Teaching unions hate them, but low-cost private schools like mine are the future
The low-cost private school that I co-founded in the north-east of England, the Independent Grammar School: Durham, has just successfully completed its first year. Fees are less than £3,000 per child per annum, the equivalent of 60 per cent of the per capita funding in state primary schools and less than a fifth of fees in an average independent school.
Every commentator said it couldn’t be done. The teaching unions were particularly vociferous in their opposition. It was, they said, “impossible to provide a quality education on such a low budget”.
At our open evenings last summer, attendees had to run the gauntlet of union pickets as members foisted glossy leaflets on parents saying that we would cruelly deprive the children of essentials such as hot water and central heating. Kevin Courtney, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), opined that it was “unbelievable” you could run a school with such low fees. Well, unbelievable or not, we’ve done it.
No doubt Courtney was relieved when the Department for Education reminded everyone that, like all new independent schools, we would be inspected in our first year and if standards were not being met, the Government would take action.
At the time, I was inclined to think that this would surely see us off. Would those with power and influence really allow a school like ours – offending nearly everyone in the education establishment – to pass its statutory first Ofsted inspection?
Not passing, of course, would mean closure, for it would be hard to convince parents of our virtues if we had failed to convince Ofsted. An inspector called, with half a day’s notice, towards the end of the second term. After three gruelling days, he summoned us for his feedback.
Effectiveness of leadership and management? Good. Quality of teaching, learning and assessment? Good. Personal development, behaviour and welfare? Good. Outcomes for pupils? Good. Overall? Good, the second highest grade (but as high as a new school is likely to get, as “Outstanding”, is only awarded when systems have had time to bed down).
We had confounded the naysayers. Prospective parents could be reassured, as could potential investors.
The year has not been without some satisfaction for our critics. Pupil numbers were lower than we hoped. You could sense the relish with which the Local Schools Network – the grassroots promoter of state schooling – announced that we had only six pupils during our first term. Durham parents, they said, were not “seduced” by our “appeal to snobbery”, for that’s what sending your child to a private school supposedly amounts to.
Actually, it was worse than that: on our first day, we had only two pupils. The newspapers had a field day. Never in the history of human education, one might say, has so much been written, by so many, about so few.
Now numbers have picked up. We’re still only in the twenties, but we know, with our positive inspection result and many word of mouth referrals, that the project is going well.
What are the next steps? We’ll make sure that the school beds in properly – perhaps in a new building. But the ambition has always been to open more than one school, to offer parents a choice, not just between state schooling and prohibitively expensive private schools, but also of an affordable yet high quality independent school. Low-cost private education is new to this country, although commonplace in much of the developing world. But one year on, I’m confident that the embryonic movement has made a decent enough start here, too.
There is plenty policymakers can do to help, for a start making it easier to get a private school registered. This took us 485 days. One issue could easily be addressed. For our pre-opening Ofsted inspection, we showed how our rented building met with all regulations – but we only had architectural plans. It turns out the inspector has to see the building ready to go, not ready on paper. In order to get approval, you have to invest, knowing you might not succeed. But you’ll definitely not succeed if you don’t risk your money.
New low-cost private schools would also benefit from Department for Education officials being more approachable – it would be great to be able to sit down with them and find out if a new school is likely to be approved rather than be forced to go through the long-winded official process only to be rejected. That could save a lot of time and help kick-start competitors in this emerging industry.
This model is common in the developing world. I’m confident it has made a good start here, too