Education: Maintained and Independent Schools

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for sponsoring this debate and pay tribute to him for the pithy way in which he introduced what has been an interesting debate. I may surprise quite a few people, not least in my own party, when I say that I believe that independent schools are currently doing quite a good job in terms of partnership work with maintained schools. That is not to say that more cannot be achieved because it always can, but given that 1,112 schools out of 1,280 members of the Independent Schools Council are already engaged in partnerships in varying forms with state schools, then that at the very least demonstrates a willingness to engage. That engagement is of course by both sectors because, as the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, said, there is value that both can derive from these partnerships.

The facilities that private schools have can be of particular benefit; by that I mean not just the recreational facilities referred to by noble Lords, but teachers specialising in the creative arts, from the performing arts to fine art, music tuition to film and media. All too rarely do maintained schools, or academies for that matter, have anything like the range of subjects available in the independent sector and it is right that in return for the benefits of charitable status, private schools should make a contribution in whatever way they can. It is to be hoped that the traffic is two-way in a physical sense also. While there are benefits for state school pupils attending classes at independent schools in subjects that are perhaps not available in their own school, it must also be of value for teachers in independent schools to visit publicly funded schools not just to impart knowledge and skills but to gain a better understanding of the conditions under which their state sector counterparts operate.

There has been an increase in the amount of crossover activity since the passing of the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016, referred to by both the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. That legislation has led to an increase in the extent to which independent schools engage with local communities and state schools to share resources, expertise and facilities. It has also resulted in the development of a website called Schools Together which promotes and encourages partnership working between schools. It now has the added benefit of being a resource to which any school, state or independent, can refer if they want to gain a clearer impression of what kind of joined-up activities can be established.

That was then, but it is fair to say that to a significant extent the landscape changed with the publication last September of what the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, pointedly called the Government’s “remarkable” consultation paper, Schools That Work for Everyone. He talked of the paper’s stated ambition to create an education system that serves not just the privileged few, and I think he exposed the vapidity of the document’s title. I agree with him, but I have a more fundamental complaint about the consultation paper—its very title. I have raised this with the Minister before: to name it Schools That Work for Everyone is a cruel deception because not once in its 36 pages do the words “special educational needs and disabilities”, appear. So whoever it works for, it is not everyone.

The consultation paper was remarkably strident about the independent sector in referring to what was expected of it, adopting a tone that I think everyone noticed was markedly different from that of the aforementioned Charities Act, when the Government were much more sympathetic to private schools. Perhaps the change in approach had its roots in the fact that for the first time ever we have a Prime Minister and a Secretary of State for Education who were both educated at comprehensive schools. Yes, the Prime Minister attended a grammar school, but she was in the privileged position—even though I suspect it may not have seemed that way to her at the time—of experiencing a school making the change from a grammar school to a comprehensive.

While acknowledging that partnership working was under way, the consultation paper came up with the hitherto unknown idea of telling independent schools with the capacity to do so to sponsor academies or set up new free schools and be responsible for ensuring that they were rated good or outstanding within a certain period. Alternatively, they could offer a proportion of places with fully-funded bursaries to those whose families are unable to afford the fees. The Independent Schools Council showed an ability to think outside the box and proposed the creation of up to 10,000 free places in independent schools every year for children for whom those schools would not otherwise be an option. As in many similar situations, though, there was a catch: it would be a jointly funded bursary scheme to which the Government would contribute no more than the cost of a state school place. The independent school places will be available across the age groups and will be non-selective except in terms of ensuring that a child can cope with the independent school’s expectations, although what that may mean was not explained.

Sceptical as to its ability to establish new schools, which of course is not an area in which it has expertise, the ISC offered to,

“work with ministers, regional schools commissioners and others in putting together consortia of suitable and willing independent schools to help co-sponsor new state-funded schools”.

On the basis of the ISC’s proposal, the cost to the taxpayer would be £5,500 per child, roughly the amount that state schools receive annually for a pupil. However, average private school fees are around £15,500, so funding would be subsidised by the private sector by around £80 million a year. That is a sizeable amount to target at state-educated children and should not be dismissed lightly, but it raises the question of just who would benefit from the plan. It sounds remarkably similar to the assisted places scheme in the 1980s and 1990s which required children to pass ability tests. As a result it did not help poor children so much as bright children who happened to be poor. The ISC claimed that the scheme would be non-selective, but if so, how will children moving from the state sector to the independent sector be chosen? Bright children tend to do well wherever they are educated, and creaming off the top of the state sector, as grammar schools do, achieves little more than those left behind being denied the benefit of learning beside and gaining from their more able classroom colleagues. That is why comprehensive education was introduced and despite its current problems, many of which I remind the Minister could be solved by adequate funding, its benefits far outweigh the disadvantages.

We recognise that the Independent Schools Council has made meaningful proposals in this regard, but we remain sceptical about the contention that independent schools can have much of a direct impact on standards of education in state schools. Private schools are academically successful largely because they educate the children of the wealthiest section of society who have enormous social capital. Private schools can afford to sustain small class sizes, have the benefit of substantial resources to support their pupils’ education, and pay staff salaries with which the state sector often cannot compete. There can be no comparison with the challenges that state comprehensive schools face, particularly those serving the most disadvantaged communities.

For that reason, while it is understandable that the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State believe that the independent sector should be asked to justify the benefits of their charitable status, we believe that establishing new schools or sponsoring academies is not the way to do so. On the other hand, partnership working should continue to expand, to the benefit of both sectors.