Why did so many of the England World Cup Rugby team go to Independent Schools?

Today England play South Africa in the Rugby World Cup Final. Nine of the starting XV were educated at HMC Independent schools (12 out of the 23 man squad). 

HMC schools' disproportionate involvement in the England Rugby Squad is not a story of privilege, but a story of investment. HMC schools believe in school sport. We believe in competition. There are great rivalries between our schools going back over a century in many cases. We devote a significant portion of our school week to sport. We invest in top-quality coaching. Furthermore, we believe in giving talented young people the opportunity to benefit from all of that history and heritage. That is why we award scholarships and bursaries. This is a perfect example of how HMC schools benefit our nation by promoting excellence and widening opportunities.
HMC schools have an amazing track record of fostering sporting talent (See my articles on Independent schools' contributions to the GB Olympic teams in London 2012 and Rio 2016). 

It should be recognised that the school most represented in the team is not an HMC school, rather it is a boarding and day school, St George's, Harpenden with three players (Farrell, Ford and Itoje - who later went on to Harrow). 

Here's where the England Rugby World Cup Squad went to school - congratulations to all those schools and their dedicated coaches who inspired this generation of players:

England team to play South Africa: 

• Elliot Daly; Whitgift School, Croydon (HMC)
• Anthony Watson, St George’s Weybridge (HMC) 
• Manu Tuilagi, John Cleveland College (Maintained) 
• Owen Farrell, St George’s School, Harpenden (Maintained) 
• Jonny May, Hartpury College (Maintained) 
• George Ford, St George’s School, Harpenden (Maintained) 
• Ben Youngs; Gresham's School (HMC) 
• Mako Vunipola, Millfield (HMC) 
• Jamie George, Haileybury College (HMC) 
• Kyle Sinckler, Epsom College (HMC) 
• Maro Itoje, Harrow School (HMC) 
• Courtney Lawes Moulton College (Maintained) 
• Tom Curry, Oundle School (HMC) 
• Sam Underhill, Sir Thomas Rich’s School, Gloucester  (Maintained)
• Billy Vunipola, Harrow School (HMC) 

 Replacements: 

• Luke Cowan-Dickie, Truro College (Maintained) 
• Joe Marler, Heathfield Community College (Maintained) 
• Dan Cole, Robert Smythe Academy (Maintained) 
• George Kruis, St John’s Leatherhead (HMC) 
• Mark Wilson, Kirkbie Kendal School (Maintained) 
• Ben Spencer, Bramhall High School (Maintained) 
• Henry Slade, Plymouth College (HMC)
• Jonathan Joseph Millfield (HMC) 

Olympic Sport and the Nation's Health

My article published in the latest edition of the HMC Insight magazine

Related posts

• Independent School Medallists at the Rio Olympics 2016
• Independent School Medallists at the London Olympics 2012

Independent School Medallists at the Rio Olympics 2016

Independent Schools continue to make a significant contribution to British Sport (28% of Team GB for Rio 2016 come from Independent Schools) - this is something that we should celebrate. 

The final statistics in detail:

• 62 women have won medals for Team GB (2 won two medals), 22 of whom were educated at a UK independent school – 35% 
• 73 men have won medals for Team GB (1 won 3 medals, 5 won 2 medals), 20 of whom were educated at UK independent schools (2 won 2 medals) – 27% 
• 135 competitors have won medals for Team GB, 42 of whom were educated at UK independent schools – 31% 

Congratulations to the following former pupils of Independent Schools who have won medals for Team GB at the Rio Games:

Gold Medals:

• Cycling
• Katie Archibald (Glasgow Academy) Team Pursuit (WR)
• Equestrian
• Nick Skelton (Bablake) Individual Showjumping
• Hockey
• Crista Cullen (Oakham) 
• Alex Danson (Farnborough Hill) 
• Maddie Hinch (King's, Taunton) 
• Shona McCallin (Repton)
• Lily Owsley (Clifton College) 
• Sam Queck (Birkenhead High - then GSA)
• Susannah Townsend (Sutton Valence) 
• Georgie Twigg (Repton) 
• Nicola White (Oldham Hulme Grammar)
• Rowing
• Helen Glover (Millfield) Coxless Pair 
• Heather Stanning (Gordonstoun) Coxless Pair
• Constantine Louloudis (Eton)  Coxless Four
• George Nash (Winchester)  Coxless Four
• Tom Ransley (King's Canterbury) Eight
• William Satch (Shiplake) Eight
• Andrew Triggs-Hodge (Belmont Grosvenor) Eight
• Phelan Hill (Bedford) Eight
• Sailing
• Hannah Mills (Howell's, Llandaff) 470
• Triathlon
• Alistair Brownlee (Bradford Grammar)

Silver Medals

• Canoeing
• David Florence (Stewarts Melville) C2
• Equestrian
• Fiona Bigwood (Croydon High) Team Dressage
• Karl Hester (Elizabeth College, Guernsey) Team Dressage
• Rowing
• Victoria Thornley (Rydal Penrhos) Double Sculls
• Olivia Carnegie-Brown (Queen Anne's Caversham) Eight
• Katie Greves (Headington) Eight
• Frances Houghton (King's Canterbury) Eight
• Polly Swann (George Heriot's) Eight
• Zoe de Toledo (St Paul's) Eight
• Rugby Sevens
• Dan Bibby (Kirkham Grammar) 
• Alex Davis (QEH Bristol) 
• Ollie Lindsay Hague (Millfield) 
• Tom Mitchell (Worth) 
• James Rodwell (Berkhamsted)
• Marcus Watson (St George's Weybridge) 
• Swimming
• James Guy (Millfield) 4x200m Freestyle Relay
• Duncan Scott (Strathallan) 4x200m Freestyle Relay
• James Guy (Millfield) 4x100m Medley Relay
• Duncan Scott (Strathallan) 4x100m Medley Relay
• Triathlon
• Jonathan Brownlee (Bradford Grammar)

Bronze Medals

• Athletics
• Emily Diamond (Bristol Grammar) 4x400m Relay
• Diving
• Tom Daley (Plymouth College) Synchronised 10m Platform
• Gymanastics
• Amy Tinkler (Durham High) Floor [NB current pupil]

Looking Back to London 2012

• Why did pupils from Independent Schools win so many Olympic medals in London 2012?
• Independent Schools and Team GB Medallists in London 2012- The final Stats

My thanks to Georgina Belcher at the ISC for helping me with identifying the former schools of TeamGB.

Bill Walsh Lessons in Leadership Part One: An example of how to transform an organisation

Bill Walsh was the coach who turned around the San Francisco 49ers taking them from the bottom of the pile to being a team that won five Super Bowl titles in 15 years. His book The Score Takes Care of Itself - My Philosophy of Leadership is packed full of insights about how to lead and manage people and how to drive change in an organisation:

"Running a football franchise is not unlike running any other business. You start first with a structural format and basic philosophy and then find the people who can implement it."  (Frontispiece)

There is not sufficient space here to do justice to all the many insights in contained in the book, so I will endeavour to give a flavour here.

Standard of Performance
At the heart of Bill Walsh's approach is the Standard of Performance - i.e. the high requirements that he had for actions and attitudes. These applied not only to the players but to every person within the organisation (he was both Head Coach and General Manager). Everyone knew how they contributed to the aim of the organisation and what what was expected of them. 

These are the characteristics of his personal Standard of Performance:

1. Exhibit a ferocious and intelligently applied work ethic directed at continual improvement;
2. Demonstrate respect for each person in the organisation and the work he or she does;
3. Be deeply committed to learning and teaching, which means increasing my own expertise;
4. Be fair
5. Demonstrate character;
6. Honor the direct connection between details and improvement;
7. Show self-control, especially where it counts most - under pressure;
8. Demonstrate and prize loyalty;
9. Use positive language and have a positive attitude;
10. Take pride in my effort as entity separate from the result of that effort;
11. Be willing to go the extra distance for the organisation;
12. Deal appropriately with victory and defeat, adulation and humiliation;
13. Promote internal communication that is both open and substantive (especially under stress);
14. Seek poise in myself and those I lead;
15. Put the team's welfare and priorities ahead of my own;
16. Maintain an ongoing level of concentration and focus that is abnormally high; and
17. Make sacrifice and commitment the organisation's trademark.

Bill Walsh was a man who liked lists ("Great organisation is the trademark of great organisations" p.85) and the book contains many useful lists of advice. Here's one for Leaders:

Be a Leader - Twelve Habits Plus One

1. Be yourself
2. Be committed to excellence
3. Be positive
4. Be prepared (Good luck is the product of good planning)
5. Be detail-oriented (but don't bury yourself in the detail)
6. Be organized
7. Be accountable
8. Be near-sighted and far-sighted (keep everything in perspective)
9. Be fair
10. Be firm
11. Be flexible
12. Believe in yourself
13. Be a leader

"A self-sustaining winning organisation"
Walsh's leadership aim was to produce "a self-sustaining winning organisation" where "everyone is able to execute their responsibilities in all ways at the highest level" (p.229), even under extreme pressure. This was illustrated in the final play of the final game that Bill Walsh ever coached. In the Super Bowl XXIII,  San Francisco 49ers were trailing 13-16 when they got possession of the ball on their own 8 yard line with only 3:08 left on the clock. What followed became legendary in NFL history: The 92 yard "Drive" to win the Super Bowl with seconds to spare:

"The Drive" was in many ways a culmination of all that Bill Walsh stood for. It was the product of hours of training, preparation, excellent strategy and meticulous planning and, executed in the cauldron of the final seconds of a Super Bowl. San Francisco went on to win Super Bowl XXIV the following year - evidence, if any were needed, that Bill Walsh had indeed produced "a self-sustaining winning organisation".

This is a book that is already heavily annotated and one to which I know that I will return, time and time again. I cannot recommend it more highly.

There is a negative side to the Bill Walsh story, which I will discuss in Part Two of this review.

Independent Schools, Elite Sport and University Entrance

Letter to the Daily Telegraph
Published Saturday 21st June 2014

Sir,
Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, argues that a disproportionate number of independent school pupils represent Britain at elite sport. So what do we do? Do we have quotas of state pupils who represent GB at the Olympics or England at Rugby? No of course we don't. We aspire to bring sport in the maintained sector up to standard of sport in independent schools.
Independent schools also provide a disproportionate number of pupils to Oxford and Cambridge and Russell Group universities, so why is Offa seeking to impose a system of quotas? Why not try to raise academic standards amongst the most able in state schools?
Both TeamGB and UKplc need the best proven talent to compete on a global stage and quotas aren't going to help - a broader talent base will.

Mark S Steed
Principal, Berkhamsted School
Berkhamsted, Herts

Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture by Hilary Levey Friedman - Book Review

I bought this book on the back of a Harvard Business Review Blog article by the author (for links see previous blogpost) believing it to be a research study into the relationship between competitive sport/ activities and future university and career success. Sadly, despite this being the thrust both of the HBR article and of the book's Preface, this is not the core of its thesis. Rather, Playing to Win is a sociological study of American parenting - focusing on how and why (middle class) parents are devoting increasing amounts of time and money to taking their Elementary school aged children (age 5-8) to after-school competitive activities. It describes how parents think and behave and seeks to unpack their motivations and aspirations.

Methodology

The field research was clearly a significant undertaking for one person. The study, which was conducted over sixteen months, took a "deep dive" into three different competitive fields (soccer, dance and chess) with six to nine months devoted to each field. It considered the parents of 86 children;in two areas, one urban ("Metro") and the other suburban ("West County"). The primary source of information was 172 "semi-informal" interviews (95 of which were with parents). 

Hilary Levey Friedman's thesis is an interesting one 

'I argue that the extensive time devoted to competition is driven by parents' demand for credentials for their children, which they see as a necessary and often sufficient condition for entry into the upper middle class and the "good life" that accompanies this. I develop the concept of "Competitive Kid Capital" to explore the ways in which winning has become central to the lives of American children." (p.3)

and 

 'I argue that it is this organised, competitive element, outside of the home, that is key to understanding middle- and upper-middle-class family life.  Parents worry that if their children do not participate in childhood tournaments they will fall behind in the tournament of life.  Whilst it's not clear if the parents are correct, what matters is that they believe that they are and act accordingly. Their beliefs about the future shape their actions in the present when it comes to their children's competitive after-school activities.' (p.8)

"Competitive Kid Capital" 

Playing to Win identifies five reasons why parents believe that competitive activities are important for young children - she terms these benefits "competitive Kid Capital":  

1. This Sport internalizes the importance of winning; 
2. Sport helps young people to learn how to bounce back from a loss to win in the future; 
3. Sport teaches the importance of performing within time limits; 
4. Sport helps young people to learn how to succeed in stressful situations; 
5. Sport teaches the importance of being able to perform under the gaze of others.

Review

Hilary Levey Friedman's has excellent academic credentials (Harvard-Princeton-Harvard) and it is no surprise that the book is structured like a serious piece of sociological research (in the "say what you are going to say", "say it", "say what you said" style). The author has command of the relevant literature and studies - it goes without saying that the noting, referencing and indexing are immaculate. However, it falls short in two respects. First, the author has not yet mastered an engaging popular writing style (typified by Gladwell and Pink) and drifts from argument into anecdote and, at times, into a stream of consciousness (e.g. in the mis-named Conclusion, which degenerates into the author's personal reflections on the broad theme of parenting). Secondly, the field research on which this book draws was on such a small scale that it is very difficult to draw any wider conclusions with any degree of certainty.

What disappointed me most was that the book set out to answer the question, 'Why do so many families spend their weekends watching their children compete?' (p.3) but ended devoting so much space simply to documenting and describing the micro-societies that are the world of the out-of-school chess/ dance/ soccer parent. Consequently, I found myself wanting to write "Don't narrate, argue" in the margin for large parts of book (it took me back to the days of marking C grade A-level essays!). For this reason, the best parts of the book were undoubtedly the Preface and the Introduction, where Hilary Levey Friedman outlined (and argued) her central thesis - these are well worth a read.

Those of us who work in schools are only too aware that young people in the UK already are engaged in many more activities that were those of us of the parent generation and that competitive parenting increases the closer to London that one travels. Playing to win serves as a timely reminder that things are only likely to get worse.

As a parent, I am relieved that the lion share of my children's activities have been provided by the school 'as part of the package'. One of the great benefits of the independent sector is that so many after-school and holiday actives are provided by the school which extend and develop young people. Furthermore there are many opportunities to compete in a whole range of areas. In short, "Competitive Kid Capital" comes as standard.

Hilary Levey Friedman, Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture (September 2013)

Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice - Book Review

Bounce by Matthew Syed (International table-tennis champion turned Times columnist and feature writer) is a well-researched and instructive book that explores the theme of achieving exceptional performance, particularly (but not exclusively) in the realm of sport. As its one-word title suggests, Bounce sits within the genre of personal/ business thinking books that popularlise the results of psychological research, such as Blink, Drive, Mindset and Outliers - indeed Syed draws heavily in places on Dweck and overlaps in parts with Gladwell.

The book is presented in three parts. The first outlines the central thesis that talent is a myth and that success (particularly in sport) is in reality the product of three factors:

1. 10 years (= Gladwell's 10,000 hours) of "purposeful practice" under the guidance of expert coaches who provide stretching training programmes and constructive feedback;
   "Purposeful practice is about striving for what is just out of reach and not quite making it; it is about grappling with tasks beyond current limitations and falling short again and again." (p.79)
2. circumstance -  growing up in an environment which gives the opportunity to develop;
3. a "growth mindset" (Dweck).

Syed draws on a range of psychological research, illustrated by an excellent range of examples to support his thesis. What is particularly impressive about his analysis is the distinction that Syed makes between "simple" and "complex" tasks. He tacitly acknowledges that there are biological factors which give certain individuals advantage to perform simple tasks - for example high jumpers need to be tall and light - but that the playing field is much more level when it comes to complex activities, such as playing tennis. Here the three factors have their most impact.

The second part explores a range of angles on the psychology of (sporting) performance:  (1) the placebo effect - which includes an interesting discussion section on how religious belief can enhance sporting performance; (2) the curse of choking (under extreme pressure) and how to avoid it; and (3) a quirky chapter on the place of ritual and superstition within sporting performance.

The final section is in effect three essays that are only tenuously linked to the central theme (and have the feel that they were tagged on to make up the pages - but they are no less interesting for that - in fact they are some of the best parts of the book). The first is on the psychology of perception, which Syed imaginatively links to the theme of performance in sport. The second debates the ethics of artificial ways to enhance sporting performance. Here Syed rehearses the arguments put forward by Julian Savulescu, Professor of Practical Ethics at Oxford, who makes a eloquent case for "regulated permissiveness" - a halfway house between a total ban of drugs in sport and a free market. In essence, Savulescu's argument is that performance enhancing substances should be permitted in sport up to the point where they become a danger to the health of the athlete. Syed then goes on to discuss the ethics of genetic enhancements that could engineer humans who are stronger, faster, brighter, heal more quickly, and so on. The book closes with an outstanding essay exploring whether or not blacks are superior runners. Drawing on human genome research, Syed's argument not only debunks the myth that black athletes have a racial or genetic advantage, but he also goes on to demonstrate how socially pernicious this racial stereotyping narrative has been.

At times, Syed seem to fall into the "talent trap" against which he is warning: for example his throw-away line when he describes Greg Norman as "the most gifted golfer of his generation" (p.172). However the greatest weakness in Syed's argument is that, at times, he confuses the three concepts of "excellence", "expertise" and "success" and shifts seamlessly between talking about these concepts as if they are the same thing. Nevertheless Syed's central argument remains: purposeful practice, circumstance and a growth mindset are the key to achieving one's goals and maximising one's potential, whether that means "excelling" or "becoming and expert" or achieving wider "success".

There is much to recommend this book - particularly if you have an interest in sport.