While maintained schools across Wales start the new curriculum this term, a private school head has explained why his pupils won’t be. Alun Millington opened his own secondary school, Redhill High, in Clynderwen, Pembrokeshire after a career mainly in the state sector.
Redhill High School, which serves children aged 11 to 18, opened with 24 pupils in 2018 and now has 90, with the school expanding during the pandemic. Mr Millington, who was educated at a comprehensive in Swansea, didn’t set foot in a private school until 2014 and doesn’t want to criticise the state sector, but feels there are alternatives people want.
Under the new curriculum for Wales traditional subject boundaries have been ditched in favour of faculties. But Mr Millington said he, his staff and parents who sent their children to Redhill preferred to continue with separated individual subjects taught by specialist teachers. You can read more details about the new curriculum and how it works here
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“We are not following the new curriculum. Everything we do is preparing for exams. We still have subject boundaries and wellbeing is also part of that," he said.
“Our core curriculum is different to the new curriculum in terms of maintaining subjects discretely. We want our students to love individual subjects and be taught by people who love their subjects. I think the new curriculum has some amazing opportunities, but for what our parents want our model is different.”
Pupils at Redhill High currently sit WJEC exams, but when GCSEs are reformed in line with the new curriculum that will change: “When GCSEs change we will recalibrate or go to English board exams,” Mr Millington said. “We do WJEC exams now and are involved with the exam board.”
He stressed his school had an emphasis on many of the other elements of the new curriculum already, including wellbeing: “We promote Welsh and county sports and are part of our communities. We balance intention of effort to do well and wellbeing. You won’t hear shouting and teacher/student relationships are informal but there are very clear lines. There’s a unique atmosphere here. It’s a private school but children and teenagers still have challenges and you have to provide support.”
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The father of two went to Penlan Comprehensive in Swansea, now Ysgol Byrn Tawe, and won a place to study history at Oxford University before starting a teaching career at state schools in London. He said the teachers he'd had as a comprehensive schoolboy, as well as those he met in his career in maintained schools, inspired him.
“My children have been to Welsh medium primaries and my son went to the Valleys comprehensive I taught in. I have been in all kinds of schools.
“I went to a working class comprehensive in Swansea and loved it. The teachers had challenges but never gave up - they did not put limits on your dreams, and that’s what we do here.”
When the opportunity to set up and run his own school came along Mr Millington was deputy head at the independent St Michael School, Llanelli, which he arrived at in 2014 as someone who had never before been inside a private school.
Redhill High School took him and his wife Bethan, a former FE college teacher, a year to set up before it opened in September, 2018. There are four other directors, Peter and Meryl Lovegrove, who run Redhill prep school in Pembrokeshire, and Laura Tomp and her husband Ed, who ran the Valero refinery.
“I did this because an opportunity came along. I thought it would be marvellous and we could do it ourselves. A lot of private schools are all about results, but I felt we could get those as well as keeping children healthy, confident and relaxed.”
What no-one could predict was that less than two years later the pandemic would hit. Mr Millington admitted he expected parents to take their children away as learning went online during lockdowns. Infact, the reverse happened and Redhill saw applications rise - pupil numbers grew from 24 in 2018-19 to 30 in 2019-20, to 50 in 2020-21 and 90 in 2021-22.
“I would imagine people became anxious and saw private schools as a solution during the pandemic,” the head said. "We were worried when Covid started because parents are paying and if you can’t physically teach you worry parents won’t want to carry on, but they did."
Lessons at Redhill went online straight away when schools were ordered to shut. There were form sessions and check-ins and help for those with internet problems. Children didn’t have to turn their cameras on and lessons were adapted so they weren’t on screens all day.
“Because we had recently set up the school teachers were excited there was a new challenge and knew they could lose their jobs if we struggled. I think the biggest anxiety for us is we have high performing students who are keen and ambitious and were geared up for exams when they were cancelled."
Everyone was concerned about the effect of exam cancellations on results.
“We are geared around great wellbeing and academic success and some felt despondent the exams they had been working towards were cancelled. We had a very small, bright cohort and we were confident in our teacher assessed judgements of their results. We had six students taking GCSEs in 2020, our first cohort. Grades were fine but there was a hidden effect of school being on computers and people not being exam ready when they started.”
The school, which charges £12,000 a year and £12,500 in the sixth form, began with years seven to 10 in 2018 and added years as they went. That meant summer, 2022, was the first year of a full sat A level exam series for Redhill as well as the first set of summer exams nationally for three years.
Mr Millington said he was “very happy” with 69% of A levels taken graded A*-A and 88% of GCSES A* to B this summer.
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“Sometimes people will project onto a private school what they want - everyone has been to school so they all have an opinion.”
And while the school prides itself on academic success, has entrance exams and scholarships, there is a focus on wellbeing and home. Because lots of the children travel long distances the day starts at 9am and ends at 3.30pm.
Alun and his wife Bethan, who have a grown up son Rhys, send their daughter Amara to Redhill so feel they have perspectives as parents and teachers: “We make a big fist of the home, school, child triangle. Being a head teacher in the school my child goes to causes no real issues.
"You are at a slight disadvantage at parents evenings. It means it could be harder to address things. But that’s never come up. You have to be modest and tread carefully. We adopted Amara as a baby from an orphanage in Addis Ababa. I feel really proud she is in the school in the beautiful Pembrokeshire countryside."
The new curriculum
All primary schools in Wales have started rolling out the new curriculum this term. More than half of secondaries have taken the option of delaying the start to the biggest education reform for decades until September 2023, although they will continue preparing.
Three of Wales’ 22 local education authorities don’t have a single secondary rolling out the new curriculum this academic year. Whitchurch High in Cardiff and Olchfa High in Swansea are among those waiting until September 2023 to introduce the changes for all year seven.
Under the changes traditional boundaries between subjects are scrapped and links between them emphasised instead. For secondary schools this means instead of separate subjects there will be six “areas of learning and experience” (AoLEs). Subjects will be part of faculties. There has been criticism of this with some warnings that this could lead to “dumbing down” and schools no longer having heads of subjects.
Teachers and teaching unions are broadly supportive of the changes, but many said they had been left without enough time to prepare thanks to the pandemic.
Read next:
The huge changes to how schools will teach in Wales this term
What it costs to send kids to independent schools in Wales and how their results compare
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The full list of secondary schools starting Wales’ new curriculum this term
