On Thursday 27 April, Professor Bill Gibson (OCMCH Director) and Tom Dobson (Collections, Digitisation & Research Officer), joined delegates in Bristol at Transforming Lives, a conference jointly organised by Methodist Schools (UK) and the International Association of Methodist Schools, Colleges and Universities (IAMSCU).
The Centre, along with 1100 other organisations, is an institutional member of IAMSCU, and all six continents had representatives at the conference. In all, the event lasted over a week, visiting our sister College, Southlands, in London; before heading to Bristol and Bath; and then on to Wesley House in Cambridge. This conference explored Methodist engagement with education throughout history, and also Methodist education alongside key issues to the international sector in the present day.
Having explored a series of exhibition stands – making time to acquire the new 275th anniversary history of Kingswood School, and begin planning Christmas activities with other Methodist heritage sites – we joined other delegates from Europe in a regional meeting, discussing how we can work more closely together, and how our collections and work can support their teaching and research activities.
The conference then started in earnest, with welcome speeches from the President and Vice-President of IAMSCU; a representative of Methodist Schools; and the Principal of Kingswood School.
Dr Gary Best opened the first full session in Bristol with a paper focussing on the history of Kingswood School, which had been founded by John Wesley in Bristol in 1748. This was the first fee-paying, boarding school established by Methodists. Dr Best finished his paper by commenting that, for Wesley, education and teaching was as much a vocation as preaching, and that, through education, a child could be raised with good Christian values.
Papers followed that discussed issues surrounding Methodist engagement with education, with a presentation from the Rev. Jennifer Smith (Superintendent Minister of Wesley’s Chapel and Leysian Mission) bridging the gap between Britain and the world; before discussion pieces from Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan, Vinita Prakash, and Julio Andre Vilanculos.
What was most interesting, however, was not the discussion around the growth of Methodist education, but how many of the matters raised are cyclical, repeating themselves time and again. Although teacher training was not covered, Dr Best’s paper referenced the fact that Kingswood had purposefully been established in an impoverished area, as Westminster College was just over a century later. The difference here, though, was that Westminster College sought to engage with the local children whereas Kingswood actively discouraged any mingling. Both Kingswood and Westminster were established as co-educational institutions, but both became single sex institutions within the first half a century of their operation, although both latterly returned to operation as co-educational, with Kingswood accepting both male and female students today.
Of further interest was that Kingswood School moved to Bath in 1851, the same year Westminster College opened on Horseferry Road, and that both Kingswood and Westminster were designed by James Wilson, resulting in buildings which looked very similar. Aside from these two institutions, Dr Best also noted that in the nineteenth century the varying Methodist denominations in Britain had embraced education as a missional output, none more so than the Methodists who, perhaps, viewed education as the fastest route for social mobility, and also as a link between themselves and the established Church of England.
Following Balfour’s 1902 Education Act (and the greater responsibility this placed on the state for the provision of education), many of these schools closed or were transferred to state management. This also reduced the financial burden on local Methodist circuits, who were expected to provide a good portion of the funding for these schools. Today, however, there are seventy-six Methodist schools in Britain alone, governed by four bodies (Methodist Independent Schools Trust; Methodist Academies and Schools Trust; The Epworth Trust; and the Inspiring Lives Educational Trust’).
The ‘Inspiring Lives Educational Trust’ will begin operation in September 2023 demonstrating, along with a growth in the number of Methodist schools worldwide, that there is a return to the provision of education by Methodists – proving that the trends in Methodist education (as with many things) are cyclical – growing and declining to meet the needs of changing populations and times and (certainly in Britain) changes and trends in direct state funding of education.
Tom Dobson is Collections, Digitisation, and Research Officer at the OCMCH. He is pursuing a doctoral study titled ‘Training to Teach: Westminster College and the development of Higher Education in the 20th century‘
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