Since 2015, Stuart McPherson, an Australian former Eton housemaster, has been headmaster at Worth School. His tenure has been a great success. The school’s sixth-form facilities will shortly be transformed with the opening of the new Spencer Building, a £6.25 million state of the art educational facility. Funded by Michael Spencer and masterfully designed by architect Tim Ronalds, the building is due to open in February.
“We are totally full,” says McPherson as we sit in his study before a tour of the school. “We are as big as we want to be at the moment. We feel we are the right size.” With 640 pupils, Worth – originally created as a junior prep school for Downside until it became independent in 1957 – is now considerably larger than its former parent school, which has around 370 pupils.
A significant factor behind this role reversal is the way that prospective parents select schools. Location is increasingly important. Parents want to be able to watch rugby and cricket matches, not just pack pupils off to North Yorkshire or Somerset for months and only see them on occasional exeat weekends.
“We are blessed with good geography. There is no question that our proximity to London and Gatwick is advantageous,” adds McPherson.
As Worth is half-boarding and half-day, it caters to those parents who still want the full boarding experience. The school was boys-only until 2008 and now has a flourishing coeducational ethos with pupils enjoying the run of 500 acres in what used to be the Paddockhurst country house of Lord Cowdray. The school was originally bought in the 1930s by Downside Abbey when it became their junior school.
Worth’s Abbey itself is modern, being perhaps the finest example of Francis Pollen’s work. Seeing the new sixth-form centre, one is left in no doubt that pupils enjoy an unusual aesthetic.
The boys boarding house, St Bede’s, is set in woodland next to the school golf course. The building won the 2012 Sussex Heritage Trust Award in the large commercial category.
Ninety per cent of the school’s pupils are Christian, with a full 60 per cent being Catholic. “We assume that children coming into the school, whether Catholics or non-Catholics, need to be versed in what it means to be Catholic and be in a Catholic school.”
It is clear that Worth’s mission is more than just academic. It provides a spiritual education. “Some 40 per cent of our pupils don’t understand what it is to be in a Catholic school – what’s the offer? So we make sure they have a fully formed Catholic education.”
Many of Worth’s Catholic students come from overseas. They can no longer assume that children come to school well versed in the faith. “We have sort of flipped the model in a way,” says McPherson. “We haven’t got the old conveyor belt, where Catholic families send them to school already as Catholics. Those families are fewer and fewer. So the school has changed.
“The first and most important thing is that pupils feel a sense of belonging at the school – that there is a strong invitation to faith because we can’t impose those things in a way that we might have done in the Fifties. So it is about what Pope John Paul II would have called a ‘preferential option for the young’. How do you create a culture which invites people to step towards their faith? That is what we were trying to do,” he says.
McPherson muses that the school culture is still very much derived from the Benedictine philosophy of its monastic roots. The pupils are encouraged to be tolerant and inclusive as well as to thrive in the liberal arts.
McPherson was sure to note that school Mass is not on Sunday but rather Wednesday. “Abbot Christopher recognised that on Sundays a certain percentage of the school was not here, so to have Sunday Mass as the principle Mass for the whole school no longer made sense. Twenty years ago it was Thursday, now we have shifted it to Wednesday. That is the whole school worship.”
The school also has a Mass on a Sunday night, which is “probably the latest in England” at 8pm for boarders. There is also Benediction.
“We try to say that we’ll keep our services to about 20 minutes. And at that point you can leave. But the second part is the preferential option. We offer different prayer experiences.”
Pupils are encouraged and prepared for confession, the Rosary, “light fever” (lighting a candle in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel), Christian meditation or just sitting in the Abbey Church and listening to music. “This idea of friendship in Christ that’s not forced on you is the way religion should be done.”
A picture of Pope Francis sits in McPherson’s study. He speaks highly of the Holy Father’s impact on Catholic education. “Because the Pope is a good communicator with the young, you can read this as the Golden Age of teaching,” says McPherson.
This article first appeared in the February 2022 issue of the Catholic Herald. Subscribe today.
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