State success puts pressure on private schools

STATE schools’ success in their war against “pot smoking and violence” is making it difficult for private schools to justify their fees, the owner of The Good

Schools Guide has said. Lord Lucas, an old Etonian and hereditary peer, argues that state schools have improved beyond all recognition in the past three decades.

This follows an increase in the number of state schools included in his publication – 10 in 1986 versus 264 now, which represent a third of the total recommended institutions.

His remarks emerged amid growing suggestions that middle-class parents are opting for state schools because of the exorbitant fees charged by private schools.

Contrary to the situation in the Eighties, many of the highly coveted state schools sit in some of the country’s wealthiest areas, he said. Lord Lucas told the Times Educa

tional Supplement he anticipates a “slow shrinkage” in private schools in years to come because a growing number of parents will realise their child could get a decent, free education in the maintained sector.

He said: “The trend over the next 50 years will be for the independent sector to reduce.

“The rise of the state system and it being free is a very difficult thing for the independent sector, as a whole, to resist. Some of them will respond very well. I’m not pessimistic about it, but I think the general trend, the baseline that they are up against, is of slow shrinkage.”

Lord Lucas’s company charges parents up to £675 for personal advice on the best schools in the state and private sectors.

He recalled how, in the Eighties, he dismissed two London state schools for his own children, but would now “be happy” to send them to both.

He said: “When I was looking at schools for my kids in London, we went around Fox Primary. I was told by the head, ‘ We don’t teach children here, we give them the opportunity to learn’.

“And what was clear was they were given an opportunity to fight, regularly, and not learn much.

“Then we went around Holland Park School and, at break time, the place was full of kids out on the lawn smoking pot.

“Now they are both in the guide. I would be very happy to send a child to both schools.”

Private schools have long been aware of the financial pressures their fees put on parents. Barnaby Lenon, head of the Independent Schools Council, told The

Daily Telegraph institutions in his sector should cut fees by as much as 50 per cent in order to attract students.

However, Julie Robinson, general secretary of the ISC, said the private sector has remained “very resilient over the years” and the number of pupils was on the rise.