Not many schools have a founder who is better known than the establishment itself – but for one Catholic school in South Oxfordshire that’s definitely the way it is.
The Oratory School near Oxford came into being in 1859 – the brainchild of Cardinal John Henry Newman. When he’s beatified on September 19 at Cofton Park near Birmingham, boys from the school will be among those serving at the Papal Mass.
‘It’s a terrific honour,’ says Clive Dytor, the Oratory’s head teacher (pictured right). ‘Education was a subject very dear to Cardinal Newman’s heart, and the school is a vital part of his legacy.’
Newman used to say that he had never met an educated English CatholicThe school, set in beautiful rural parkland, is a living testimony to the life of Cardinal Newman. Although it didn’t move to its current location until 1942, some decades after Newman’s death, the school lives and breathes the philosophy of a great church reformer – and to many of his champions, it is one of the finest gifts he bequeathed to the church. Cardinal Newman’s great legacy to university education was his setting up of a Catholic university in Dublin, now University College; but while he wrote down his ideas about higher education, he didn’t ever consign his ideas about schooling to paper – which is why the Oratory should be seen as an organic, constantly-evolving, treatise on his views on the subject.
The school is the first example of a conventional Catholic public school ever founded in the UK – other church public schools were founded by religious orders, but the Oratory had a different kind of model. ‘Newman used to say that he had never met an educated English Catholic,’ says Mr Dytor. ‘He set up this school so that Catholic boys could take their place in English society.’ In other words, the establishment of the school was part of the process that took Catholicism out of its ghetto in British history, and brought it into the mainstream.
Newman used to say that a day school was only for the day – he had a more holistic approach to lifeMr Dytor himself has a special affection for Newman – like the soon-to-be-beatified cardinal, he is a convert and was once an Anglican priest (his other claim to fame, pre the Oratory, was that he was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in action after he led an assault during the 1982 Falklands war). ‘I was a convert because of Newman, whose life and philosophy I have always admired, and I am a big fan of his ideas of a liberal education,’ he says. ‘Newman was an intellectual, but his ideas about education were about boarding, and about community. He used to say that a day school was only for the day – he had a more holistic approach to life.’
Walk round the school today, and Newman’s spirit is never far away. There’s no doubt that this is a place of privilege – boarding fees are around £8,300 a term – but it’s also a place of warmth and friendliness.
There’s a sense of being in a well-maintained but nonetheless cosy small stately home – a couple of labradors are lying asleep on the floor outside Mr Dytor’s office, and in the hall a large group of boys who’ve just been playing in a rugby tournament have arrived noisily and hungrily for cups of tea and sandwiches.
There are 420 pupils here – all boys, because single-sex education was very much Newman’s philosophy. Mr Dytor thinks that, unfashionable a view though it might be, he was correct to insist on it. ‘From an early age, boys and girls act differently – and they need an education that takes this into account,’ he says. ‘Boys are into special awareness, and girls are much more interested in relationships. Of course there are exceptions, but generally this is the way it is.
‘At adolescence, these differences become even more pronounced. Boys need a high diet of activity – they have all that testosterone, they have to exercise. Here, we have games every day, and a cadet force. And it’s easier for them to be creative because subjects aren’t related to girls or boys – so we have many boys who are very interested in art, for example.’
The truth is, says Mr Dytor candidly, that it would have been much easier for the Oratory to do as most other Catholic public schools did in the 1990s, and start taking girls as pupils alongside their boys. ‘What happened to Catholic independent education was that the numbers dried up, and that was for two reasons. Firstly, Catholics stopped having such big families, so the numbers of potential pupils naturally dropped, and secondly, Catholics started to feel more part of the mainstream culture and so became more likely to send their children to secular public schools such as Eton.’
At adolescence, these differences become even more pronounced. Boys need a high diet of activity – they have all that testosterone, they have to exerciseIn 1980 there were about 600 independent Catholic schools; now, there are around 150. ‘The ones that are flourishing today are those that understood the changes that had to be made, but didn’t change their essential qualities,’ he says. The Oratory, naturally, is in his view very much among them – he’s proud that the school stuck to its guns over being male-only, and he feels it’s a place with a lot of confidence about its place in the world of secondary education. In the ten years since he took over as head, Mr Dytor believes he’s turned the place around to make it a school facing the 21st century with optimism.
‘Our selling-points here are our sense of Catholic community, and the fact that we’re boys-only,’ he says. ‘About half of our pupils are Catholics, which in terms of other church independent schools is very good. Being a Catholic school attracts people, and that’s non-Catholics as well as Catholics. You have to have confidence in your faith, and we do have confidence in it.’
The Oratory is, needless to say, extremely proud of its links with Newman – who took a close interest in its running during his lifetime, when it was attached to the house of the Oratory Fathers in Birmingham (in 1922 it moved to what is now the BBC Monitoring Station at Caversham Park in Reading, and moved to its present site during the Second World War). There’s a Newman corridor, complete with photographs and letters from the school’s archive; and in the main drawing room in the central area of the house, the so-called Black Room is dominated by a portrait of the great man himself.
Since Newman’s time, the school has continued to contribute to the rich cultural and intellectual life of the nation – just as its founder would have hoped. In 1949, the writer JRR Tolkein came to stay in the grounds of the current Oratory School because his son, Michael, was a housemaster there (it’s said that sometimes, when Michael was busy, Tolkein even covered the lessons for him). Tolkein wrote part of the Lord of the Rings in the Black Room during visits to his son.
There are plenty of other well-known alumni: the writer Hilaire Belloc was one; the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins another, and the English rugby fly-half Danny Cipriani a more recent ex-pupil As befits the school that has been called ‘the Catholic Eton’, there are plenty of other well-known alumni: the writer Hilaire Belloc was one; the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins another, and the English rugby fly-half Danny Cipriani a more recent ex-pupil. He, one hopes, will be one of those cheering from the sidelines – or more aptly, perhaps, offering up a prayer of thanks – when his school’s founder becomes the Blessed John Henry Newman in a couple of weeks time.
For more information, see www.oratory.co.uk
