One of the pleasant aspects of working at Hogwarts must be the admissions policy. There’s no agonising about student selection: candidates simply show up on the magical register and off they go. Choosing a tutor group or house for new entrants presents no challenges either: a hat takes care of that. The school is able to ignore any issues over positive character education: openly evil applicants are more than welcome and there is a house in which to store them all conveniently to help manage their impact on others.

Pretty much everywhere else in education, admission to schools remains an enormous challenge. The non-selective state system, especially in cities, is gamed by catchment: class enclaves cluster around outstanding schools. As for selective state grammars, everyone in this part of Berkshire is very well aware of the pressure that process can put on families and directly on young children. And academically selective independent schools like The Abbey contribute too.

We believe whole-heartedly in the principle of fair and open academic selection. It actively creates opportunity; it allows students to access communities of learning right for them; it can change lives. But it creates a serious responsibility for schools not to impose adverse burdens on children.

So: we argue against academic tutoring. It increases pressure and disrupts the playfulness of childhood; taken to excess it is evidently harmful; and if it enables students to access an environment that does not, in truth, suit their needs, the harm will only be prolonged.

But – while such sentiments are all very well – if schools operate admissions tests for which children can be effectively tutored, then they are creating a powerful incentive to plough ahead and tutor anyway. Parents worry that everyone else is doing it, and if they don’t, they are failing their children – and so the problem incrementally worsens.

At The Abbey we have taken steps to address the negative sense of pressure around the selection process. We have stripped out a pass/fail test for our Junior School children and instead rely on academic selection via continuous assessment for internal candidates. We have created a new optional academic scholarship paper, for which students cannot prepare, and which prioritises playfulness and creativity of thought: this removes the incentive to tutor to maximise scholarship chances. Above all we are committed to holistic admissions. We meet every applicant and review every single aspect of their application, taking some pressure off any one element of the process. If we see potential from interview or school reference, we may offer a place even where exam performance is lower.

However, we and all selective schools need to do more. We need to commission research into ability tests that resist preparation much more effectively. We need to consider common exams more carefully, so children do not face multiple assessments with separate requirements. We need to remove as many unspoken incentives to tutor as we can, so that we are truly living up to our belief in welfare and wellbeing.

We will, I hope, never tire at The Abbey of seeking ways to place joy at the heart of everything – and to remove obstacles to it where we find them. I write this on a day when I also judged the Upper IV Launchpad competition and watched the Drama Scholars’ production, Women of Ithaca: both experiences were joy incarnate. The more we celebrate joy, the more inventive and consistent we must be in letting its light shine through every aspect of what we do. That’s what we are all about.