Usually, it’s important to dress up smartly when visiting schools. It’s a basic principle of education that, if we’re expecting children to approach their learning with a degree of professionalism, we as adults need to reflect that back to them. Even if, for most schools, a detachable stiff collar and white tie might be considered slightly de trop.
So I felt just a little abashed on appearing at Outwood Academy Riverside, in central Middlesbrough last Friday, dressed in sweaty bright lycra and shorts. My friend Melissa Brant-Smith, the principal, seemed only too delighted to see me—though I noticed she preferred a handshake to an embrace! As I cycled up Russell Street in the town centre, I was greeted by 13 Year 10 students who had spent the previous week at Eton on our brilliant ‘Skills for Success’ course, in which they’d built up confidence at public speaking and other future skills, all while being away from home… I was also greeted by A____, who will be joining C Block in September on the Orwell Award—Middlesbrough’s first son to achieve this.
My excuse for this dress offence (or offensive dress) was that Riverside was the final point on a longer journey, connecting Eton to Dudley, Oldham and Middlesbrough by the cycleways of Britain. I left Eton in July 2024, travelling as far as Dudley; then completed the Dudley to Oldham leg in October 2024; with the final leg, in July 2025, connecting Oldham with Blackburn (the home of our partners Star Academies) and with Middlesbrough.
The route took in Pendle Hill, the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors: and I was lucky enough that the chosen dates were during the July heatwave. Never have Staithes and Whitby looked so Mediterranean, with the crisp blue sea looking warm enough to wallow in. Cycling aficionados will note the presence of electrical assistance on the picture above—only too necessary as I struggled up the road to 1300 feet between Brown Haw and Little Whernside in James Herriot country.
Since October 2024, the Eton Star Partnership project—designed to build on Eton’s expertise in educating the most academically able students and to share that expertise widely across the national education system—has unfortunately been on hold. We have been working really hard with the local authorities in Dudley, Oldham and Middlesbrough, and taking every opportunity to talk to government about the manifest virtues of the project. We remain very hopeful that, at the right time, the government will unlock the capital funding necessary to go ahead.
The ambition is nothing less than three gleaming new Eton Star schools, free to access and fully within the state sector, marshalling Eton’s extraordinary aptitudes and marrying them to the equally extraordinary work of our partner Star Academies, which fulfil Eton’s fifteenth century mission of providing transformational educational opportunities to disadvantaged young people in the places where they live. Those amazing young people at Outwood Riverside will be among those who benefit—although I hope that next time I meet them, I might be slightly better dressed.
