This interview with Mr Frank E. Bell (FEB) was done by Juan Carlos Solis (JC), Paul Cavadias (PC) and Calvyn Laang (CL) in 1985 for the 10^th edition of the Concord Magazine – they wanted to to get to know the personal side of the man who has brought this college into its life.  A big THANK YOU to these alumni for creating an historical memory of this remarkable man.
 

JC: how many years of your life have you been involved with educational institutions?

For 40 years since the war and a little bit before. After the war I was for 10 years in the University of Cambridge in the Department of Adult Education, one of my jobs being the arrangement every summer of a vacation course for foreign students, and I was absolutely fascinated with that work.  What excited me most was when several hundred students came from all over the world to spend a month in Cambridge to study English, other language and culture. I decided that I would like to devote my life to that element of education, so after having failed to persuade Cambridge University to embark on an all year round course for foreign students in English, I decided to plunge into private enterprise and do it myself. So in 1955, my wife and I started the Bell School of Languages in Cambridge.  In the summer of this year, 1985, we celebrate the 30^th anniversary of Bell Schools.
 

PC: You started with courses specialising in English Language.  When did you turn to O and A Level studies, such as in Concord College?

The Bell Schools, of which there are five in different, parts of Britain and which is my main life’s work, are almost only concerned with teaching the English Language. I became interested in O and A level studies when in 1969 I became the owner of Concord College, then based in Tunbridge Wells.
 

JC: what happened to you in the war?

I was a prisoner of war for three and a half years in the Far East. This period as a prisoner played a very important part of my wanting to be involved in the teaching and studying of languages, because while in the prison camps I taught my fellow prisoners of 100 Army and FAF officers’ seven languages. I only knew three of them, the other four I taught by studying very old-fashioned books (one of them written in 1880, and all of which I still have), reading a couple of lessons in advance and then teaching what I had learnt – a very good way of learning a language is to know that you have to teach it to other people.
JC: How do you feel when you recall your time of being a prisoner of war? Do you fell it has made you a better man?
FEB:  I feel it was partly beneficial and partly harmful.  I believe most human beings would benefit from about one and half to two year of imprisonment because it is a very interesting experience – you are detached from your normal life, you have aplenty of time to think about what really matters , about the values of life – providing the hardships are not too great. The first two years of being a prisoner of war did me good, but the last year or so did not because of hunger and disease.
JC:  you were decorated by the Queen.  When was this and what was the reason for it?
FEB: It was about eight years ago and the decoration is called and OBE – an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.  The award was for services to international education, that is, the work that I had done in the Bell Schools and also in various other ways.  I was Chairman for many years of the organisation called the Educational Interchange Council.  It was an independent organisation, concerned with trying to build up cultural and educational inks between Britain and countries where it was difficult, so after the war we were very concerned to help young Germans whose country was in ruins, and later to help Russians – we were the very first organisation ever to bring Russian citizens to Britain.  The idea was to cross the political divides.

 JC, PC: Do you believe that the government should give more help to school like Concord?

Yes, and I feel that the branch of education that is concerned with foreign students who come over to this country to learn English or to do O or A levels like yourselves for entry into British universities, is an enormously important service to Britain and I do not think that those who provide it, like ourselves, get enough help from the government.  We are a service industry earning foreign currency – you all bring many thousands of pounds into the country – but it is far more important than that, for if we who provide these schools satisfy you and you go away from us saying ‘perhaps it was a bit expensive, but it was worth it”, who can calculate the value to our country over the years ahead?  And the reverse very much applies: if students felt that their schools were dreadful, just think of the harm that would do in 20 years’ time when those students are in business.  If they wanted to buy goods from abroad they would probably not come to Britain because of the impression they had received in their schools. The repercussions of what we do being done well, with integrity and honour and care is enormous.  So going back to your questions, no, we do not get enough help and we get almost no fiscal benefit. I do not feel that the work that colleges like ours do has been fully recognised and I would much sooner that happened than that I or anyone else got an OBE – much more important.

PC: Has the Concord Trust any plans for the future?

Yes, we have very exciting plans for the college.  In a year or two we hope to build a new dining room and later on a sports hall. And all this is made possible because first of all the fees we charge you enable us to make a proper surplus – it would be wrong if we made an improper surplus – our aim is about 10-15%. This is very healthy – it gives us a reserve against a rainy day. Should anything happen to prevent students coming to Britain, we would have enough in reserve to carry us over a difficult time – many schools in the past have gone under because they have not had sufficient reserves – and also it enables us to make improvements to the college.  This Trust can never again make a private profit for anybody and that is why we can write to your parents, as we have done this year, to ask them if they would like to help us with a gift to our capital development.  That is one of the advantages of the Trust – it is possible to approach people and ask for help because the only people who will benefit will be the students.

PC: you are retiring this year. What are your plans on retiring?

First of all we are moving our home back to Cambridge where we have lived nearly all of our lives –my wife and I and our family.  We have loved it here, it is a beautiful part of England and we are planning to keep a small flat in Old Walls as a pied-a-terre and we should be coming back quite often. But our main home will be in Cambridge and our plans are to enjoy a little leisure, get around a bit more, but most of all to write a book or two, about all the sorts of things that we are talking about.  IT is going to be not a history of the Bell Schools and Concord, but more of a story of international education considered in categories – administrations, students, teaching, etc.  I have boxes and boxes of papers to consult!

PC: When you retire will you be retiring from the Trust?

Yes and no.  I am retiring from being an executive of the Trust.  I am retiring from carrying out the policy of the college.  I am very pleased that I have been invited to join the Board of Trustees – I am going to become a Trustee, so my connection stays but not as an executive.

PC: So far we have talked about your retirement from Concord, what about the rest of the Bell Schools?

I am already a Trustee of the Bell Schools – in 1973, the year we moved from Tunbridge Wells to Acton Burnell, the Bell Schools became a Trust and for five years I was Executive Director to the Board of Trustees. When I retired from there in 1978 and moved here, they most kindly invited me to join the Board of Trustees of the Bell Schools – the Bell Educational Trust.

CL: Do you look forward to your retirement?

In the main, yes.  It is very difficult to analyse one’s own feelings.  When you reach my age you will be quite glad to ease off a bit, to do a bit less, to do the things which you like doing like reading books and a bit of travel.  In many ways I shall miss the life of the college enormously, but in general I think I will enjoy it. Perhaps the luckiest people are those who can retire in stages, like myself – I am half retired no, I can do much more that when I was in charge of the Bell Schools. I have a limited role here, as Director of the Trust.  Am I looking forward to retirement? Yes, we are going to have enormous fun.  We have an old boat on the river and we hall go on it more often than we can now. We shall enjoy our leisure but I shall do a little bit of teaching in the Bell Schools., so I think it will be a nice, well balanced life suited to a septuagenarian (a 70 year old).

JC: What will you teach if you decide to teach?

I will teach the acquisition of English through literature to our advanced pupils.  That is an area that interests me very much. Although I shall also teach the study of English from translation – French & Spanish mainly.

 PC: Why did you choose Acton Burnell for Concord after Tunbridge Wells?

You probably know that we moved because the land on which the college was in Tunbridge Wells suddenly became very valuable.  It became worth four of five times what I had paid for it.  With the full approval of the former owners we decided that the right thing to do was to sell the building and the land for as much has we could get and then simply look around the country – for an estate with suitable buildings to which the college could move.  We looked at about eight properties in different parts of Britain; some were incomparably the most beautiful at a price we could afford.  It was simply because it was the most suitable place at the right price and there was no other reason whatsoever.

CL: since you first came to Acton Burnell what improvements have been made?

We can divide the improvements into physical and academic.  The physical improvements – sports facilities such as the volleyball and basketball courts, the laundry block buildings and garden, Highfield, which as you now will become student accommodation next year, Parkside, the flats in Old Walls I and II: we built on to Mr Case’s house and to the Gate Lodge where Mr Morris used to live; and improvements inside the building – one of the first things to be done was the rewiring of the whole building, which was a huge operation – we have tried constantly to improve the physical facilities.  However, the essential quality of Concord College is not just related to buildings or grounds, but much more to the services given by those who care for and teach the students. It has been a very important and interesting area of life to try and oversee the growth of that. Eight or nine years ago there was not this warmth, this atmosphere that we now have. In general the atmosphere of this college is a place of serious but friendly study I think it is very remarkable and that has been built up not by buildings or beautiful grounds but by people.  I think the most significant improvement in the college is the quality of what goes on in the staff room, the degree of concern and integrity and dedication of your teachers. “As soon as the fire to improve burns low – then that is the time to be worried”.  We are not a complacent place, there is a lot of thought as to how the college should move and develop academically and in other ways.

 CL: What have been your most memorable moments in Concord? What makes you think of Concord?

 I think if I have to single out the most enjoyable moment of each year, it would be the staff concert, which is quite remarkable. And the second loveliest moment is the student concert, because somehow the whole atmosphere, feel and spirit of the students comes out in a very special way then – individual characteristics of our many different nationalities and at the same time it is a coming together.  It somehow epitomises the central ethos of Concord College. 
When I took over, people asked me if I was going to change the name to Bell College, and I said no.  First of all I think it would have been hurtful to the previous owners and there is an even stronger reason, which Mr Morris often mentions in speeches, if it is an excellent name.  What is Concord? =- it is collaborative agreement, working together.  Concord means 2hearts together” – it is a wonderful name and I believe that what is written in the prospectus of this college is true.  Now you read many things in prospectuses but when you get there you find that it is not quite like that.  If somebody could point to a sentence in our prospectus and say “that is not true”! Then we would have to do something about it because it must not be.

 CL: what advice would you give to present and future Concord students?

Take more advantage of each other’s nationalities than you do. There is a very strong tendency to remain in your own ethnic and linguistic groups, which is very understandable, and in no way would it be right for us to try and eliminate this.  Your learning is very strenuous and you need the relations of your own companions and compatriots, but I would like to see a more conscious effort to profit from the international atmosphere. This leads me to one area where we who operate the college maybe do not do quite enough, integration with the English. Now some people make friends with English families and of course there are always your teachers, but I feel that this is where Concord has not done as well as it could have   We have not got you around meeting local people or families.  It is quite difficult of course.  So my advice is: profit more from the environment in which the college finds itself.