An article was published recently by Helen Weathers in The Daily Mail detailing the success of a young boy from a council estate who has secured a place at Eton College on a scholarship for boys from deprived areas.
New Foundation Scholarship
As a successful candidate for the New Foundation Scholarship at Eton College, Schuyler Audley-Williams deserves to feel the success that he undoubtedly is.
It is very hard for candidates to win a place on the New Foundation Scholarship and to even make it onto the list speaks volumes about the skills and abilities that each prospective recipient has.
With a place on offer at Britain’s most elite boarding school, with fees of around £33,000 – £40,000 after allowing for extras, the competition is understandably stiff.
Standing six foot two, the 14-year-old can rightfully feel that he’s earnt the right to wear the uniform of tailcoat, waistcoat, striped trousers and white tie, something he does now with a level of self-assurance that belies his young age.
A talented rower and all-round sportsman, he recently helped Eton’s rugby sevens to second place in a 32-team inter-schools competition and is also developing a passion for drama.
‘I love it here,’ he says of the £40,000-a-year boarding school founded in 1440 by King Henry VI, taking a break from learning his lines for a production in which he has been cast as God, no less.
What’s not to love? Excellent teachers, top-notch facilities, an atmosphere of high achievement plus an alumni that reads like Who’s Who, including 19 former British prime ministers and Princes William and Harry.
Every third weekend, Schuyler, who is on a New Foundation Scholarship for boys from deprived areas, goes home to his parents Harry and Stephanie — not to some stately pile, however, but to a council estate in one of the most deprived pockets of London.
Until he left to board at Eton last September, the sprawling White City Estate in Hammersmith, West London, was the only community he’d ever known.
Eton works closely with the UK’s largest boarding school bursary charity, Royal SpringBoard, which helps children from some of the UK’s most deprived communities attend some of the country’s top boarding schools, state or independent. Around 120 students a year are placed, of which Eton takes about four.
In 2012, Eton, along with five other independent schools, opened the London Academy of Excellence, a sixth-form college in Newham, one of London’s poorest boroughs.
You can read the full Daily Mail article here.
Comment: It’s interesting to note that his parents chose to remove him from his state school and follow a programme of home education.
This is something which many parents elect to do. Sometimes it’s because their school’s level of misbehaviour is causing their child a problem and other times it’s due to a lack of quality teaching.
In deciding to take their child out of a school parents be made to feel they are doing something ‘wrong’ or illegal, but often the alternative, keeping their child in a failing school, means that the decision of doing nothing isn’t an option.
Whatever the reason, it’s always an option worth considering and it’s something we’ve helped various parents with.
Congratulations to Schuyler Audley-Williams and his parents. Their success sounds like it was richly deserved.