Anyone reading about Ampleforth College in recent weeks could be forgiven for assuming the school is stuck in the distant past, struggling to adapt to the modern world. As a former pupil who remains deeply involved in the wider community and knows numerous families with children currently being educated there, I can say with confidence the very opposite is true: notwithstanding procedural issues raised by Ofsted, the school is, and always has been, ahead of its time. The rule of St Benedict, on which the monastery was founded in the 1550s and which permeates every aspect of school life, reads like a template for every modern private school now seeking to “check its privilege” in our very divided world.