Adventurer Bear Grylls has said his Eton College education failed to teach him the skills to succeed in life.
The survival specialist - who went to the £33,000-a-year boarding school where the Duke of Cambridge and David Cameron are among its many famous ex-pupils - bemoaned the lack of important life lessons he was taught as a child, including keeping fit, healthy eating and how to be an entrepreneur.
Grylls, 42, revealed he struggled with confidence at school, and suggested that schools are good at championing the academic, sporty or good-looking student who go on to be “disasters in life”.
He said he wants his own children to be taught skills that will “really help them” in the real world.
According to the Press Association, Grylls, who also studied at the fee-paying Ludgrove School, was speaking at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai, and said:
“The thing is, I wasn’t very good at school, and I struggled a lot with confidence and everything, but I look back now, and I see it with my own kids. I wish that school taught them stuff that really helps them.”
He said he had built a life despite not being very good at maths:
“There’s stuff I wish people had taught me. I don’t know whether you agree with this or not, but I wish they had taught me how to keep fit, how to eat healthy food, how to lead a team, how to communicate with people.
“I wouldn’t have minded even a bit of entrepreneurial stuff, or citizenship, all of this sort of stuff, a bit of tax, a bit of legal.”
He added:
“I think school celebrates the good looking guy, or the sporty guy, or the academic guy. When I was at school, there were people who were brilliant at school who were often disasters in life because they missed the one thing that matters in life, which is called the fight.
“And the great people I know at life, often struggled at school because it was the struggle that developed strength. And my message always to kids who are shy, and not very confident at school is ‘you got it’, ‘you’re the ones’, ‘go for it’.”
Grylls, the son of Conservative politician Sir Michael Grylls, joined the Army after university, and went on to serve in the SAS before his career as an adventurer.
Several TV series have included the NBC reality show Running Wild, which included then US President Barack Obama making a guest appearance.