Ampleforth College

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Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire is the largest private Catholic boarding school in the UK, and it is sometimes referred to as the "Catholic Eton", a moniker also attached at different times to Beaumont (no longer open) and Stonyhurst College (both Jesuit schools) and which was Cardinal Newman's aim in founding the Oratory School. It first opened in 1802 and is run by the Benedictine monks of Ampleforth Abbey, the Community of St Laurence (a house within the English Benedictine Congregation), who trace their origins back nearly 1000 years to mediaeval Westminster.

1 Overview
2 Press coverage
3 Notable Old Amplefordians
- 3.1 Links
4 References

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Overview

The school's primary concerns are to educate its pupils in the principles of the Catholic faith and to provide a thorough and broad-based education. It is notable that its academic admissions policy isn't as exacting as that exercised by other English public schools. As a result, the school is typically between 150 - 200 in the annual league tables of public examination results, although it was ranked 6th nationally in the 2004 "value added" table. The school's administration claims that by looking at the top 50% of candidates (those who would have been able to get into the most selective schools had they wanted to) the school's teaching appears to score just as well as, if not better than, other famous English public schools. It maintains a strong scholarship set, with about 8% of pupils gaining the offer of a place at Oxford or Cambridge; over 90% go on to university.

There is a famous anecdote of Fr Paul Neville, the school's headmaster in the 1940's, boasting of record offers from Oxford to a prospective parent. "And what of those boys who don't go to Oxford?" replied the parent. "Oh, they run the companies that employ the boys who do" replied Fr Paul. The likes of JCB suggest little has changed.

As a result of the school's association with the monks, religion is central to the life of the school. All pupils are expected to take religious education at GCSE level. Mass is attended by all pupils twice a week, once on a weekday (in the house) and once on Sunday in the Abbey Church.

The school also has an excellent choir (the Schola Cantorum) which sings at High Mass on Sunday and also at a choral Mass on Friday nights during termtime. The choir has made various recordings, broadcasts and tours throughout the world.

Though originally only a boys' school, over recent years the school has progressed from accepting just day girls in the sixth form to the present situation with girl boarders of all ages.

The school is arranged into houses, with boys (and now girls) living in the separate houses, eating together as a house and playing sport together as a house in inter-house competitions. There are currently ten houses, each named after a Saint: St Aidan's, St Bede's, St Cuthbert's, St Dunstan's, St Edward-Wilfrid's, St Hugh's, St John's, St Oswald's, St Margaret's and St Thomas'.

Sport is a large part of school life, with pupils able to participate in a wide variety of sports including rugby, shooting, tennis, cricket and football. As well as many rugby and cricket pitches set in the 2000 acres of the valley, the school runs the St Alban's Centre (SAC), a sports centre with a large hall (also used for school assemblies and official ceremonies), a 25-metre swimming pool, three squash courts, and a fitness suite. SAC is also open to the general public for a fee.

The school also sports a large wall to the south of the Abbey, popularly know as "the Ball Court". It is approximately 10m tall by 15m wide and constructed from local sandstone. It was speculated that the wall was constructed to play an Amplefordian version of Fives; the exact nature of this game and its equipment was unearthed in a marginal doodle in a book in the monastic library by Dr Galliver, a school history master, in the 1990s. Nowadays it is often used by members of the school to brush up on their tennis skills, and by the cadet corps for drill.

The college is colloquially known as "SHAC": the popular explanation for this is that the acronym stands for "Senior Houses, Ampleforth College", although it is believed that it was originally referred to as "the shack" in the early 20th Century because of the parlous state of the old school building at that time; the phrase was coined when the then Head Monitor welcomed the school "back to the old shack" one September. School monitors play an important role in the smooth running of the school and are known as "shackies" to all in the college. The school is situated in a picturesque valley, which has many sports pitches, forest and lakes. There are three lakes remaining of the original five constructed by the Fairfax Family centuries ago. The middle lake is stocked with trout (mainly brown and rainbow, although the occasional blue back has been known).

The Current headmaster is Father Gabriel Everitt OSB, a convert from the Church of England.

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Press coverage

As the leading Catholic school in the country, its occasional problems make the news, and the school has suffered some poor press coverage during recent years. Several monks who took up positions as teachers have been accused of molesting the children under their care Template:Ref. Around the same time it was indicted as having taken part in a cartel of price fixing amongst public schools Template:Ref. The school has periodically experienced a drugs problem due to its position (and lack of nearby entertainment) and the relative affulence of the children who attend.Template:Ref

The school was the subject of a light-hearted ITV documentary made by director Dan Barraclough shown in 2003 and entitled Ampleforth: My Teacher's A Monk. The aim was to show off the school to a wider audience, although it also highlighted large scale breaking of the school rules on smoking, and what some regard as the lax rules on alcohol. However he did report that he did not witness a single act of bullying, something that used to form the stereotypical English public school image Template:Ref. Recent pupils thought it was an accurate, if rather superficial, portrayal of the school.

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