Fettes College

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Fettes College
Motto	Industria
Established	1870
Type	Independent school
Headmaster	Mr. Michael Spens
Founder	Sir William Fettes
Students	circa 600
Location	Edinburgh, Scotland
Website	www.fettes.com

Fettes College is an independent boarding and day school in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is sometimes confusingly referred to as a public school in the English sense, but in Scotland as in most of the English-speaking world, the term "public school" signifies a local government run state school.^[1]

Contents 1 Overview 2 History 3 School culture 4 The Boarding Houses 4.1 Male 4.2 Female 4.3 Other 5 Architecture 6 James Bond and Fettes 7 Famous Old Fettesians 8 Notes 9 External links

[edit] Overview

There are 600 pupils at Fettes; these consist of 460 boarders and 140 day pupils. Fees per term are £7,442 for boarders and £5,280 for day pupils, with three terms a year.^[2] Discounts are available if multiple children from the same family attend the school, as well as for children of members of the armed forces. Scholarships are also available which pay up to a third of a pupils fees, with bursaries available for scholarship holders which can provide additional assistance, up to the full value of the fees.^[3]

This school has always followed the English, rather than the Scottish education system. Pupils take GCSEs rather than Scottish Standard Grades and, due to the recent removal of the Scottish Highers examination, students now have the choice between the A Level exam system or the new International Baccalaureate Diploma, but cannot take Scottish exams; this may reinforce the image of Fettes being an English school in Scotland, as stated by George Campbell Hay many decades ago.^{[citation needed]} It was an all-boys school until 1970 when female pupils were first admitted for the final year; since 1983, it has been fully co-educational.

The current Headmaster, named Michael Spens, has held this position since 1998. Previously, he was headmaster of Caldicott School in Buckinghamshire.

[edit] History

To perpetuate the memory of his only son William, who had predeceased him in 1815, Sir William Fettes, a former Lord Provost of Edinburgh and wealthy city merchant, bequested the then very large sum of £166,000 to be set aside for the education of poor children and orphans.

His will declares:

It is my intention that the residue of my whole estate should form an endowment for the maintenance, education and outfit of young people whose parents have either died without leaving sufficient funds for that purpose, or who from innocent misfortune during their lives, are unable to give suitable education to their children."^{[citation needed]}

After his own death in 1836 the bequest was effected and invested and the accumulated sum was then used to acquire the land, to build the main building and found the school in 1870. Fettes College thus opened with 53 pupils (40 were Foundation Scholars with 11 others boarding & 2 day pupils) and by 1875 there were 200 boys enrolled.

Over the last decade Fettes candidates have regularly achieved very high academic standards at A level and GCSE as evidenced by:

• In 1998 Fettes was placed 4th in the Daily Telegraph league table of Schools
• In 1999 Fettes was placed 5th in the Sunday Times list of top mixed independent schools in the UK
• In 2002 Fettes was declared "Scottish School of the year" by the Sunday Times.^[4]
• In 2003 Fettes was again declared "Scottish School of the year" by the Sunday Times.^[5].

Fettes College offers the International Baccalaureate in the Sixth Form. It is an IB World School, one of only three schools in Scotland to have attained this status.^[6]

The most controversial Head was Anthony Chenevix-Trench (1971-79), former headmaster of Eton College. The investigative journalist Paul Foot wrote an expose in Private Eye detailing his excessive use of corporal punishment which was commonplace in boarding schools at the time, while a housemaster at Shrewsbury School. Author Nick Fraser made allegations against the headmaster of sexual assault in his book The Importance of Being Eton: Inside the World's Most Powerful School and, according to a former Vice-provost of Eton College, Chenevix-Trench's resignation from Eton was caused by his heavy drinking and fondness for caning.^[7]

In 2002, a number of controversial incidents took place at the school. Three sixth-form boys were correctly excluded from the school over drugs; two were caught with Cannabis at a school event, while the other failed a drugs test while on a school trip — a female sixth-form pupil was later expelled from the school for allegedly leaking details of those exclusions to the media. In a letter to parents, the Headmaster, Michael Spens, described her actions as "despicable", "reprehensible" and "well beyond the pale".^[8]

Then, a physics teacher, who claimed haved suffer from leukaemia for the past four years, was found to have been lying about her illness, despite shaving her head, appearing to faint in the classroom and regularly taking time off work. She was asked to leave the school.^[9]

In April of that year, a pupil was shot by another pupil with an air pistol. The victim was not seriously injured and the incident was not reported to the police.^[10]

In early 2007, videos made at the school which were apparently based on the television programme Jackass were posted to the video-sharing website YouTube. These videos featured stunts such as pupils smashing branches over their heads and walking on banisters, as well as the consumption of alcohol and nudity. The videos also included a pupil having his head flushed down the toilet, a form of ritual hazing. A local newspaper reported that Fettes pupils were being investigated by school authorities over the incident.^[11]

[edit] School culture

Some major events in the life of the school include:

• November 1887: the installation of a telephone
• May 1890: the burning down of the School Swimming Baths
• 1921: the School’s War Memorial was unveiled
• 1939: building of six bomb-proof shelters by Main College Building and an air raid occurred
• 1946: Kimmerghame House derequisitioned by Royal Navy and re-opened with 64 boys
• 1955: visit of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh
• 1967: Glencorse caught fire but a game of cricket continued un-interrupted
• 1970: School centenary, and visit of HM Queen Mother, and girls first appeared as pupils
• 1980: First computer introduced
• 1984: School House closed for boys and re-opened for girls
• 1987: running track sold
• 1992: First female Head of School
• 1996: link established with Ying Hao School, Guangdong, China and Fettes tartan introduced

[edit] The Boarding Houses

There are seven houses; four for boys and three for girls. The male houses are large period buildings which stretch from East Fettes Avenue to Carrington Road; two of the female houses are in the upper floors of the main College Building and the third is in a modern building in the eastern part of the grounds. An innovation, reflecting the changes in responsibilities of teenagers in the school and society, is the Upper Sixth Boarding House being built for both boys and girls in their last year at Fettes. This will be opened in September 2007.

[edit] Male

• Carrington [1] (Dark Blue)
• Glencorse[2] (Sky Blue)
• Moredun[3] (British Racing Green)
• Kimmerghame[4] (Mustard Yellow)

[edit] Female

• Arniston [5](British Racing Green) – Tony Blair's old house, (when it was a boys' house)
• College East [6](Maroon)
• College West [7](Black)

[edit] Other

• Dalmeny House – Was renamed Carrington one year after opening in the 1890s.

• Inverleith – The Junior House, for those between the ages of 10 and 13, ceased to exist in 2000 when it became "The Fettes Preparatory School " and it educates children in the normal prep school ages - its two Houses are named after the Scottish islands, Arran and Iona.

[edit] Architecture

The college's main building by David Bryce (built 1863-9) blends the design of a Loire château with elements of the 19th century Scottish Baronial. The combination of styles and the site of the building make an Edinburgh landmark.

[edit] James Bond and Fettes

Whilst expanding on James Bond's backstory, Ian Fleming wrote in You Only Live Twice that the spy had attended Fettes College after having been removed from Eton College

While Fleming has never claimed there was any other source for the name of Bond than James Bond an American ornithologist, there was another real life James Bond who did attend Fettes. He was a frogman with the Special Boat Service, much as the fictional character Bond has a naval background & the school actually has his Who's Who entry copied and framed in one of its main corridors.

[edit] Famous Old Fettesians

• Tommy Armour, golfer
• John Arbuthnott, 16th Viscount of Arbuthnott, KT, CBE
• Fereydoon Batamanghelidj, Persian/Iranian doctor
• John Hay Beith, (Ian Hay) writer
• The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP PC Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• Norman Cameron, poet
• Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton, electrical engineer and television pioneer
• Hugh Crichton-Miller, psychiatrist, founder of the Tavistock Clinic
• General John de Chastelain, Canadian. Chairman Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, Northern Ireland peace process
• Bill Gammell, Scottish rugby international and oil magnate
• George Campbell Hay, poet in English and Scottish Gaelic, who wryly called Fettes College a little piece of "Forever England".
• The Rt. Hon. Iain Macleod, Minister of Labour, Colonial Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer
• Sir David Murray, Chairman & Managing Director, Murray International Holdings; Chairman, Rangers Football Club plc
• David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy, Benson & Mather, advertising pioneer
• The Rt. Hon. John Selwyn Lloyd, Baron Selwyn-Lloyd CH PC, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer
• Lord Normand, Scottish politician and judge.
• W. C. Sellar, co-author of 1066 and All That, Head Boy 1917 and taught at the school.
• The Rt. Hon. John Allsebrook Simon, 1st Viscount Simon, in Churchill's government, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Chancellor
• Tilda Swinton, screen actress, attended in sixth year.
• Sir Michael Tippett, composer
• Ruthven Todd Scottish poet and novelist, known also as an editor of William Blake, and as an artist.
• Lord Woolf, lawyer, Master of the Rolls and Lord Chief Justice

• • James Bond, movie character 007

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Official website