approach education, to stunt intellectual curiosity and development, and to make – if we are not careful – rather unhappy automatons.
Have a great weekend,
Matt Jenkinson
Following on from the above … as we continue through the pre-test and scholarship season, I would like to extend our best wishes to all those boys (and their families) who are involved. There is a lot of steady preparation being done, I know, to ensure that the boys feel comfortable and can give their cheerful best. We can’t ask any more from them than that. Further information about our pre-test preparation can be found at https://www.newcollegeschool.org/page/?title=Future+Schools&pid=104.
Services in New College for Hilary 2026 begin with evensong at 18.15 this evening, and we wish the choristers well for their endeavours this term. As ever, NCS families are always very warmly welcome to New College chapel. The full schedule of services is available at https://www.new.ox.ac.uk/chapel.
We are very much looking forward to the NCSPA Quiz Night on Friday 30 January at 19.00 (questions start promptly at 19.30). The evening includes question rounds set by the SLT and a curry meal with vegetarian options from 19.00; there is also a cost-price bar. Entry is by sign-up only, via https://tinyurl.com/232s2xdb. There is also the option for (cheap!) childcare, staffed by NCS teachers, in the auditorium. Advance sign-up for this is required at https://square.link/u/5GxqQDJw. The Quiz Night always proves to be one of the best nights of the year in the school calendar. In previous quizzes, teams (of up to 10) have grouped themselves by year group, but this is not a hard-and-fast rule. There is also, traditionally, a Year 8 pupil team, for whom the cost is significantly reduced and tickets for these boys are available at https://square.link/u/ArmWjUtn.
Year of Reading: On Thursday, Emma Krebs introduced the prep school to the life and career of Dolly Parton. As if writing Jolene and 9 to 5 weren't enough, Dolly is also a patron of reading. Her Imagination Library gifts free books to children from birth until their fifth birthday. Unfortunately (although it is available in other parts of the UK), the Imagination Library is not currently operating in Oxfordshire. The 'welcome book' is Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit and the 'graduation book' is Nick Sharratt and Pippa Goodhart's Just Imagine. Parents who have participated in the programme report their favourite pick from the library is Eric Carle's Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? All three are warmly recommended (by the Queen of Country herself!) to our pupils in Reception and Year 1.
Monday 19 January 2026 14.00 U13 B-D Hockey v d'Overbroeck's, St Edward's Wednesday 21 January 2026 8.15 Eco Committee Meeting (CLC) 9.00 Chapel. Speaker: Mr Nick Thomas, author, journalist and former NCS parent 13.00 Rehearsals for Scholars' Recital (New Space) 14.00 U13 A-D Hockey Hockey v Summer Fields, St Edward's 14.15 U11 House Cross Country, uni Parks 18.00 Music Scholars' Recital (New Space) Friday 23 January 2026 14.00 U11 A Hockey County Cup, North Oxford Monday 26 January 2026 14.30 U12 A Hockey County Cup, North Oxford 17.30 NCSPA Meeting (CLC) Wednesday 28 January 2026 9.00 Chapel. Speaker: Dr Sarah Squire, Head of Cokethorpe 14.15 U13 A&B Hockey v Hatherop Castle, St Edward's 12.10 Year 4 Trip to Ashmolean (return 14.30) 18.00 Year 4 parents' evening Friday 30 January 2026 7.30 U12 A IAPS Hockey, St Edward's (return 16.00) 19.00 NCSPA Quiz and Curry Night -- sign-up only (Sports Hall; food from 19.00; rounds begin at 19.30)