The School Prospectus (Draft).
With memos and corrections by Lord Downey.
This was born out of a review of one of my stories posted by TreacleMineRoad. Unfortunately I couldn't reply directly. But while I think I've got the maths and the numbers broadly right, the canonical and my fanfic descriptions of the Assassins' Guild School on Filigree Street, Ankh-Morpork, require a little detailed analysis, just to be absolutely certain all the numbers stack up. I thought that writing a school prospectus for the guidance of interested parents and students would be a fun way of testing this out. Thank you!
This is also slightly different from other versions posted elsewhere within the corpus of my Fanfic. I wanted to prevent total student numbers ballooning to an absurd point. 1600 is on the high side, but not un-known for a comparable British school, either public (in the British sense of a fee-paying selective private institution) or "public" (in the American sense of a State-funded open Middle/High School). And numbers thin out very sharply after general education largely ends and The Black takes over.
All designations and descriptions are according to canon and are taken from the Assassins' Guild entry on the Terry Pratchett L-Space Wiki.
The very few elements sneaking in from the Pessimal version are Joan Sanderson-Reeves – my own OC creation and a woman I have a sneaking love for. And respect. A very great respect. Also Miss Smith-Rhodes' doctorate and her romance with Ponder Stibbons. Apart from these, this first chapter summarises details which are wholly canonical. "Aceria" is of course my catch-all term for anything remotely "North American" in cultural origin, style, appearance or spelling. Which fuddy-duddy people in Ankh-Morpork deplore, much as some British people resist American cultural imports to the death. But any resemblance between Aceria and the USA/Canada is all in the mind...)
And do not forget, in the Words of God:
"The Assassins' Guild School was created by taking a classic British public school and turning all the knobs up past eleven, especially the one marked 'violence'" (Terry Pratchett, quoted in The Art of Discworld)
Slight editing has taken place to remove typos, spelling errors, minor inconsistencies, and one huge glaring error in the maths. Thanks to Nimbus Llewellyn for beta-reading and alerting me.
Lord Downey studied the document on his desk. Every so often he frowned and made a pencil note in the margin, sometimes emphatically pencilling through a word or a line. He read on.
So you are considering placing your child at the Assassins' Guild school. We sincerely thank you for your interest, and we hope this modest prospectus will provide the information you require to assist you in arriving at an informed decision.
Hopefully all the answers will be contained in these pages. Should you have any further interest, we run Open Days for prospective parents at regular intervals throughout the academic year, where staff and carefully selected current students will be happy to offer tours of the premises and to answer any further questions you may have.
Appointments and dates for such Open Days are available from the Guild office. Please direct Clacks or postal enquiries to the Office of the Guild Bursar, Mr D.V.P. Winvoe, who will be delighted to reply. N.B.: Mr Winvoe, owing to an ongoing medical condition, may not always be available to reply coherently, if indeed at all, but please be assured other Bursary staff members are on hand to deal with your inquiry, which is important to us. {MEMO: Please do not mention "dried frog pills" at this point in conjunction with our Bursar. The parallel affliction of Dr Dunwiddie at the University is well known and I want to communicate, especially to parents, the concept that our finances are extremely well managed. Downey}
Mr Winvoe or a member of his Staff will, on application, discreetly present a current schedule of fees and other incidental costs for both Boarding and Day pupils. Some Bursaries are available to defer costs for deserving applicants, and the Guild also considers exceptionally bright and able Scholarship pupils. For further information, please address an inquiry to our Head of Scholarship, Bursary-Assisted and Charitably Assisted Students, Miss J. Sanderson-Reeves.
The Houses of Study:
The Boarding School
Head of Boarding School and Deputy School Mistress: Lady T'Malia
Mrs Beddowe's House (M. le Balourd)
Black Widow House [girls] (Mme les Deux-Epées)
Broken Moons House (Mr Moody)
Cobra House (Mr Mericet)
Mykkim House (Mr Linbury-Court)
Pernypopax Dampier House (Professor Stone)
Raguineau's (Baron Strifenkanan)
Raven House {girls} (Doctor Smith-Rhodes) {MEMO: Any reference to "Mrs Stibbons" at this point is somewhat premature. In any case, following marriage she would properly be "Doctor Stibbons." Downey.}
Scorpion House [girls] (Lady T'malia)
Tump House [girls] (Miss Alice Band)
Viper House (Mr Nivor)
Welcome Soap House (Mr Graumunchen)
Wigblock Prior (Kompt de Yoyo)
These thirteen Houses belong to the Boarding School where pupils will be housed, provisioned and looked after by the Guild 24/8 during term time. For those who express a need, are from overseas, or who are acting out of a purely human parental need to want to see less of their children, we can board pupils outside recognised term-times. Naturally this attracts a premium on top of the standard Boarding fees.
Only four Boarding Houses are currently set up, in terms of inescapable administrative details such as the plumbing, to accept girl pupils. Therefore places are limited and we have discovered that demand outstrips supply. Entrance conditions are listed separately. But for those families unlucky enough not to secure a boarding place for their daughter, the Day School offers a limited number of places. And of course as the academic year progresses, pupils inevitably leave the School or drop out, for a variety of acceptable and inescapable reasons. It is therefore always possible at a later date to transfer from a Day to a Boarding house (subject to acceptance). Free beds will always appear but be subject to availability. We maintain a waiting list for this reason.
2) The Day School:
Head of Day School: Miss Joan Sanderson-Reeves. {MEMO: In no circumstances, or indeed ANY circumstances, use the phrase "Mrs Mericet" at this or indeed at any other point. I wish to avoid any difficult consultations with a fellow, though much-valued, member of staff. Downey.}
B2 House [day pupils] (Dr von Ubersetzer)
C1 House [day pupils] (Dr Perdore)
Tree Frog House [day pupils] (Mr Bradlofrudd)
All Day School houses are fully co-educational and strive to admit an equal number of boys and girls in each academic Year.
As there is no boarding component involved, fees for educating a Day Pupil are substantially lower.
As we strive to maintain an air of exclusivity to the School and to maintain the best and most efficient student-tutor ratio consistent with economic viability, we limit the number of students admitted to every First Year.
In the main, the oldest-established and most traditional Houses within what was formerly the Boys-Only School will take no more than 20-22 pupils each in every First Year. {Memo: we need something to throw to the Rusts, Venturis, Eorles, Selachiis and others who do not want their sons educated along plebs, proles and the Great Unwashed, as Ronald Rust puts it. Money talks. Unhappily, with our great families, it shouts, very loudly and insistently and directly into my ear from inches away. Better we keep some Houses socially exclusive. Can the final text at least hint at this? Downey.}
The Day School is designed so that its three houses will admit 30 pupils each in every academic year, divided evenly between Boys and Girls. This allows for 45 pupils from each gender. This allows more scope for us to admit and educate very bright Scholarship pupils from social backgrounds, who would not normally be able to afford the fees. In deference to representations made by some parents and benefactors of the School, only a handful of charity and Scholarship entrants are considered eligible to mix with others, who may be from different social backgrounds, in the context of a Boarding House. The school believes this degree of social mixing is educative to all informed ,and ensures everyone's informal curriculum is thus enhanced.
The four Houses of Study set aside for the Boarding education of young ladies are slightly larger, and are each geared to a total of 30 new pupils each year.
Prospective parents should be reassured in that we take the moral welfare of our young ladies seriously and we do not permit young gentlemen into these boarding Houses, except under the most rigidly prescribed circumstances. It may sometimes be necessary for a male pupil to see a teacher who is also Housemistress of a Girls' House, for instance, but any visit to her personal Office will always be chaperoned.
Therefore total numbers admitted to the School every year will be a maximum of:
Day School: 90. (45 boys and 45 girls).
Girls' Boarding Houses (4 Houses) : 120 female pupils.
Boys' Boarding Houses (9 Houses): 180 – 196 pupils.
In the first year of study (Age 11, First Form, Fifth Grade, Year Eight), there will therefore be a total of 390-400 pupils spread across sixteen houses. Numbers will necessarily fall throughout the year as normal scholastic attrition takes place.
A simple calculation would inform the potential pupil that in the four academic years of the Lower (Pre-Black) School, the maximum number of School pupils will be 1560-1600. (Actual numbers will inevitably be lower as, sadly, pupils will leave over the course of a typical school term.) This is on a par with comparable secondary schools around the Disc and is not excessive. Indeed, the School teaching staff now numbers eighty-five fully articled Teachers and around 100 Teaching Assistants, who are a valued part of our team and without whom the School would not function. The greater part of our teaching staff are also fully licenced graduate Assassins, which allows for all lessons in the lower School to be slanted towards the possibility that at the end of the Fourth Form (age 14-15, Ninth Grade, Year Ten) that the student may Take Black and remain with us.{MEMO: While I deplore changing fashions in Education which appear to have arbitrarily changed long-standing year and age-group designations for the sake of change and appearing "trendy", I suppose we have to take a deep breath ,and accept it. But please ensure the favoured designation "First Form, Second Form, et c, through to Upper Sixth," is placed FIRST, n preference to the more new-fangled designation. Or worse, those local terms imported from Aceria. Downey.}
In practice, only a small portion of our students elect to remain at the start of the Fifth Form (Year Eleven, Tenth Grade) and enter the High School – to "Take Black" as custom and tradition term it.
While we are sad to see so many pupils go at this crossroads in their lives, all those who leave remain Associate Members of the Guild and may enjoy some privileges with us. Famous Associate Members have included financier Reacher Gilt, Royal Bank chief executive Sir Joshua Lavish, and his son Cosmo Lavish. {MEMO: can we update this section? Concerned it is not quite conveying the right impression. DOWNEY. }
The Guild School will of course provide appropriate references to stand the leaver in good stead with employers, other Schools or institutes of study, and even Universities. Miss Alice Band, for instance, has referred excellent pupils to the Quirm College of Archaeology, of which she is an alumna, whilst Doctor Smith-Rhodes has similarly referenced outstanding students for further training in zoology, veterinary surgery, large animal curation, and industrial demolition.
At this point, as training for the Black is necessarily hazardous and competitive and students drop out for a range of reasons, the numbers necessarily become approximate.
But those who stay on to Take Black can, on the basis of recent years, be enumerated thus:
Fifth Form:
No more than 8-10 boys from each of nine boarding Houses. A total of 72-80 candidates.
No more than 10-12 girls from each of four boarding houses. A total of 40-48 girls.
No more than 12 pupils, sexes unevenly distributed, from each of three Day School houses. A total of 36 candidates.
This represents a total of 164 pupils of both sexes in the Fifth Form.
If we allow for 15-25% attrition over the course of the Fifth Form, Lower Sixth and Upper Sixth years, Black numbers will diminish by approximately 25-30 over these three years. Therefore only 112-130 candidates will survive to undertake the Final Exam. {MEMO. Please can we avoid use of the word "survive", as I am concerned this is unfortunate use of language in the context. DOWNEY.}
These figures are conjectural, but based on experience. It will be appreciated that numbers will vary somewhat from year to year.
It has been estimated that even if 90-100 students pass the Final Exam each year, thus having earnt full Guild membership and the right to inhume for money, a surprisingly high proportion will consider this is achievement enough and will not go on to inhume even once. Many of our graduates go on to life and professions in other areas, having succeeded at School and having become, albeit in a non-active sort of way, part of an elite Brotherhood. {MEMO: And, these days, a Sorority. Is there a word connoting "siblinghood" that does not sound so worthy? Or indeed ridiculous? "Siblinghood" sounds like a neologism Estressa Partleigh would coin for her own purposes, Gods help us. DOWNEY}
On the basis of recent years, no more than 20-25 Graduates per year will go on to attempt a Guild contract, and most will take on no more than two or three in the course of their active careers. From an initial intake of 400 pupils in any given year, this largely self-selecting process keeps the Guild both exclusive and élite – only the very best make it.
And this is the education we are proud to offer your son or daughter.
There will be more. Unusually, no footnotes. Lord Downey's marginal notes serve the same purpose!
Next: teacher biographies, curriculum descriptions, and the Guild sites spread across Ankh-Morpork and its environs.