“Think different.” “Just do it.” “Because I’m worth it.” These slogans combine a few words in an effort to encourage people to identify with a product or company. Sometimes, in using slogans, companies seek to project a purpose and an ethos - British Airways recently dropped its slogan “The world’s favourite airline” and restored ”To fly, to serve”.
Long before Apple, Nike, L’Oréal and BA, educational institutions were seeking to explain their mission as pithily as possible. Mottoes tended to converge on a few formulations, often invoking education as illumination - as in Oxford High School’s ”Ad Lucem” (”Toward the light”).
Eton has two unofficial mottoes: ”Floreat Etona” (”May Eton flourish”) and ”May it last forever”. Both are unyielding with respect to outreach.
Westminster’s motto is ”God gives the increase” (which one assumes is inflation-linked).
Brighton College puts its weight behind ”Let right prevail”, which one hopes is no more political than ”The future’s bright - the future’s Orange” as a precocious endorsement of Donald Trump.
Many venerable foundations endorse sentiments that speak of continuity. ”Upon the right tracks” feels charmingly pre-Beeching; ”Always the same” bespeaks a spirit alien to the perpetual revolution of today’s schools sector.
The motto of Miss Porter’s, the elite girls’ school in Connecticut, speaks approvingly of change: ”They come as girls. They leave as women.”
Winchester’s motto, ”Manners makyth man”, nods towards student competencies, although it would lose marks for SPaG. Uncompromisingly, King’s School, Rochester exhorts its inmates to ”Learn or leave”.
In comparison, modern school mottoes seem quite bland, almost Blairite.
Among those of the highest performing schools, you’ll find ”Expectation and excellence” and ”Quality through cooperation”.
‘Aspire to a great motto’
A trawl of school websites suggests that mottoes now often take second place to rather more banal sloganising about excellence and exceptionality. Some of the older mottoes seem to be less vaunting and more human: ”Do thy best and rejoice with those who do better.”
Mottoes change to reflect the temper of the times. Cranbrook School’s original motto seems presciently well adapted for life after levels, being translated as something like ”Being equal to the present challenges, I attempt greater things”. Its current motto is ”Respect, Aspire, Achieve.”
For a short time, Lewisham College’s tagline was ”Pushing prosperity”, which unfortunately lent itself to various interpretations. It was replaced with ”Achieving ambitions, specialising in success”.
Mottoes offer schools the opportunity to go beyond slogans, and to distil their mission, character and purpose into just a few words - although a unique formulation is hard to find.
Some schools succeed with a distinctive motto that captures their essence - Fearns Community Sports College has ”Further, faster, higher”.
I once visited a Singapore school where each building prominently displayed a different word: ”Victory”, “Valiant”, “Vigour”, “Valour” and “Vigilance”. I half-expected to see “Vengeance”. The school had adopted the names of corvettes in a squadron of the republic’s navy.
Fictional schools have more latitude in creating a distinctive identity - Hogwarts’ ”Never tickle a sleeping dragon”, or ”Life is Dangerous” (Andy Mulligan’s Ribblestrop). Interestingly, both imply a risk-assessment.
If you are still in the market for something unique, you could try one of the online motto generators. How about ”Grab life by the school”, or, and this is my personal favourite, “In victory, wind”.
