School daze
What happened when the pupils at £9,000-a-term Wellington met under-privileged teenagers from Burnley? Elizabeth Day reports on a remarkable school swap
School exchange programme, Wellington College
Donna Taylor, 14, (far right) hesitates to join the lunch queue with the pupils of Wellington College. Photograph: Richard Saker/Observer
The driveway leading up to Wellington College is a kilometre long and cuts through a vast green blanket of lawn, the edges of which have been cordoned off to ensure the damp grass is not trampled by careless feet before the end-of-term rugby match. Walking up the long drive, there is ample opportunity to admire the impressive red and white brick building as it emerges from the early-morning mist. As you get closer, you notice the carved stone pediments silhouetted against the sky.
Established in 1859, the college was founded by Queen Victoria and the Earl of Derby as a national monument to Britain's great military figure, the Duke of Wellington. It is a school that exudes privilege from every pore, with its 400-acre grounds, its golfing greens, its shooting range and its extensive stretch of private woodland. A term as a boarder at Wellington costs £8,975, and last year there was a 100% A-level pass rate. The school's motto, inscribed in Latin in the chapel hymn books, is Heroum Filii - Sons of Heroes.
Chris Uthman, 15, is the son of a truck driver and an Accident & Emergency nurse. He lives on a council estate about four miles south of Manchester city centre with his mother - his parents split up when he was six. Until relatively recently, Chris went to school at Chorlton High, a comprehensive where fewer than half the pupils are white British and a high proportion have English as their second language. In 2008, it was given a "satisfactory" rating by Ofsted.
When he was 14, Chris was excluded from his school. He had been playing truant from lessons for more than a year and had fallen out with a new maths teacher. It came to a head one day in the classroom and Chris became verbally aggressive. He is a broad-shouldered teenager, well over 6ft and with an expression of glowering discontent on his face that he adopts whenever he feels threatened or uncomfortable. It is easy to see how Chris could appear intimidating.
