Best Schools - Private schools expose children to the right kind of stress because of their emphasis on sports and

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Private schools expose children to the right kind of stress because of their emphasis on sports and dramatic arts, a head teacher claims.

Shaun Fenton, the headmaster of Reigate Grammar School in Surrey said that too many people thought stress was automatically bad for young people.

The incoming chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, which represents 250 independent schools, has been head teacher at two comprehensives, a state grammar and an independent school.

The benefit of private education was being able to champion extracurricular activities. “We’ve got a little bit more room to celebrate the arts, the extracurricular, and not be looking over our shoulder at what the inspectors will say,” he said.

Sports and artistic activities provide teenagers with a much-needed dose of “healthy” stress, he said, voicing concern that “there’s a danger in our narrative around teenage life that we see stress as a negative”.

'Spoon-fed' state pupils are unable to cope at uni, claims ex-private school head

Former head of Wellington College says students struggle at university because they are 'not given the freedom to learn' at state school

Speaking at a Headmasters' and Headmistresses Conference (HMC) event in London, Sir Anthony Seldon said that new university students were living away from home for the first time, having to organise themselves, and "the attitude of universities, the world over mostly, but not always, is that they fend for themselves – 'They are 18-year-olds, we are not going to infantilise them, they are going to cope.'"

These young people "need help to learn how to cope with autonomy", he added, suggesting that schools and universities could do more.