Education: Maintained and Independent Schools

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Lexden]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the progress of partnership work between maintained and independent schools.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I declare at the outset my interest in the subject of this debate. I am a former general secretary of the Independent Schools Council—the ISC—which both accredits, and works on behalf of, some 1,300 of the 2,500 independent schools in our country today. Although more than 80% of pupils being educated in the independent sector attend ISC schools, it should be noted that there are more than 1,000 other schools in the sector which prefer to go their own way. I am also president of the Independent Schools Association, one of the ISC’s constituent bodies. I thank all noble Lords who will be contributing to this debate.

I sought this debate primarily to provide an opportunity for the further discussion of partnership work between ISC and maintained schools, which featured quite prominently in the debates in 2015 on what is now the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act. At the Report stage on that measure, which took place on 20 July 2015, important commitments were given on behalf of the ISC and the Government by my noble friend Lord Bridges of Headley. I thought it would be useful to revisit those commitments and review progress.

I would also like to comment briefly on the proposals relating to independent schools in the Government’s remarkable consultation paper, Schools that Work for Everyone, which was published last September, and on the ISC’s response to it. The document’s remarkable features include poor drafting that invites stern rebuke from the nation’s English teachers. Its opening sentences embodies a tiresome party political catchphrase:

“This consultation sets out the Government’s ambition to create an education system that extends opportunity to everyone, not just the privileged few”.


The Government cannot possibly believe that the aim of education reformers since the 19th century—Liberal, Labour and Tory—has been to fashion a system that serves the interests of only a privileged few.

Partnerships between the two sectors of education have existed for a long time. When I arrived at the Independent Schools Council in 1997, exactly 20 years ago, I found a well-established tradition of encouraging work with maintained schools and local communities. An annual audit was published. It occasionally got a small paragraph in the press. For the first time, the Government started to show interest. In 1998, the then Labour Minister of State for School Standards, Stephen Byers, established an advisory group on independent/state school partnerships which awarded modest grants to specific projects involving schools in both sectors.

I circulated a paper in 1998 on behalf of this group. It stated: “The general perception has been, for far too long, of two education sectors working separately towards the same goal—the success of their pupils. Since all schools are in the business of trying to secure the best education for their pupils, each sector has a wealth of skills and expertise from which the other could benefit”. The stress that was laid on the value that both sectors can derive from partnership was—and remains—crucial. It became one of the themes of Labour education policy.

What we lacked over the years was really authoritative, detailed information about the extent of partnership work. The need for it emerged clearly during the debates in 2015, to which I have referred. Some noble Lords, who felt strongly that not nearly enough was being done, pressed for legal compulsion, particularly in the spheres of music and sport, where much is now being done in partnership but where undoubtedly still more could be achieved. Facts were required. As Dr Mark Bailey, High Master of St Paul’s School, has said recently:

“It’s an area of education that is particularly vulnerable to wide generalisations and a lack of full understanding”.


In July 2015, the ISC committed itself to developing a website which would, for the first time, provide a platform where partnership work could be exhibited, and to which schools in both sectors could contribute. The website, entitled Schools Together, was launched in January 2016; 1550 projects now appear on it. Furthermore, the ISC is, as it promised in 2015, now gathering fuller information than ever before from member schools—information that it is sharing with the Charity Commission. For its part, the commission has produced fuller guidance on public benefit and now requires partnership work to be reported to it in greater detail.

In all this, it is essential to bear one point above all in mind: independent schools vary so greatly in size, in income, in areas of particular expertise and much else besides, that uniform obligations in respect of partnership work could not be laid equitably upon them. As the ISC has put it in its response to the Government’s consultation paper:

“We have found that successful partnerships rest on strong local relationships and freedom for schools to support them according to their particular circumstances and capabilities”.


That has always seemed to me the right approach. I hope this Government agree with it.

One further commitment was given in July 2015. My noble friend Lord Bridges announced that the Charity Commission would carry out a research project so that discussion could be based,

“more solidly on a better understanding of what is actually the case”,—[Official Report, 20/7/15; col. 974.]

where partnership work is concerned. He added that the research would be published and debated in the House. The Minister will no doubt report on the progress of this important work when he comes to reply.

I have spoken disrespectfully about certain aspects of the Government’s consultation paper. I do not have undivided admiration for the section of it which sets out proposals for independent schools. Though proper acknowledgement is given to existing partnership work, the proposals are expressed in the language of intimidation, not partnership, which is astonishing from a Tory Government. The message is unambiguous: work hard to add,

“extra capacity to the state sector”,

and create masses of free places in your own schools, or your charitable status will be at risk. Nowhere is there any recognition of the fact that the total annual benefit arising from charitable status is some £150 million, while ISC schools, some of which do not even have charitable status, devote over £850 million to means-tested bursaries and fee remission.

The ISC has replied to the Government in the language of partnership. It has proposed jointly funded free places and consortia of schools to help create more good places in the maintained sector. Discussions between the ISC and the Department for Education are in progress. I hope they reach a satisfactory conclusion.

Back in 1997, the Labour Government set out three guiding principles: first, “the high standards being achieved in independent schools must not be compromised”; secondly, “change must be voluntary”; and thirdly, “there must be no imposition from above”. The Government should stick to those well-tried principles.