"Where did you go to school?”

"Where did you go to school?”

Damian Thompson

From Saturday's Daily Telegraph

"Where did you go to school?” Six words to strike fear into the heart of any English social climber. How I dreaded them during my own, comically unsuccessful, attempts to “pass” as a Sloane. Not only had no one heard of Presentation College, Reading – an independent Catholic school charging modest fees – but the funny name provoked snobbish titters.
Looking back, I shouldn’t have been so defensive, because the truth is that I loved “Pres”, as we called it.
The Irish brothers who ran the school – and how their names resonate: Fidelis, Leander, Virgilius, Athanasius – were hopeless at administration but good at recruiting inspiring staff, sometimes sealing the deal in the pub. Three of my old teachers are still among my dearest friends.
Then, 10 years ago, disaster struck. “Someone is trying to murder my old school,” I wrote in this newspaper.
Without any warning, the leaders of the Presentation Brothers in Cork decided to sell the Reading site; with the right planning permission, they could make as much as £18 million from developers. Why did they need the money? Was their decision connected to a massive payment the Brothers had to make to the Irish state in order to indemnify themselves against future charges of child abuse? We never found out.
Anyway, the heads of the Order sat coldly by while parents tried and failed to keep Pres going; then – planning consent for houses having been blocked – they sold it to a non-Catholic charity that renamed it the Elvian School (an even odder name – shades of Middle Earth). That experiment also failed. The result: a perfectly serviceable building has been left to rot.
OK, so my alma mater isn’t exactly pretty, but I’m intensely nostalgic. When I was there, ghastly Shirley Williams wanted it merged with the crap Catholic comprehensive next door; so did the Left-wing Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth, Derek Worlock. The redoubtable Brother Fidelis, who commissioned the main school buildings in the Sixties, saw them both off. The thought of a ball and chain smashing his legacy to pieces has been driving me crazy.
So imagine my excitement when, last week, someone tweeted at me: “RT this and help save your old school from demolition.” It turns out that a group of Reading parents want to turn the Presentation College site into a free school. They call themselves the West Reading Education Network (Wren), and they’re working with CfBT, an educational trust that manages a portfolio of free schools and academies.
The trust talks of a “relentless focus on excellent teaching”, of stretching pupils academically, and accountability to parents “supported by first-class data about the performance of teachers and students”.
When we were fighting to save Pres a decade ago, no one used that sort of language: even a private school was expected to spout child-centred Lefty jargon. CfBT – originally founded to help British teachers abroad – has created a demanding ethos; but it’s Michael Gove who has found space for it in mixed-ability comprehensive schools.
Not being a parent, I’ve never felt personally invested in the free schools movement, though obviously it’s a hugely welcome development. Now I do. There are many obstacles to clear before Wren can reclaim my old school grounds. If they do, however, not only will west Reading gain an excellent school but some sort of justice will have been done. Please, Mr Gove, see if you can make this happen.