First it was the abandonment of single-sex schooling, then the sidelining of compulsory chapel services. Next came the end of communal school dining in favour of the cafeteria system. As Masters shed their academic hoods and gowns and pupils loosen their ties, private education in England is becoming an affair exclusively reserved for the super-rich kids who expect a luxurious lifestyle at school as well as at home.
One school, founded in 1802 as a junior seminary in the wake of the French Revolution, and refounded in 2002 as an international Catholic boarding school for boys, is bucking the trend. When boys are admitted to Chavagnes in western France, they promise to “uphold the College’s traditions and bring honour to its name”. As other schools ditch their traditions, Chavagnes is restoring them.
As well as a full programme of academic studies leading to British exams, Chavagnes also has compulsory choral singing, daily Chapel services, daily sport and the boys all help with chores around the school. Principal Ferdi McDermott, an Edinburgh graduate, and keen writer and linguist, insists that the Masters still wear their gowns at all times. He founded the school, with a groups of like-minded friends, back in 2002.
Of course, Father Anthony Talbot, the chaplain wears his cassock. For Fr Talbot, coming back to continental Europe was a kind of homecoming: his Talbot ancestors went over to England with William the Conqueror and his family have been hereditary counts of the Holy Roman Empire ever since one ancestor single-handedly captured the Turkish standard during the crusades.
Watching the boys out rowing coxed fours on a crystal blue lake, hearing the strains of the organ from the chapel or the enthusiastic cries of boys on the rugger field, you’d easily forget you were in France. And oddly enough, when a Benedictine priory was first founded on the site 800 years ago, that part of France was under English rule.
Chavagnes has caught the eye of the French aristocracy and has managed to recruit a number of young counts and barons to its ranks. After a year at Chavagnes it is difficult to tell them apart from their English chums, except that Chavagnes has been developing its own anglo-french school jargon, something which marks out all the boys, English and French. There are even a few Spanish pupils, which further boosts the real enthusiasm for modern languages among the boys. Two former pupils are now students at Oxford and one was top of his Oxford class for French literature. Another is studying international law in Spain.
Conditions are Spartan: old-fashioned dormitories, drafty corridors and wooden floors give the school a 1950s feel. But the boys are happy, and proud to be in a place they consider to be the Catholic Church’s answer to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts. The difference being that they learn prayers in stead of spells, and the only chanting that goes on at Chavagnes International College is dictinctly Gregorian …
For more information, visit the website of Chavagnes Interational College, a Catholic boarding school for boys at www.chavagnes.org
(Source: www.free-press-release.com, March 2009.)
Catholic boarding schools 