Divorced from normal life? NO, Prime Minister
THERESA MAY claims that independent schools have become ‘divorced from normal life’.Try telling that to a dedicated teacher dealing with an adolescent’s problems on a Monday morning. It seems that taking a potshot at independent schools is well on the way to becoming an Olympic sport.
There is little doubting the Prime Minister’s sincerity in driving an agenda towards greater opportunity for all young people, but she seems to fall into the trap of assuming that independent schools are a uniform body of self-seeking bastions of privilege with overflowing coffers and a blithe disregard for ‘normal life’.
The reality is very different. Of their nature these schools are independent, each following its own educational philosophy in different circumstances. A handful sit on pots of money, which they mainly use for bursaries, but most of the 1,250 schools in membership of the Independent Schools Council (ISC) operate within tight financial constraints.
They are chosen by parents who pay twice, once through tax and again through a school fee.
If an independent school does not offer the education that parents want for their child, the school will fail – and failure means extinction.
Once again the issue of charitable tax relief has been raised. It is plain wrong, some claim, for fee-charging schools to be able to benefit from tax relief. On the face of it, that makes good sense.
Except it is only not-for-profit schools that have charitable status, schools that plough back any surplus to improve the education they offer. And look at the maths. The annual benefit from tax relief to independent schools is £150million, a figure dwarfed by the massive £3.6 billion per annum generated in tax revenue and the £9.5billion estimated as gross value added to Britain’s GDP.
The state does very well out of parents who pay twice for their children’s education. Using charitable status as a blunt instrument is counter-productive. We really need to move this debate forward. There is a strong moral argument.
Throughout my teaching career, I have been struck by the desire of good teachers to do their best not only for their own pupils, but also for young people generally. It is a vocation shared by the best teachers in schools of all types. In calling for greater collaboration between the independent sector and state schools, the Prime Minister is pushing at an open door. This is not an issue of legislation or regulation, but a desire to be engaged.
The best teachers want to learn from each other. Already 87 per cent of ISC schools work with state schools – and not all of those schools have charitable status: good schools participate because they believe it is the right thing to do.
The issue is what lies on the other side of the door. Over the past decade, there have been calls for independent schools to give their DNA to transform inner-city schools. This is misguided. The skills acquired by an experienced teacher in a top selective independent school are of a different order to those needed to be successful in the inner city. It is both patronising and wrong-headed to believe that a master from Eton can sort out problems in an East End school. But with open-hearted collaboration, remarkable things can happen.
FOR the greatest benefit, independent schools need to play to their strengths. There are many examples: in Eton’s case helping create a new state boarding school, top academic school Westminster sponsors an academically focused sixth-form college, city-based King Edward’s, Birmingham, runs an extensive programme with state junior schools, Hereford Cathedral School shares its strengths in music and physics – the list goes on.
Really effective collaboration has benefits both ways: teachers and students have their horizons lifted.
There is good evidence of some excellent work. Yet it remains a fact that some independent schools are not committed.
The important next step is to make collaboration pervasive.
Over a decade, the London Challenge demonstrated how collaboration between schools could dramatically lift the performance of schools in our capital city. Key to its success was creating groups of schools which could work together to find ways to improve.
It was collaboration with teeth: schools were obliged to be involved. With independent schools today, there should indeed be an obligation to show evidence of meaningful con- nection with state schools. This should be tested as part of the inspection process. It should be an obligation on state schools, too.
BUT a heavy-handed approach would be disastrous. The particular circumstances of each school need to be taken into account and the benefit to children assessed in a pragmatic way. This is a case where politics and dogma can kill good intentions stone dead.
Far from being ‘divorced from normal life’ independent schools are woven into our national story of education. Their particular and different skills should be drawn upon to the benefit of as many children as is realistically possible.
Independent schools are part of the solution, not the problem.