Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - If We Want to Save England, We Have to Start Here

July 10, 2025 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

38:41

If We Want to Save England, We Have to Start Here

There is no reason the King Alfred School should close. Support them: https://www.thekingalfredschool.co.uk/support-us Get the Trivium: https://courses.lotuseaters.com/bundles/the-trivium

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	I'm at the King Alfred School for Classical Education.
	This is a private school in Derby, which is also a charity that is a really, really tiny place.
	But what they've done here is something that is actually quite unique in the country.
	They're the first to properly revive a truly classical education in the Victorian mold.
	And I'm so impressed with the results that they've generated already that I think this should be expanded all across the country.
	But instead, Kirstama is going to shut it down.
	The King Alfred School is a small private school in Dudley, West Midlands, that was founded in September 2021 by Tom and Haley Bowen.
	Tom invited me to come and see the school as what they have created here is a working example of the kind of classical education for which I have been advocating.
	So the King Alfred School was founded off the back of a public meeting that my wife and I held in a church hall.
	So we hired a church hall and we put it to the local community to see if there was interest in a low-cost independent Christian school that offered a classical education.
	So the kind of education that was available to a lot of people at the beginning of the 20th century and has since died out.
	and we wanted to revive that to pass on our culture to the next generation.
	As a consciously Christian and English school, we began the day at 9am sharp with morning worship, which is carried out according to Thomas Cranmer's 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
	This was very pleasant and the children clearly enjoyed singing all the hymns.
	We were allowed to film in the school but of course we couldn't film any of the children and the school does not set up for brilliant acoustics or lighting so when we get to some of the later clips you'll have to forgive the slight drop in quality.
	Afterwards we got sit through the recitation period which is where the children recite facts they've learned across all of their subjects throughout the year which included poetry recitals, history questions, English grammar questions and Latin.
	Henry, when did Julius Caesar invade Britain?
	55 to 54 do you say.
	Very good.
	Remember when Calibian came?
	And here we go.
	And here we go.
	Do you know what he did?
	Was it where he said he conquered Britain?
	He just collected charles and dicks, didn't he?
	And he took them out to Rome and he said that he did conquer Britain.
	Who came after him?
	Hands up.
	And he really did conquer Britain this time.
	Ollie.
	Claudius.
	That's right.
	Who led the Britons against Claudius?
	Do you remember?
	Caracticus.
	That's right.
	What happened to him?
	He was captured by Claudius and taken back to Rome in chains.
	Excellent.
	What did he say to dissuade Claudius from having him executed?
	Quite clever what he said.
	But if Claudius killed him, then everyone would know that he was a bad ruler and if he didn't kill him, everyone would know that he was a good ruler.
	That's right, so people would know he wasn't merciful.
	He wanted people to think he was a merciful ruler.
	I couldn't get over the kids' historical knowledge.
	It was absolutely superb.
	When the teacher started asking them, well, when did I remember which Roman emperor it was it invaded?
	And I was staggered that the kids just correct, correct, correct.
	And even knew who, say, Caraticus was.
	And even knew what Caraticus had said to the emperor.
	It wasn't Claudius.
	I can't even remember which emperor it was.
	But what he said to the emperor to persuade him to spare his life.
	And these kids are like eight or nine years old.
	I didn't have that kind of knowledge when I was eight or nine years old.
	I had to develop an adult interest in history as a mature person and then go back and read all of this.
	Instead, they've been provided with this long before they get into the workplace.
	So they don't have to go and rediscover the history and the education that I had to rediscover.
	They're being given it going forward well before they're adults.
	This is such a privilege.
	We name the three English articles 12.
	Uh, like the definition?
	Yes, I did.
	Articles are words that signify nouns.
	A and then are the indefinite articles.
	This is the definite article.
	Articles are considered adjectives.
	Excellent.
	Even the eight parts of speech, please.
	Noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adjo, purposes, and conjuncture, interjection.
	Excellent.
	Ollie, do you have the four types of sentence classified by purpose with definitions?
	Declarative, which makes a statement.
	Imperative, which gives a command.
	Interrogative, which asks a question.
	And exclamatory, which expresses strong feelings.
	Excellent.
	Hannah, what is the definition of a sentiment, please?
	The definition of a sentence is a group of words expected in computers.
	Very good.
	Everybody, the two parts of every sentiment.
	Subjectively critical.
	Good.
	The King Alfred School's curriculum is based primarily upon the trivium and classic English history texts, which formed the basis of Victorian education right through until the middle of the 20th century.
	The trivium itself consists of three primary pillars, which are grammar, logic and rhetoric.
	These give the students the ability to properly understand the components of their own language, how they fit together coherently, and then how to properly express the thoughts they have constructed.
	It was the gold standard in education and made Britain the best place in the world to be educated.
	If you are an adult like me who didn't have the opportunity to do the trivium and you would like to go back and recapture this education, it's never too late to learn.
	And we actually sell the full trivium course on lotuseaters.com.
	I'll leave a link in the description.
	And as I said, it's a lot of work.
	This isn't a series of YouTube videos.
	It's a proper academic course.
	But I'm working through it myself and I can already feel the benefits.
	How have the students taken to this kind of education?
	Very, very well.
	Our little ones, they know lots of poems, they know lots of maths, facts, they know the times tables.
	They know a lot about the world and it really creates a sense of wonder.
	So let's jump ahead a little bit.
	When did the Saxons arrive?
	Ollie.
	449 A.D.
	Yes, they buy E. Who was it, Henry?
	Two men.
	Named after Saxons, when did they arrive?
	Sorry, when, who were they like born?
	Rachel. Begins with Rachel. Rachel.
	And Horsa, very good.
	We've lost the narrative of English history.
	It's more difficult to sell that than it ought to be.
	I think people have forgotten that they have a duty to pass on English civilisation from one generation to the next.
	I feel like the generation before mine hasn't done that to me and I've had to discover it in order to pass it on to the next.
	Let's recite the William Wordsworth poem.
	I travelled among unknown men in lands beyond the sea, nor England did I know till then what love I bore to thee.
	Tis past that melancholy dream, nor will I quit thy shore, a second time for still I sing to love thee more and more.
	Among thy mountains did I feel the joy of my desire, and she I cherished turned her wheel beside an English fire.
	Thy morning showed thy nights concealed, the boughs where Lucy played.
	And thine too is the last green field that Lucy's eye surveyed.
	I had the pleasure of being able to interview Mr. Falkland and Mrs. Betts and the love of what they were doing just poured out of the conversation that we had.
	It was very clear to me that they were very happy to finally have found a place where they could give what they considered to be a proper education to the young students.
	And the students were between, I think, about seven and nine, possibly 10 or 11 at the upper end.
	And you could see they were just so happy to not have to essentially pollute their minds with the curse of modernity.
	I joined the school last, it was in 2023, it was in September.
	So I've been here just over, well, getting under two years now.
	I love the school because it's when I had trained as a teacher in 2015, but I hadn't quite found a school that I fit into.
	And over time, my views on things have begun to change, so my politics have started to shift quite significantly.
	And I just didn't want to be part of the education system anymore because I thought it was anti-British and it was anti-Christian.
	And as time went on, I became a Christian.
	And there weren't any schools that I really wanted to go into because they all seemed to be part of the same sort of harmful system, I suppose.
	And I'd gone back into retail and a couple of other things, customer service.
	And then over some years later, I'd learned to, I'd heard about the classical Christian model.
	And I found it quite interesting because I was concerned about having children of my own.
	I thought, well, how are they going to be educated?
	And there's a theologian I quite liked that I was following his stuff and he spoke quite a lot about it and I thought I knew there were some of these schools in the States in America but I didn't think there were any schools like this in Britain.
	And my girlfriend at the time told me about, I think she was watching, she's watching the New Culture Forum and she'd see Tom and Hallie Pier on that.
	She said, this seems to be one of those schools and maybe you could.
	And I thought it can't be the real thing, you know.
	Anyway, I went on the website and I looked at it.
	I thought, yeah, this is the real thing.
	I was really excited about it.
	And so it was really the only school that could bring me, that was going to, that I wanted to teach at, that I could teach the way I wanted to teach in a traditional fashion.
	And it was also something that was entirely new in the sense that it hadn't really existed in Britain for you could probably argue about it, but probably about 100 years actually.
	And that's the reason I came and the reason that I that it was the only school that I would come back into teaching for Franklin.
	And I love it.
	I love it here.
	You know, we all knock in and sometimes it's a challenge, but I just feel very blessed to be here and to be teaching the children.
	If we wanted this model everywhere, there's no reason that the school couldn't be the blueprint for the new wave of state schools.
	There's absolutely nothing preventing the state from actually employing this kind of curriculum and this kind of ethos towards education, towards students, towards the transmission of culture and knowledge, and setting up these schools around the country.
	There's no reason it has to be a private school.
	It's only it has to be a private school now because the state is not prepared to do this because this is not what they consider to be a quote-unquote progressive education.
	But I can't help but notice that a progressive education means the dumbing down and reduction of everyone everywhere all the time.
	So to the point now, I mean, the best example is actually given in Netflix's Adolescents.
	Remember the school that's presented to us in, I think it's episode two of Adolescence.
	The parents hate it.
	The police officer hates it.
	The teachers hate it.
	And the students clearly have got no interest in being there.
	And I think that's actually quite an accurate representation of what the average state school is like now.
	Whereas here, the kids seem to be really enjoying themselves.
	They seem to be actively engaged in the class.
	And the story about Henry V punching the judge, I didn't know that.
	That was not taught to me when I was a kid.
	And so I was wrapped enjoying the lesson itself.
	And I'm 45.
	I should already know these things, but apparently I don't.
	What it comes down to, I think, as well, is that rather than just pushing for the test, which of course we want to achieve good results, we do.
	But actually, that comes organically out of producing learners where you encourage them to flourish in all areas.
	So in their virtue, in their different attributes, in character, and in that joy of just wanting to learn, you found haven't used it.
	If they want to learn, then they'll open up all the different areas and then interconnecting it in rather than just teaching discrete subjects.
	Like here, with our history of art curriculum, for example, we start chronologically from prehistory and then we interweave that into the other subjects.
	So geography is connected at the same time, the rest of history is connected at the same time, classical studies and it opens up that map whereas I don't know about anybody else, but when I was certainly in mainstream, it was like that with the Egyptians and you'd teach it topic-based and it's great and it's wonderful, which we enrich all that learning as well.
	But with that chronology and how it's like logically taught rather than, oh, we like India or, oh, let's do another topic.
	That would be wonderful.
	Rather than it being having that order or logic to it, teaching it all together and enriching the individual to become that really cultivated learning in every area.
	To just an ordinary comprehensive secondary school, state-funded school.
	And because I liked history, I think I knew that past generations were educated in a more serious way.
	So the history curriculum, for example, would be a good starting point that they were reading.
	The students were studying real history.
	So they would look at the ancient Greeks and military campaigns.
	You could study the life of Alexander the Great and his tutor Aristotle, whereas our history was very safe and soft and effeminate and wasn't as weighty, perhaps more fashionable, but wasn't really a weighty education.
	And we wanted to go back and try and revive that if we could.
	All of the teachers were, of course, incredibly courteous, professional, and knowledgeable.
	And they all were part of the mission, right?
	They all understood that the mission is not merely to come in, get a paycheck, and then go home.
	But actually, what they're doing is they are actually doing what needs to be done for the future of England.
	They understand themselves to be part of the cultural revival.
	They want to revive Christianity, they want to revive Englishness, they want to revive the sort of national spirit that modernity has spent so much time and effort stamping out.
	And they really, I mean, obviously, you know, I'm here for the day, so maybe it's not like this one here, but I can't help but feel that none of this was artificial, especially during the recitation in the morning, where Mr. Falkland is asking them quickfire questions, and the kids just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, with all of the correct answers.
	For me, I'd have to think about them.
	Because again, I had a state education.
	I didn't have what these kids have.
	And so, and the entire environment, and this, I think, is the most important part.
	The entire environment seems to be permeated with a spirit of goodwill.
	Everything in the environment is about doing the best for the people around them.
	So the teachers are trying to help the students as much as they can.
	And this attitude reflects in the students, where the students are then helping each other and they offer each other corrections or they're just happy to be in one another's company.
	And so you get this generally affectionate atmosphere in the school.
	And everyone's smiling, everyone's happy to help, everyone's happy to be here.
	And you can't help but think that this is a kind of microcosm of a world that has passed on that they've managed to resuscitate and bring back.
	And it's actually got a heartbeat.
	And if we could expand this to the rest of the country, even if it's just slowly and incrementally, then actually England doesn't have to die.
	It can carry on.
	I would say time has been the biggest sacrifice.
	The goal originally was for my wife to knock when we had our children.
	And then we're in the predicament of not wanting our children to go to the local state school.
	So that meant she's had to work even more than the average job.
	And then I was working in another sector at the time, so I was constantly doing things out of hours.
	So lots and lots of time, sort of going through all the standards, physically coming and decorating this building, painting and tidying up, and then going to churches and different events where we're trying to promote the school.
	So and often they're out of town, so sometimes it'd be an overnight stay somewhere, wasn't it?
	So there's always something that we're doing.
	Yeah, it has been a massive personal sacrifice to take this from a vision of a school to reality, probably for the last seven or eight years.
	Constant work because you to build something like this there's only been a very small team, so you have to be the person who builds it, the person who markets it, the person who does all the fundraising, the person who helps write the curriculum.
	There's really been myself Tom, Mrs Pepper and Katie on our team really the main three people who've done absolutely everything that's required to run a school.
	So you have to live and breathe it in order for it to have happened.
	You know it really is all day, every day evenings weekends, like Tom says.
	You know, many trips all over the country trying to to get word out that we're pioneering this return and I think it's especially hard because we're the first, the first one in the in the UK so to to revive this.
	So there's lots of extra work to make it happen.
	And I'd like to mention the families who sacrifice.
	Obviously we have to charge because we have to pay the staff and costs and there's a big sacrifice for families.
	Even though it's a low cost profit school it is, it is still a financial sacrifice, and a worthy one for parents, and it's a shame that they're being taxed on on that.
	They could just spend that on a holiday or whatever, but they don't.
	They invest in the next generation and they're taxed on that.
	I think that's that's quite cruel, and also all the staff.
	You can't run a school like this and pay yourself the the going rate.
	So I suppose financial sacrifice for everyone involved has been a big thing as well.
	So staff sort of have a trade-off.
	Do they go in the state system or do they come here where they really believe in the vision?
	But they have to take the pay cut, as with any fledgling independent school.
	Aside from all of the other costs, there is a tremendous burden placed upon them in the form of overbearing regulations and the looming hand of the government watchdog Ofsted.
	Ofsted was founded in 1992 and significantly reconstituted during the Blair years by the Education And Inspections Act of 2006.
	This introduces many problems but foremost among them is that the people enforcing the bureaucratic rules operate under the mindset of a one-size-fits-all agenda which makes it very difficult for small institutions and also they are very modern and progressive.
	I think the administrative burden on small schools is so much to the point where you could easily stop running your school because 95% of my job will, I would say, is compliance to standards rather than getting into the wonderful education and the content of what we're trying to deliver.
	And I think again, that really rules out many groups in being able to deliver this because it could be a very simple setup and you could deliver as good, perhaps even better education if you had less of that to deal with.
	I think if you want to do something on a small scale, it's not very friendly towards you doing that.
	It kind of leans its self to something that's going to cost millions to operate because for us as a small school of 20, we have still the same amount of compliance for someone who might have a school of 5,000.
	So yeah.
	Could you give me some examples of those particulars?
	I think it would probably be around the building because there's things, for example, if you have a child who's 11, you have to have a shower in your school, even if they will never have a share in the school.
	So you will walk around our building there and you'll see a share in the corner that will only ever be turned on when the offset inspector arrives.
	This extra work costs time and money that is easy for large institutions to complete, but creates a much higher barrier of entry for small institutions.
	All of the teachers at the King Alfred School felt not only the weight of the bureaucracy that Ofsted imposed upon them though, but also a general sense that the inspectors treated the project with suspicion, as if they were doing something wrong by not being progressive.
	We started with nine families and I think they were families who were already waiting for such a school to open.
	So they'd got young children, mostly just about to start reception, and were worried about the cultural climate, especially the trajectory of modern education.
	So they were looking for something different.
	Many of them were considering homeschooling before I heard about our school.
	So there was a few people who were ready for us.
	Local churches were very indifferent.
	We presented the idea as a way of Christians being educated in a traditional manner so that we pass on our faith to the next generation.
	And that is my definition of culture, my definition of education is that we pass on culture from one generation to the next.
	But that kind of thinking is lost with local churches.
	I think it might be a generational thing.
	I think people think very short term.
	They don't think how their sons and grandsons will be in years to come.
	And we want English civilisation to continue, not just for my own children, for my grandchildren and their children also.
	But that was a hard message to sell because I think many people don't think that way anymore.
	Fundamentally, at the heart of the classical education being provided here is the old Aristotelian project of educating children into virtue, which is a term that is simply not found in classrooms outside of the King Alfred School, but is something that is on the minds and lips of all of the students and teachers.
	So I've worked in secondary schools, I've also taught in primaries and different settings.
	And the main thing I asked myself as someone who is a teacher but also a parent is would I want to send my child into this environment?
	And the honest answer was no.
	Like I say, wisdom and virtue were not words I'd ever heard anyone mention in the state sector at all.
	And logic, I think a big focus when I was in secondary was we'd talk about critical thinking, but we would never teach logic.
	So I don't think you can have great debates if you have no knowledge base, if you don't know how to apply logic and you can't communicate in a winsome and graceful manner.
	If you imagine a Roman landowner years and years ago, he would want his son to be virtuous so he can pass on the farm or the family estate to the next generation in a better condition that he found it.
	And that requires a lot of self-discipline.
	So with freedom, you need self-discipline.
	So that's what the virtue of this school is.
	We're trying to create free citizens and they need to regulate their own desires.
	But this brilliant resurgence in classical education has been put under dire threat by the resentful socialist policies of Keir Starmer's Labour government.
	On January the 1st, 2025, Labour decided to remove private schools from the VAT tax exemption that they'd previously enjoyed.
	Value-added tax, VAT, is a consumption tax that is added to goods and services and raises the price of everything by 20%.
	And that 20% is given to the government.
	Private schools, being a public investment in young people and the future of the country, were previously counted as charitable organisations and so were exempt from VAT.
	However, Starmer, the old unreformed socialist that he is, views all private schools through his personal hatred of Eton and the British aristocracy, whilst failing to understand that most private schools are where the aspiring working and middle classes invest in their children's future.
	Indeed, his government seems to have been as disruptive as possible to private schools in the timing of the VAT introduction.
	And when asked about this issue, he seems to think that everyone who attends a private school is a multi-millionaire.
	If I'm honest with you, I'm a bit confused by some of the arguments against this, right?
	Saying that private schools will close, for example, if it's introduced.
	Why wouldn't private schools just increase class sizes or cut staff and make, I guess, the kind of economic decisions that the state sector has to make all the time?
	You know, do you think that actually, yeah, private schools should have to make the kind of cut their cloth in the same way that all the other schools do?
	Yes, I think they will adapt.
	And they've had lots of increases in costs over the last 10, 14 years and they've accommodated it.
	And there's no evidence to show that these schools will close.
	They don't have to pass the cost on to parents.
	It doesn't require any kind of education in economics to understand that if the price of a good goes up by 20%, then the proportion of people who can afford it will go down.
	It is hard to take anything he says to be said in good faith on this subject.
	In fact, as he appears to just be ignoring the brute reality of his decisions, at least 12 independent private schools have already closed because of this.
	And if something isn't done, the King Alfred School will be next.
	That's been devastating for our school.
	So the whole point, as I mentioned earlier, was a low-cost independent school.
	So we thought people who have a little bit of disposable money could put that into invest that in their children's education.
	So we envisioned a low-cost private education.
	Now, with a 20% VAT charge on top, has made that much, much more difficult for families to access their education.
	So we've created a brilliant product that's going to really help lower middle class and working class families.
	And now that's been moved out of reach just by the government adding tax.
	Now, if you the VAT alone is £1,200.
	If you imagine you've got three children and you expect just ordinary working families to afford that, it's just far too much.
	And we have gone from 34 students down to 18.
	The effect of Starmer's VAT increase was to cut the King Alfred School student body from 34 down to 18.
	Despite this, the good reputation of the school has spread and the registered attendees for September 2025 has gone up to 40.
	But the issue has left the school in a terminal financial hole until the next term begins.
	Put simply, if they are unable to raise £200,000 by the end of the summer holidays, they will have to close.
	We've got a healthy new intake in September but it was hugely damaging so there is hope but we are having to look at whether we can carry on or whether we can or whether we should just close the school.
	I send my kids to a private school and that private school costs six grand a term.
	And that's not including Keir Salma's VAT increases.
	This school costs six grand a year and there are, I think, I think three terms in a year.
	So this school is way cheaper than the school I pay for.
	And don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with the school that my children go to, but I would prefer them to be getting this education.
	Because this education, and I've made this point many a time now, is based in the trivium.
	It's based in a traditional classical Victorian education.
	The school I send my children to, well, it just isn't because there's nothing around for them to do this, because this is the first example of that in England.
	And you can see the quality of the critical thinking skills and the knowledge base of the children already.
	The trivium is the key to a good education.
	And this school is proof of that.
	So for only six grand a year, I'm genuinely quite annoyed that I can't do this for my own.
	But maybe one day, not in the too distant future, I actually will be able to do that.
	Are there any other schools that operate in the same way in the country?
	Well, we've helped two new schools start up, one in the south of England, one in the north of Scotland.
	So we regularly have parents come look around this school from all parts of the country and say, we wish this was accessible to us.
	And they ask us if we could start one near them.
	Obviously, we don't have the resources to do that, but sometimes they attempt to start schools themselves.
	And we've supported two that are up and running.
	And we're quite proud of that.
	As the King Alfred School is a registered charity, if you would like to leave a donation with them, whether it's big or small, I'll leave a link to their support page in the description of this video.
	So please do consider it.
	Because I really think that what Tom and Haley Bowen have done here and the entire staff of the school, as well as the parents who were brave enough to try something new for their children, what they've accomplished, I think is actually really remarkable.
	And I think it would be really, really tragic if Keir Starmer's socialist government was able to just legislate it out of existence.
	So we're now at the end of the day here.
	And I just wanted to record some sort of final thoughts about just the experience of being Higgs.
	We were here all day.
	We sat in the lessons.
	We had lunch with the children and the balance.
	And you can feel the passion that they've approached this with.
	They've really looked at the issues and the issue, particularly with the education system in the country, and decided, because they were thinking about doing homeschooling of their own.
	I thought, well, why don't we start a school for a classical Christian education so the children can actually have what they were themselves deprived of, what I was deprived of, what you were deprived of, when you were growing up.
	And I've never heard the words virtue being used so much in an educational setting.
	The idea is to raise virtuous people and make them confident about going out into the world and being good people.
	So the kind of people you'll be pleased to interact with when they're older.
	And all of the children were just absolutely lovely.
	And they had dignity and poise and confidence and they knew what they were doing and why they were doing it.
	And they weren't meany-mouthed.
	They weren't scuffing their feet.
	They didn't look like they were out of place or like they didn't belong or that they didn't know what they were doing.
	These children seemed confident and happy and kind and considerate and exactly the kind of children you would want your own to be.
	And so I'm watching this thinking, okay, but what possible reason is there for us not rolling this model out?
	And the answer is, of course, it's not woke.
	It's not something that the Ofsted inspectors are always going on about politically correct issues, woke issues, and they are interested in that they're bureaucrats, they're box tickers, they're pen pushers, and they're just literally like, okay, well, I've got a list here, list here, list here.
	And so they have to constantly struggle with Ofsted because Ofsted, on some subconscious level, view them kind of like enemies, like as if they're, oh, right, you're troublemakers.
	You're not, where are the pride flags?
	Where's the Black Lives Matter month stuff?
	You know, where's all that?
	And of course, they don't have any of that here.
	What they have, children reading Bibles and reading classical works or our island story or other things that are actually a part of the traditional English education.
	And so obviously the people at Ofsted and the government and whoever else are just looking at them going, okay, these are weird aliens and we don't really trust them.
	We're not certain about what they're doing and we think it might be a bit suspect, actually.
	And so this whole thing is outside of their experience and they don't see the good that's coming out of it.
	And of course, when it comes to the Labour government talking about wealth redistribution, frankly, they're going to tax, well, reintroduce the VAT on private schools.
	Well, most private schools are not big.
	This is tiny.
	This is an absolutely tiny place that's got not enough space, but has also lost students because of Kirstama's VAT rise.
	And so he thinks he's punishing Eton when in fact what he's punishing are hardworking, working and middle-class parents who are aspiring to give their children something that they personally were deprived.
	And honestly, I was listening to them tell me this.
	I'm like, well, that's me.
	That's exactly what I'm doing with my children.
	I spend my money, not on flashy cars or anything.
	I spend my money educating my children and getting the education that I didn't have because my father began his life in a caravan and I had to go to state schools and they were terrible.
	And I would like my children to at least be the recipient of that kind of traditional view of progress where it's like, no, we're building for ourselves and our future and our children.
	And that's the ethos that underpins this whole thing.
	And it's not just for the parents, it's for the nature of England itself.
	And Tom is very clear.
	He views this as part of the restorative mission of the country.
	And I can see it.
	I can see it living and breathing in this place.
	And so the fact that it's honestly on a knife edge and could end up closing down before the school term in September when they have a bunch of new sign-ups just and again, closing down because of bureaucracy.
	It's because of bureaucracy.
	It's kind of heartbreaking.
	I hate to see it.
	I absolutely hate to see it, which is why I'm making this video.
	It's why I'm doing this.
	So if, like I said, they are a charity.
	So if you feel compelled to help and you feel that actually this might be one of the cornerstones that in 100 years time we look back on and say, yeah, this was what saved England, well, do donate.

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