The King's Scholarship

Have you ever woken up one morning to find your neighbourhood invaded by a hoard of garishly dressed dwarves? I have, and I can tell you it’s a nightmare. In fact, it happened to me this very morning. And yesterday morning. And the morning before that. How come? It’s the King’s Scholarship exam week.

The King’s Scholarship exam week is when Eton decides which fourteen of the future intake to make King Scholars. Any boy in his last year of prep school is invited to enter it, and should he succeed in making the top fourteen a place in College is reserved for him the following year. College, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, is where the King Scholars live, while the rest of us, Oppidan plebs, are accommodated in the other twenty four boarding houses.

Once all new boys are at Eton there is no mobility between the two groups. King Scholars cannot become Oppidans, and Oppidans cannot become King Scholars. It is therefore hugely important for the school to pick the right boys to put into College the first time round. They must sort the wheat from the chaff, the cream from the milk. And what better way to do that than organise three gruelling days of nerve-wracking exams to see who’s really got what it takes to be a KS.

So it happens that every summer half for three days over a hundred silly, immature, miniature prep school boys in their multi-coloured blazers arrive at the school and pollute the chilled out atmosphere with their inane mutterings about what papers they’re doing, what books they’ve read, and what the cubed root of 3,476 is. It’s like having the most annoying boy in F block cloned dozens of times and let loose in the school. The only problem being that you can beat up the F blocker in the queue for lunch, whereas the scholarship boys, as guests of the school, are protected from violence.

If I sound harsh in my criticism of the scholarship boys it’s because I’m embarrassed by my former self. Like all the little freaks currently staying at Eton, I too sat the Scholarship exam back in the day (without success), and spent my days at the school mouthing off about Pythagoras and Animal Farm, telling anyone who would listen about all the papers I’d done, and generally being a nuisance. To put it kindly, I exhibited the type of behaviour which once you arrive at Eton is soon kicked out of you, if not figuratively then literally.

Whilst it’s a pain to spend hours each day scribbling away on exam papers, the whole Scholarship exam experience is otherwise great fun. The main attraction of course is that you get to leave the strict confines of prep school for a few days and taste the freedom of secondary school, where within reason you can do what you want when you want.

Most scholarship boys are put up for their stay in their future houses, providing they don’t get a scholarship and go to College. Arriving at the house is a nervous moment, since for the duration of one’s stay you are required to participate in the house activities, such as eat meals and meetings. Depending on what house you’re staying in, your room will either be on the house master’s private side, or a spare one on the boys’ side. The latter is certainly more fun.

After unpacking and settling in, the impending exams loom in one’s mind. This week will be the culmination of a year’s (if not longer) hard work and preparation, as everyone will have been coached intensively by their prep school. This means month after month of algebra equations, French irregular verbs and Latin declensions, and as a result little else occupies one’s thoughts.

There are only four papers which are compulsory for everyone: English, science, maths ‘A’ and general paper I. An additional three papers must then be chosen from a list of French, Latin, Greek, maths ‘B’, history-geography-divinity (all one paper) and general paper II. In total, seven exams over the three days.

The first exam is definitely the most nail-biting. You are beckoned into School Hall, which with its lofty ceilings, its little natural light, and its many portraits of old men staring down at you does not feel you with much ease. In fact, it’s positively spooky. Only after the third or fourth exam do you feel reasonably comfortable.

So long as you have revised properly, most of the papers are not too tricky. The first few questions are straightforward, but then begin to increase in difficulty. By the end you always find one knock-out question which is so challenging that only one or two boys will answer it at most. Best not to even look at it!

The most peculiar or unpredictable papers are without doubt the ‘general’ ones: general I and general II. Only general I is compulsory for all, but a fair few enter general II as well. General I is akin to an IQ test, with a bit of verbal reasoning and maths thrown in too, whereas General II is more of an essay-style paper, with questions on topics that range from philosophy to current affairs.

The year I sat the scholarship exam (2011) actually saw one of general I questions later court controversy in the nation press. The question was about a hypothetical riot in London after a Middle East oil crisis, in which the Army had to intervene and kill several of the protestors. You then had to imagine you were the Prime Minister and write a speech to the public explaining why the killings were both ‘necessary’ and ‘moral’! I don’t think it’s hard to see why this didn’t go down so well!

Outside of the exams there are plenty of opportunities for exploring Eton and enjoying oneself. Given the seriousness of the prize at stake you’d think everyone would be stuck inside revising, but the reverse is true. But the time you’ve arrived at Eton people have done so much revision that it’s hard for them not to get distracted. Tudor Stores for instance, the Eton tuck-shop, has every chocolate bar imaginable stocked under their roof, which after being cooped up as a prep school boarder is a bit like having Willy Wonka’s factory on your doorstep. Plus, there are F and E blockers calling you out for a game of football, not to mention the chance to wander round and explore.

This time away from the books doesn’t really matter that much if, like me, you have little hope of actually getting a scholarship. I knew before going into it that I wasn’t bright enough to become a KS, but I did it anyway to stretch myself more than Common Entrance would have done. Common Entrance is the entrance exam for all independent schools, and if you do well enough in the scholarship exam without actually getting a scholarship you can be exempt from it. Somehow, this is what I achieved, and I went back to my prep school with a long, lazy summer to look forward to.

However, when you have plenty of time on your hands you often think about things you would otherwise never have thought about. For me: what kind of impression did I make on my future house members during my stay at Eton? Not a brilliant one I slowly realised, not a brilliant one at all, what with all my irritating pseudo-intellectual posturing. Only a vigorous PR operation when I actually arrived in F block stopped me becoming the most unpopular member of the house.

So although I dread the arrival of the scholarship boys every summer half, I do absolve them of their sins. They know not what they do, those little freaks.

Just be careful not to hand me a machine-gun while they’re here.