Independent Schools: Variety and Diversity

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for tabling this debate and for giving us a chance to reflect on what is happening in the independent education sector and to scrutinise the latest journey that it is embarking upon.

I start with an acknowledgement: the sector has done very well for the parents that pay its sometimes eye-watering fees. Their children are twice as likely to attend a Russell Group university compared to their peers from the state sector and they are five times as likely to attend Oxford or Cambridge, with only one in 100 pupils from the state sector winning a place there. The Sutton Trust has identified five elite schools and colleges which have as many Oxbridge entrants as nearly 2,000 state schools and colleges. The advantages do not stop there. Pupils go from that advantage to make up 71% of senior judges, 53% of senior diplomats, 45% of public body chairs, 43% of newspaper columnists, 33% of MPs and, of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, drew to our attention, 50% of your Lordships’ House.

What does that really tell us and where does it get us? At one level, it reaffirms that our education system is still entrenched along old class division lines and that state school children have to struggle that much harder to succeed against the odds, but I am sorry to say that I think that when the noble Lord opened the debate, he was asking the wrong question. It is not a question of how we can add to the variety or diversity of a sector that is by its very nature selective and elite.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

Just to recap, the point I was making was that we are debating the wrong question. The challenge is not really about how we can add to the variety or diversity of the independent sector but much more about how we can give every child in this country a first-class education and an equal chance of succeeding in the very fast-changing global market. Noble Lords do not need me to tell them that the world is changing. If we have any chance of remaining a player in it, we must make sure that all our children are equipped with the skills, knowledge and character to compete successfully.

Our view is that we will lose out if we allow the top jobs to be the preserve of young people from a very small pool. The unskilled, low-ambition jobs of the past simply will not be there for those who are excluded. So whether it is a high-quality vocational offering or a comparable academic grounding, it has to be available to all young people regardless of the type of school they attend. This has to be the way of the future and it is a challenge across the entire educational landscape, including the private sector.

What does the independent sector have to do to play a part in addressing this challenge? One answer is that it should develop deep and measurable partnerships with state schools and share its resources and skills so that the benefits can be shared; for example, independent schools’ teaching expertise can be utilised to help disadvantaged state school children into the top- class universities, or by running joint extracurricular programmes with equal access, opening up their sports and arts facilities to joint activities with local schools, and running summer schools and mentoring programmes, thus giving access to their employer networks for careers advice and work experience. They also provide care and innovation in the special school sectors, as described so eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield. I fully acknowledge that that is a role which independent schools play.

All this could be encapsulated in a new schools partnership standard as proposed by our party against which the independent schools will be measured. To give an added incentive, we would amend the Local Government Act 1988 so that private schools’ business rate relief would become conditional on passing the new standard. Those independent schools that are already involved in these activities have nothing to fear from these changes, while those that have not kept up with the times will find it difficult to justify why they continue to be subsidised by the taxpayer to the tune of some £700 million over the course of a Parliament.

The statistics appear to show that only 3% of independent schools sponsor an academy, only 5% loan teaching staff to state schools, and one-third allow state school pupils to attend lessons on their premises, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, that more transparent and robust independent verification of what is going on in this sector would help us all. However, on this basis it appears that they have a long way to go before they will be able to persuade us that they are involved across the board in true partnerships with the state sector. While I welcome the noble Lord’s commitment to diversity, I would suggest that we need to be much more open about what they are able to offer. If there are to be meaningful partnerships in the future, they need to be based on the recognition of the much bigger challenge of providing a world-class education for every child, which is ultimately in all our interests. On this basis, I am sure that the Minister will agree with much of what I have said, and I look forward to hearing her response.