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Bradfield College
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bradfield College is a public school located in the small village of Bradfield in the English county of Berkshire.
The college was founded in the 1850s by Thomas Stevens, Rector and Lord of the Manor of Bradfield. It now has some 500 male and 120 female pupils.
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The school, which admits pupils between the ages of 13–18, has been co-educational throughout since September 2005. All first years pupils (fourth formers) enter a first year boarding house (Faulkners) and then, from the second year (the shell), they move to their main boarding houses for the remaining four years.
Bradfield's Motto: Benedictus es, O Domine doce me Statuta Tua — Blessed art thou, O Lord: teach me Thy statutes.
Bradfield is most renowned for its Greek theatre and triennial Greek play, which is performed on a three-year rota ('presumably', says Tatler's Good Schools Guide, 'it takes that long to build up the stamina again) in conjunction with Cambridge University and Oxford University respectively. Started to save the school from bankruptcy, the Greek plays have been staged by the school for almost 150 years. The students who act in it receive no formal training in speaking Ancient Greek, and have only nine months to learn the lines and direction, as well as keeping up with their other studies. The 2006 play was Euripides’s Medea, directed by John Taylor. It has been noted for its groundbreaking advances, including the addition of projected subtitles and the bold decision of incorporating the orchestra into the skene, using a ramp covered in sand and flooded to symbolise the sea and Medea's situation of being "between places".
In 2005 the school was embroiled in the so-called “Sevenoaks survey” fee-fixing scandal, exposed by The Times. They were eventually found guilty, with fifty other schools, of breaking the Competition Act (1998).
The Commission for Social Care Inspection, which routinely inspects standards at both private and state boarding schools, praised Bradfield, in an otherwise damning report, for its "safe and caring environment" and for endeavouring to "develop a more modern approach to boarding". The Daily Telegraph reported that, ‘against the relevant 47 standards, Bradfield achieved 16 gold stars. In only two areas was it judged to have "minor shortcomings”.
Former footballing hardman turned Hollywood actor, Vincent Peter Jones, known as Vinnie Jones, once worked in the kitchens at the college. 'He got me in at a boys’ public school, Bradfield College, near Reading, Berkshire. Neil’s dad, Tom, was the hairdresser who called at the school a couple of times a week. He went to see the bursar and got me a job: washing pots and pans!' explains Jones in his hard-hitting autobiography Vinnie: My Life (Headline Books 2001). Although at the time Jones was at a particularly low-ebb – the Bradfield days appear in a chapter entitled ‘Life in a Bin Liner’ – he writes with some tenderness about the friends he made, and the room in which he lived: 'It was built on a corner and overlooked the gardens and the sports field, which was lovely, and there was a river [the pang] at the bottom.'
In 2005, girls taking German A-level at Bradfield scored the highest results of any independent school in the country.
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