Unity call for all sectors of education
INDEPENDENT AND state education sectors in the UK must collaborate better to prepare the younger generation for “severe post-Brexit uncertainty”, principals will be told today.
Chris King, chairman of the Headmasters’ & Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC), will call for a “cessation of hostilities” against independent schools as he opens the HMC’s annual conference.
Emphasising its role in promoting UK excellence across the world, Mr King will urge that the sector is treated as a “valuable and necessary asset” to the economy.
The HMC is a professional association of heads of the world’s leading independent schools.
Mr King, the head of Leicester Grammar School, who is taking up the HMC chairmanship for an unprecedented second time, will call for a new unity of purpose across the educational landscape as the UK prepares to the leave the EU.
He will suggest the sector does not get the credit it deserves.
“It is endlessly ironic that UK independent education, one of the most valued and enduring global brands, should be so sneered at in its country of origin,” Mr King will tell the conference, which this year is being held in Belfast.
He will add: “It is urgent for state and independent schools to work together to put pupils, not politics at the heart of education policy.
“A more collaborative, less aggressive approach is urgently needed. The time for state versus independent education is gone, to be replaced perhaps by state education with renewed independence of spirit and independent education with a renewed sense of responsibility to society.”