But the strictness is also tempered: the academy, which will eventually have 1,200 pupils, is subdivided into four "small schools", so that children are not swamped by the vastness of the whole.
The superlatives keep rolling, the magnitude of change has reached a whole new Richter scale of vastness, and the nature of events at Westminster has so little precedent we have been facing political meltdown of a kind not witnessed since the Stone Age.
The implications of this vastness were, well, vast.
"The toughest thing for someone from outside the country is the vastness of the U.S., plus the whole system is different," Vermes said.
"For many pupils, there's a real sense of shock at the vastness of the place, and a whole range of skills goes on hold while they try to adjust," says Jane Thomas, a project manager with HSE.
McGrath's style is scholarly yet accessible and engaging, and he presents a convincing case for replacing the old "narrative of conflict", which he sees as ideologically driven, with a "narrative of enrichment" which allows us to "hold together the ideas of cosmic vastness and personal significance in a coherent whole".
I wouldn't fear the ocean if I were built — its obliterating vastness and perpetual thrashing, how it hides a whole shadow world of pre-human creatures who bite or sting or haunt us with their indifference.
The vastness of the island, in fact, makes the whole story seem smaller, less powerful - these are not characters in imminent danger of running into each other.
"The first," he said, "is to build aspects of the park that stretch across the whole site, so visitors early on get a sense of its vastness".
Tanguay offers in crystal-clear prose the first assessment of the whole of Strauss's thought, a daunting task owing to the vastness and scope of Strauss's writings.
