Queen Elizabeth’s School Headmaster Dr John Marincowitz met the Prince of Wales at a Clarence House reception held to celebrate the work of the Prince’s Teaching Institute in encouraging inspirational teaching.
Earlier this year, QE’s Science Department became one of only 194 departments in 126 schools nationwide to be awarded the Prince’s Teaching Institute’s (PTI) Schools Programme Mark. The Mark, which is awarded after a year-long evaluation process, recognises teaching that challenges and stretches students. The School hopes that in 2011 the English, Geography and History departments will also gain the award. In a further link, QE’s History Department recently hosted a PTI teachers’ conference on the Cold War.
Speaking at the reception, the Prince explained why the PTI was established: "All of a sudden, in the 1960s, anything which might conceivably be described as a timeless principle was abandoned on the basis that all we had known and learned had suddenly become irrelevant, old-fashioned, out-of-date and definitely not modern. Frankly, I thought this was bonkers and likely to end in tears."
He therefore helped create a series of summer schools to provide a forum for teachers to step away from the classroom and discover new ways of teaching. Two years ago this three-day event was developed into the PTI, a full-scale charitable enterprise, with more than 20 per cent of secondary schools in England sending their staff on the scheme’s courses.
Prince Charles added: "The teaching of bodies of knowledge is a crucial part of a young person’s development, which ensures that when they leave school they do so equipped with a thorough understanding of a whole range of subjects, and with curious minds, whether they be geared towards the academic or indeed vocational. This is the vital task that the PTI concentrates on."