29 Sep 2024
“You want to see a magic trick now don’t you?” When it came to preparing for an interview with the headmaster of one of the district’s leading independent prep schools, witnessing slight-of-hand, close-up magic was never on my agenda.
But Christian Pritchard, recently celebrating his first year overseeing Beechwood Park School in Markyate, is far from your average headteacher, and although he’s not quite up to Dumbledore’s standards of magic, he is an accomplished illusionist.
“I was six, and I got a Paul Daniels magic set for Christmas, and that was it for me, I worked my way through the tricks and I was hooked. I loved the idea and loved the concept.
“I do tricks in assemblies and the playground, but I also run magic clubs. It’s quite a refined skill between doing the easy stuff and the higher level, and it’s fascinating to watch the children who want to take it further.”
He asks me to choose between one of four glass tumblers laid out in his study, and roots around in a drawer for a pound coin and a penny.
“This is probably one of my favourites, it’s called the melting coin.”
He places the pound on top of the penny and covers it with the glass I chose. “So the coins are under the glass and literally all I’m going to do is give it a little bit of a wiggle.”
I can see both coins clearly, even when he begins to spin the glass around them.
“Watch the coins, keep your eyes on the coins and make sure they don’t fly off anywhere or do anything that you wouldn’t expect them to do…”
The spinning continues, and then: “What we end up with is just the one pound coin and the penny has completely disappeared.”
It’s a brilliant trick, and I genuinely have no idea how he pulled it off.
“That’s the kind of stuff I like. It’s a brilliant educational aid because it captures interest. It’s great for dexterity, it’s great for skill, it’s great for learning. You’re playing with the mind and you’re sort of teasing human beings, which is quite a clever area.
“It’s also a great icebreaker. When I’m showing a prospective family around the school, if one of the children is finding it all a bit hard I can just do a trick and it works well to make it easier easier for them.
“It challenges my brain. I like to read, I like to cycle, I like to do lots of different things, but actually for the old grey cells it’s a good thing to do as a hobby.”
Disappearing coins aside, there’s nothing tricky about Christian Pritchard. He seems to be a remarkably personable, easy-going, yet hugely passionate man focused on providing his pupils with the best all-round education within his power.
But I also wanted to know more about how he ended up at Beechwood Park.
“I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. I’ve been in the teaching sector since I went to university and trained to be a teacher. I came out, started in the state sector and then went abroad for what I thought was going to be an adventure for a couple of years. That ended up being, to be honest with you, a tenure of around 18 years, so half my teaching career I have spent abroad.”
His time abroad took him to the United Arab Emirates, then south-east Asia – where he met his wife – on to Taiwan – where their daughters were born – and then finally to the Netherlands, working in a mix of British international schools and European schools, before finally returning to the UK.
Back on home soil and he ran a series of boarding schools across the country, making Beechwood Park his fifth headship, but it is his international experience which he really brings to the table.
“I see learning through a global lens, genuinely. I want our children to be world-ready learners. We live in a beautiful country, but we kind of sometimes lose sight of the fact that it’s actually a small island, and one of the things I want to instil in our children is to travel, to see the world that they live in, because that brings the richness of culture and nationality. I bring a lot of that into our assembly and learning programmes. We use the Singapore style of mathematics for example. We want to bring a more international, global citizenship into the school.
“Last year we had an astronaut, Jeanette Epps, who has a connection to the school come and see us, and of course all the children now want to go into space. So it’s really about allowing our children to understand the world they live in and embrace it.
“They’re lucky, most of them travel a lot and visit lots of countries, but you often see them through a refined lens when you stay in a hotel so I just want them to be able to understand the amazing planet they live on.”
He said he was attracted to Beechwood because it emulates many of the things he is personally very passionate about in education: it’s co-educational, it runs from three to 13, and it has an established nursery: “This is a school with a very warm heart. It’s also a big school, we’re one of the largest standalone, truly independent co-education schools in the country.”
One of the first things he did when becoming head was to send out a questionnaire to parents, staff and children to determine what they liked about the school and what was important to them, in order to build a clear strategic plan.
“The clear message that came through is that this is a school of evolution rather than revolution. The school’s got lots of traditional values. We’ve got a very smart school uniform, there’s an expectation of polite, kind, caring and well-mannered pupils.
“But parents were very clear in their feedback. They wanted a streamlined school day, a wraparound programme for really busy parents, they wanted our communications sorted out, and they wanted us to really get to know their children and spend a lot of time with them.
“I would say I’m a very visual head. I’m on the door in the morning and at the end of the day. Come hail, rain or shine the umbrella’s up and I’m out there shaking their hands, saying ‘good morning’, giving them a little high five and welcoming them into the school. I’m always there on the touchline talking to families at sports matches. Parents needed to see that I was approachable, I was visible and they can have conversations with me.”
He also implemented a new online communications platform, started a breakfast club and after-school care, and brought in new school hours and structure to the day.
Having taken on the role of headteacher, as he put it “the stars lined up” and following a retirement his wife Zoe was able to take over the running of early years.
“I suppose I’m unique in many ways in as much as I really enjoy teaching infants, juniors and seniors, I have a real affiliation with the younger years, who already have a natural curiosity and independence. They want to explore, they want to create, they want to see, and if we’re not careful as we go through education we can knock a bit of that out of them and it becomes quite constrained. For me it’s about being able to get that lovely academic balance, but keeping that independence and that resilience as they get older.”
In the run-up to the General Election, there was a strong local focus on the impact of Labour’s proposed introduction of VAT on school fees, a manifesto pledge which now looks set to become a reality.
How has that impacted Beechwood Park? “I genuinely didn’t think as a head I’d ever see in my lifetime a situation where a Government would actually tax children.
“What we’re doing as a school is consciously saying to our families that we’ll do what we can to help and support you, but we don’t want to damage or water down our offer so we will continue to offer a high level premium education.”
Because the school offers boarding facilities, both Christian and his wife Zoe live on site, and have spent the past year exploring the local area when they’ve been able to get away.
“I have family in St Albans, so I know St Albans really well. The beautiful Abbey, the independent shops, the fantastic places to eat. I know St Albans School obviously and the range of senior schools that are there.
“One of my Form 8 girls sings in the Abbey, she’s a beautiful chorister, and they’ve invited me down to their choral evensong. I’ve got two rather nice mountain bikes and I like to head off and enjoy the paths and cycles around here.
“My children and my wife, we love a good gastropub for a good Sunday lunch, as well as international cuisine from around the world. There are a number of different restaurants we’ve managed to find, but I’m very bad at names, although the Prae Wood Arms is one.”
As he enters his second year of headship, Christian says he is keen to genuinely put the school on the map: “I think in some respects we’re a little bit of a hidden gem. There are some people who know about us, but there are others who that don’t.
As a co-ed school we’re very different from a lot of other schools in this area, and I genuinely believe that if you get the relationship right between boys and girls it’s both healthy and very exciting.”
In contrast to my preconceptions of boarding schools like Malory Towers and St Trinian’s, Beechwood Park treats the whole experience as an evening play date.
“This whole school turns into a giant house and the children are playing hide and seek, they’re in the woods, climbing trees, building dens, toasting marshmallows, playing giant games. What’s really lovely is that although we’re a technologically rich school, being outdoors in the fresh air and away from screens is really important, and we’re also, very proudly, an absolute no mobile phone school, they’re not even allowed to bring them on site.”
For the older pupils, there are opportunities presented by the fact that the school takes them up to the end of Year 8, when they are 13.
“It just allows children to be a little younger for a little longer. They become a big fish in a mid-sized pond as opposed to being a small fish in a big pond,” Christian explained.
“The Top Formers are also prefects and they all have leadership roles in the school. They’re standing up in front of audiences, they’re presenting, they are showing people around the school, they are giving us feedback, they’re doing critical debating, and that’s all exciting.
“We are an academically ambitious school. Our children get very, very good results, and because we don’t feed into any one senior school, so we’ve got to be really on our game, but what we also hear is that they are genuinely lovely children, which for me is a really nice thing to hear.”
