Inside Saracens High School, where rugby values replace gangs
Club the first in Britain to provide secondary education for needy, writes Daniel Schofield
In his 23 years of owning Saracens, Nigel Wray has signed countless superstars, moved stadiums and filled several cabinets with trophies. This week, however, marked the start of his most exciting project yet. On Thursday morning 156 children walked through the doors of Saracens High School in Colindale, one of the most deprived communities within the borough of Barnet. This is not an academy or another form of rugby pipeline, but an actual bricks-and-mortar secondary school, the first launched by a professional sports club in the United Kingdom.
A further 156 year seven pupils will enrol next year and then 180 in 2020 when they move to a new facility, which eventually will host 1,130 students. Barnet Council has indicated it would like Saracens to eventually run several schools, taking up to 3,500 children.
“It started having a life of its own and then suddenly you are there and thinking, ‘Oh my God, we have to do it now,’” Wray told The Daily Telegraph. “I am a middle-class child myself so I don’t mind if it is good middle-class kids getting a good education, but that’s not the object. The goal is to give children from a deprived neighbourhood a better opportunity, founded in part on the values of that we try to live up to here: honesty, humility, hard work, discipline.”
The idea first occurred to Gordon Banks, Saracens’ chief community officer, around the time that prime minister David Cameron launched his Free Schools initiative. He sent an email to the club hierarchy, the proposal was briefly discussed and then quietly forgotten, until Wray came back to him a couple of years later asking two questions: is this needed and is it feasible?
What Banks found was that there was a desperate lack of secondary schools in the borough of Barnet. In Colindale, which is less than a mile and a half from Saracens’ Allianz Park home, children were having to take two or three buses to attend schools. It is also an area blighted by crime. Last year two members of a gang operating out of Grahame Park Estate, directly opposite the school, were jailed for life for murdering a teenager with a “Rambo-style” knife.
“It is an area of high social deprivation,” Banks said. “The Grahame Park Estate has been a really troubled community. There’s a fair amount of gang activity yet we have found families who are really aspirational and who really value education, but have nothing on their doorstep in terms of secondary schools.”
Consultations with Barnet Council and the Department of Education all returned a green light. “I spoke to Nigel and the others at length to say, ‘Guys, we all need to be really aware of what we are getting into here. People’s lives and futures are on the line’,” Banks said. “We are aware that there is no greater responsibility than educating children.”
So what business does a rugby club have in running a school? For Wray, the core values of honesty, humility, hard work and discipline that Brendan Venter introduced to Saracens in 2009 apply just as much to a school or a business as they do to a rugby club. Will Fraser, who played in Saracens’ 2016 double-winning side before retiring the following year, explained to the teachers how these principles can be introduced to organisations as varied as a Ftse-listed company to Feltham Young Offenders Institution.
Over the course of a couple of hours, the teachers were left to create their own behaviours to match the values. Examples included treating everybody with the same respect, from the dinner ladies to the principal (under humility) and being brave enough to ask for help (honesty). These are the principles around which the school will run.
The next task for Wray was to select the principal. “One of the main things I have learnt in business is that the fish stinks from the head,” Wray said. “With a school, you have to get the headmaster right. It is the same philosophy as choosing a coach.”
He chose Matthew Stevens, a former sports psychologist for Watford Football Club, who has worked in schools in some of the most deprived parts of London. He also has next to no interest in rugby. However, the values that Saracens intend to instil resonated fully with his experiences in secondary education.
“A lot of schools don’t start with the culture or character of the students, but are very focused on the exam results,” Stevens said. “I understand that pressure. We have got the opportunity, because we are starting afresh, of being able to focus on the culture. If we get those parts right we will not need to worry about exam results because our wonderful children and our wonderful staff will have high aspirations, will be driven to work hard and will achieve.”
Stevens in turn recruited his teachers on the basis of how well they understood the values rather than the length of their CVS. He is at pains to point out they are not under instructions to unearth the next Maro Itoje. “It would be nice if one of them became a professional rugby player but that’s not the goal,” Stevens said. “We want children from here to be able to compete in every field and believe they can compete with anybody.”
Banks added: “It does not matter whether they come to watch the club as long as people here think that Saracens are a force for good. We want them to be proud of the club, but that is something that can only be earned.”