Charles’s letters on Scots schools to remain secret
‘A direct result of pressure’
LETTERS said to show that a charity backed by Prince Charles lobbied ministers to loosen-up rules on teacher training will not be released by the Scottish Government.
Three requests to publish documents and letters relating to Teach First, which Charles helped to set up 15 years ago, have been rejected under Freedom of Information rules which exempt the royal households.
Although sources have told the Mail that Charles did not write the letters, or request them, the ruling was made because the letters, written between 2012 and 2014, mention the prince.
Charles is still patron of Teach First, which was created to set up fast-track teacher training in order to get more young people into the profession.
The Scottish Government is close to announcing a £1million scheme to accelerate training in the country amid a dire shortage of suitable graduates.
Teach First, which has operated south of the Border since 2002, has expressed a strong interest in bidding for the new contract to supply teachers in the region and would earn a fee for each person it recruits if it wins.
In England, where the charity has recruited more than 10,000 for state schools and academies, it earns £2,600 for each.
Candidates undertake an accelerated six-week training course and then continue to learn on the job in the classroom.
In Scotland, however, teachers must have a university degree in the specialist subject they teach and a one-year graduate diploma, making any relaxation in the rules a deeply contentious issue.
In 2015, The Guardian newspaper won a legal battle to have correspondence between the future king and UK Government Ministers released as part of a long-running campaign to prove the extent of his ‘lobbying’ of policy makers. Referred to as the ‘black spider memos’ because of the prince’s scrawled handwriting, the letters tackled subjects as diverse as homeopathy, the armed forces and the environment.
Since then, however, the law on the disclosure of royal correspondence has been significantly tightened up.
Iain Gray, Scottish Labour’s education spokesman, told the newspaper that the ‘pattern of communication’ from Teach First raises questions of policy being made ‘as a direct result of pressure’ and called for the correspondence to be disclosed.
Clarence House declined to comment last night. The Scottish Government said it applied the royal exemption because the material directly related to ‘communications with HRH the Prince Charles, the Duke of Rothesay’.
A ten-year battle using FoI laws to uncover the extent of Charles’s ‘lobbying’ of ministers revealed that he wrote to then Prime Minister Tony Blair to protest about ill-equipped British troops being deployed to Iraq and to other ministers on diverse issues.
Charles also privately lobbied Alex Salmond when he was First Minister, sending at least seven letters between 2007 and 2010, asking for financial aid and political backing for causes including an organic food group, a stately home and a derelict castle. In 2009, Charles wrote to Mr Salmond to urge him to give ‘some form of support to assist the Soil Association’, an organic food group of which he is the patron.
The then First Minister replied: ‘I have asked my officials to meet with Soil Association Scotland and discuss scope for further support in respect of opportunities identified in Your Royal Highness’s letter.’
He ended with the phrase: ‘I have the honour to be, Sir, Your Royal Highness’s most humble and obedient servant.’
Mr Salmond said it was the last time he used the traditional signoff because he thought it ‘inappropriate to a democratic age’.
By contrast, Mr Blair signed a 2004 letter, ‘Yours ever, Tony’.