Surrey


<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1500" height="1000" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2023/04/Frensham-Heights-Ben-McCarey-and-students.jpg" alt="Ben McCarey and students at Frensham Heights School near Farnham in Surrey." class="wp-image-56304" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2023/04/Frensham-Heights-Ben-McCarey-and-students.jpg 1500w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2023/04/Frensham-Heights-Ben-McCarey-and-students-800x533.jpg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2023/04/Frensham-Heights-Ben-McCarey-and-students-1000x667.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2023/04/Frensham-Heights-Ben-McCarey-and-students-400x267.jpg 400w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2023/04/Frensham-Heights-Ben-McCarey-and-students-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Ben McCarey walks through the grounds at Frensham Heights School with is dog and two pupils.</figcaption></figure>



<p><strong><em>Eduction was perhaps always on the cards for Ben McCarey, head teacher at Frensham Heights School near Farnham. His mum and both of her parents were also teachers. He&#8217;s relatively new to Frensham Heights School, arriving in April 2024 from Holyport College near Maidenhead in Berks, where he was headmaster.</em></strong></p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-are-the-top-three-things-to-tackle-in-your-inbox"><em>What are the top three things to tackle in your inbox?</em>&nbsp;</h3>



<p>The number one thing is supporting families affected by VAT. I&#8217;m also working on bringing cohesion to our curriculum &#8211; we have some fantastic things on offer but connecting the dots in between will make them even better. </p>



<p>Number three, is to have fences built for our herd of pygmy goats and flock of chickens that will be coming to the school next week. Without fences we may find ourselves with pygmy goats wandering around the maths department &#8211; and that&#8217;s not quite what we intended.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-goats-and-chickens-really-why"><em>Goats and chickens. Really? Why?</em></h3>



<p>Because, why not! Kids love animals, especially Frensham kids and we can learn so much from them &#8211; from sustainability to the responsibility of animal care, as well as perhaps just sketching a chicken. Animals bind people together. And they&#8217;re fun!</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ben-mccarey-s-30-second-elevator-pitch-for-frensham-heights-sell-it">Ben McCarey&#8217;s <em>30 second elevator pitch for Frensham Heights – sell it!&nbsp;</em></h3>



<p>Frensham Heights is the antidote to everything that&#8217;s broken in the UK education system. Children are way more than the academic grades they receive and the culture and ethos at Frensham Heights reflects that. It&#8217;s so different to so many schools in this country &#8211; and beliefs are foundational to the development of the human beings we want them to be.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-who-would-you-like-to-star-as-ben-mccarey-in-a-hollywood-blockbuster-of-your-life"><em>Who would you like to star as Ben McCarey in a Hollywood blockbuster of your life?</em></h3>



<p>I&#8217;d love to say to Jude Law, because he&#8217;s suave and debonair, and slightly droll. But I think if you ask my wife, she&#8217;d probably say Billy Connolly. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-you-ve-been-given-a-1m-donation-for-the-school-what-will-you-spend-it-on"><em>You’ve been given a £1m donation for the school, what will you spend it on?</em>&nbsp;</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/01/Frensham_theatre.jpg" alt="The theatre at Frensham Heights School near Farnham in Surrey." class="wp-image-57976" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/01/Frensham_theatre.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/01/Frensham_theatre-800x534.jpg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/01/Frensham_theatre-400x267.jpg 400w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/01/Frensham_theatre-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The theatre at Frensham Height School.</figcaption></figure>



<p>I&#8217;d spend it on 100 £10,000 projects. We&#8217;re really lucky at Frensham Heights to have superb facilities (including a theatre!) &#8211; it&#8217;s one of the things I love about the school. </p>



<p>But with £1m I&#8217;d change every classroom in the school so that every surface was writable &#8211; it&#8217;s non traditional but it encourages movement and debates. I&#8217;d also think about refurbishing the Sixth Form library. Other projects would be fun, individual, quirky and Frenshamiam.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-describe-your-own-childhood-school-days"><em>Describe your own childhood school days</em></h3>



<p>I boarded from the age of 7 in a very traditional and restrictive environment &#8211; which was very young. Did I enjoy school? Probably not. And that caused me to rebel and become a bit anti-establishment. When I entered Education as a career I wanted it to be different to how it was done to me. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-was-the-common-theme-of-ben-mccarey-s-school-reports"><em>What was the common theme of Ben McCarey&#8217;s school reports?&nbsp;</em></h3>



<p>Pretty terrible most of the way through! Ben could be better if he tried harder and stopped trying so hard to make everyone laugh. I got their in the end though, but I wouldn&#8217;t have wanted to teach me.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-favourite-worst-teachers-at-your-childhood-school-and-why"><em>Favourite/worst teachers at your childhood school and why?</em></h3>



<p>The best is easy. I had a lot of really good teachers &#8211; too many to name &#8211; but what they all had in common was that they were inspirational, passionate, deeply knowledgable about their subjects and they loved what they did. My A Level history teacher stands out &#8211; John Moule &#8211; he&#8217;s a warden at Radley College now. But he took what is possibly the single most boring topic in the world &#8211; Corn Laws in the 1800s &#8211; and got our attention. He didn&#8217;t sugarcoat anything and he didn&#8217;t patronise us. He made it interesting.</p>



<p>My worst teacher was a nun called Sister Maryanne. I was only five and she was strict, so very strict. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-best-and-worst-subject-at-school"><em>Best and worst subject at school?&nbsp;</em></h3>



<p>Best was music. I liked music. I went to Christ Church Cathedral School in Oxford and I was a chorister, so I always enjoyed music because I found it easy and because I was good at it. And I think that kind of gives you validation. </p>



<p>But then on top of that, it was always English literature &#8211; I loved reading when I was younger. From Christ Church I went on to Stowe School on a full scholarship bursary.</p>



<p>My worst subject was maths. Although it&#8217;s really interesting, because it I always thought I was bad at maths &#8211; and I never understood it because it was taught as abstract concepts. But when I became a senior leader of a school, and I had to analyse data and create algorithms to write timetables, I found that I was actually quite good at it.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-where-did-you-go-to-uni"><em>Where did you go to uni?</em></h3>



<p>The University of York &#8211; which really suited me. I was turned down from Cambridge because I&#8217;d done absolutely no work in preparation for my interview. But actually York being, certainly at the time, quite left-leaning, liberal, non traditional, non conformist, suited me down to the ground.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-did-you-study"><em>What did you study?</em></h3>



<p>I read English Literature &#8211; and I was very much able to choose my own path through it.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-was-your-high-and-low-of-student-life"><em>What was your high and low of student life?</em></h3>



<p>All the way through my degree I worked in local restaurants and really enjoyed it. It may sound strange to say this was a high &#8211; but it gave me balance. </p>



<p>The lows are more difficult because I really enjoyed my student life. But I suppose I found it could sometimes be tricky living in a student house. I&#8217;m quite a  neat and tidy person &#8211; so when you come home and the house smells of cigarettes, nobody has washed up for three days and there&#8217;s mess everywhere, it&#8217;s not great. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-if-you-weren-t-a-head-what-would-you-be"><em>If you weren’t a head, what would you be?</em></h3>



<p>A chef. I&#8217;m not saying I&#8217;m the best chef in the world, but I worked in restaurants throughout my teens and 20s and always really enjoyed it. I think it actually taught me a lot about how to spin the plates you as a head teacher. </p>



<p>But when I&#8217;m having a bad or stressful week, my fantasy is to buy a little gastropub somewhere and run that. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-describe-what-s-on-your-work-desk"><em>Describe what’s on your work desk…</em></h3>



<p>There&#8217;s a standing desk on top of it &#8211; I don&#8217;t like sitting down at my desk at all. Then there&#8217;s my laptop, a phone and I&#8217;ve got a rock from the beach near my house in Sussex that my daughter painted to look like a sunset. It sits on my inbox, on top of the paper. And that&#8217;s about it. I try and keep it quite minimal. I don&#8217;t really like clutter.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-and-what-s-in-the-top-drawer"><em>And what’s in the top drawer?</em></h3>



<p>I had to open the drawer to find out because I never use them. But I&#8217;ve discovered there&#8217;s a bunch of branded Frensham Heights post cards and pieces of paper with notes from speeches I&#8217;ve given. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tell-us-your-favourite-books-in-childhood-uni-and-now"><em>Tell us your favourite books – in childhood, uni and now.</em></h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1525" height="2172" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/01/book-invisible-man-ralph-ellison.jpg" alt="Book cover Invisible Man by American author Ralph Ellison." class="wp-image-57975" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/01/book-invisible-man-ralph-ellison.jpg 1525w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/01/book-invisible-man-ralph-ellison-562x800.jpg 562w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/01/book-invisible-man-ralph-ellison-702x1000.jpg 702w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/01/book-invisible-man-ralph-ellison-281x400.jpg 281w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/01/book-invisible-man-ralph-ellison-768x1094.jpg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/01/book-invisible-man-ralph-ellison-1078x1536.jpg 1078w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2025/01/book-invisible-man-ralph-ellison-1438x2048.jpg 1438w" sizes="(max-width: 1525px) 100vw, 1525px" /></figure>



<p>In childhood, I loved &#8211; absolutely loved &#8211; a fantasy series by an American author called David Eddings. He wrote two <em>The Belgariad</em> and <em>The Malloreon</em>. They were your classic journey from childhood to adulthood &#8211; 10 novels in total &#8211; in a fantasy world full of demons and gods and monsters.</p>



<p>At uni, I was much more political, and the book that moved me most was <em>Invisible Man</em> by Ralph Ellison. My favourite course was early 20th century American literature, and I was always really profoundly moved by the post emancipation and black writers talking about the experiences of black people in America in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s.  <em>Invisible Man</em> for me was the best of them. </p>



<p>In the last 10 years, the book I&#8217;ve returned to most often is the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. His dedication is inspirational.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-s-the-best-school-trip-you-ve-ever-been-on"><em>What’s the best school trip you’ve ever been on?&nbsp;</em></h3>



<p>This is an easy one. It has to be a school trip when I was 17 &#8211; when I met my wife. It was a week-long modernist literature residential to Villiers Park near Cambridge. Our eyes met over a pint of lager in local pub &#8211; and the rest is history.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-play-book-and-film-should-be-on-every-child-s-cultural-bucket-list"><em>What play, book and film should be on every child’s cultural bucket list?</em></h3>



<p>Play would have to be <em>Matilda the Musical</em>. Book is <em>Never Let Me Go</em> by Kazuo Ishiguro and film is something from the genré of <em>Chitty Chitty Bang Bang</em> or <em>Bednobs and Broomsticks</em> &#8211; for the simplicty, innocence and slower pace of story telling, as well as the joy of song and dance.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-if-you-want-to-hide-from-the-kids-and-staff-for-half-an-hour-where-do-you-go"><em>If you want to hide from the kids and staff for half an hour, where do you go?</em> </h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="667" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2020/03/Frensham-Heights_BOARDERS-60-1000x667.jpg" alt="Frensham Heights School, near Farnham, Surrey" class="wp-image-38992" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2020/03/Frensham-Heights_BOARDERS-60-1000x667.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2020/03/Frensham-Heights_BOARDERS-60-800x533.jpg 800w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2020/03/Frensham-Heights_BOARDERS-60-400x267.jpg 400w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2020/03/Frensham-Heights_BOARDERS-60-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2020/03/Frensham-Heights_BOARDERS-60-788x525.jpg 788w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/surrey/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2020/03/Frensham-Heights_BOARDERS-60.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The woodlands at Frensham Heights, which also has a high-ropes course and zipwire.</figcaption></figure>



<p>I go for a walk in the woods with the dog. We&#8217;re lucky to have 80-acs of woodlands here. I love to be around nature &#8211; it&#8217;s very grounding. Good for the soul.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-song-you-sing-at-full-volume-when-everyone-s-gone-home"><em>The song you sing at full volume when everyone’s gone home?</em></h3>



<p>Blinded By Your Grace by Stormzy. He played this in 2019 at Glastonbury and it was absolutely staggering. When pupils were returning to school after the pandemic we decided to play uplifting tunes over the PA system as they arrived at school &#8211; and this was the first song on that playlsit.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-advice-would-you-give-to-a-younger-ben-mccarey"><em>What advice would you give to a younger Ben McCarey?</em></h3>



<p>Slow down. When I was younger thought I was in a hurry to get where I wanted to be as quickly as possible. But I&#8217;ve now realised that none of that matters. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-and-your-current-students"><em>And your current students?</em></h3>



<p>The same advice. Slow down and know yourself. It&#8217;s important to know that you don&#8217;t have to be the finished article just yet.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<p><strong><em>Frensham Heights is a modern and forward-thinking all-through school near Farnham offering a child-centred, holistic education where individuality is celebrated. Ben McCarey has been headteacher since April 2024.</em></strong> <em><strong><a href="https://surrey.muddystilettos.co.uk/school-reviews/frensham-heights-school-near-farnham/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Read our review.</a></strong></em></p>



<p><em><strong>Frensham Heights Road, Rowledge, Farnham, Surrey, GU10 4EA. Tel: 01252 792 561. &nbsp;<a href="https://www.frensham.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">frensham.org</a></strong></em></p>


Head’s up! Ben McCarey, Frensham Heights School

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