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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]
OverviewThere 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]
The current Headmaster, named Michael Spens, has held this position since 1998. Previously, he was headmaster of Caldicott School in Buckinghamshire. HistoryImage:Fettes College, Edinburgh.jpg Fettes College 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.
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] School cultureSome major events in the life of the school include:
The Boarding HousesThere 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. Male
Female
Other
ArchitectureThe 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. James Bond and FettesWhilst 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. Famous Old Fettesians
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