John Fowler
The twitter handle @AbolishEton makes clear the objective of Labour Against Private Schools.
For those who want to see a more equitable society in the UK, as I do, it is not right that the products of a few elitist schools dominate our public life, often giving the appearance of wanting to continue their schoolboy antics lifelong on the national and international stage.
The Clarendon Commission that looked into nine ‘prestigious’ schools in the 1860s did so because the future of these schools was “a matter of national importance”, sucking in the male scions of Victorian society, and incidentally leaving many of the other endowed schools in a parlous state – as evidenced by the Taunton Commission later in the decade.
Debate on what to do about such schools has continued in the intervening 150 years. The 20th century began with a common vision of creating “a truly national system of education” providing for all children. It took until the Education Act 1944 before fee-paying schools accepted the state’s right to inspect and register them while permitting the possibility of forced closure for not being ‘efficient’; it took another 14 years to implement.
Then the centralising Education Act 2002 instituted the Independent Schools Standards to begin the long overdue task of improving what went on in many of these schools. When the legislation was consolidated in 2008, the proposal to make HMCI (the chief inspector at Ofsted) responsible for both registration and inspection caused an uproar and the proposal was dropped. The big independent schools wanted a direct line to the responsible minister, and they got it.
The nine Clarendon schools are little changed: they are still top of the pile of the fee-paying schools. Of the Taunton Commission’s endowed schools, many have closed or merged, some have joined the ranks of the ‘prestigious’ often through many years of accepting paid-for places from local authorities and other state support. Dulwich College was rescued by the London County Council from closure a century ago. And many are thriving in the publicly-provided system as voluntary and academy schools.
The range of independent fee-paying schools is massive. New schools join and others close, whether endowed by a charity or run for commercial profit. According to the government website Get Information About Schools, there were 2346 ‘other’ independent schools on 9 September 2019, of which 516 are special schools (they are ‘other’ so not as to confuse with academy schools which are legally independent schools).
Of the remaining 1,831 non-special independent schools, 49 are recorded as not having returned information to the Department for Education in the last two years. 460 (25%) had fewer than 100 pupils.
I learnt about the full range of fee-paying schools in my first job in local authority educational administration some 30 years ago. I responded to a DES (Department for Education and Science) inquiry to confirm or otherwise whether the listed dozen independent schools were still operating in the area. The two ‘prestigious’ independent schools in the area were easy to track down and welcoming. One other school seemed OK, but for the rest, I could not understand why any parent would want to send their child to them given the quality of education on offer.
I accept that parental choice for these schools may have been guided by reasons of faith, family and community, but parents were paying for a poor education. But a conundrum all the same.
David Bell, when he was HMCI, received a Guardian headline saying “Private schools ‘some of worst in the country’” (29 April 2003) after speaking to independent school heads about standards. The only source of information on the quality of education in these schools is in the HMCI annual report. The 2017-18 report found “Despite some schools improving, the number of inadequate schools remains high” of schools which Ofsted inspects (about 40% of fee-paying schools).
And in the school year just finished, a quarter of the non-special independent schools were found to be inadequate. The equivalent figure for publicly provided schools is a twelfth.
Much education policy-making over the last 30 years has taken place without an honest and open public debate of the consequences of proposed policies. The DfE collects lots of information about fee-paying schools, including who runs them and their fees, GCSE results, and inspection performance. However, there has not been a comprehensive published analysis of the totality of these schools by which to judge the effect of any proposed policy and possible unintended consequences.
There are three main tax benefits, two which only affect charities: company taxation and business rates, and VAT which affects all. All three also affect publicly provided schools, universities and early years provision, not to mention the Saturday morning drama class. How easy is it to draft the legislation?
An immediate intended consequence must be to get children from the poor fee-paying schools to switch to publicly provided schools. How is this to be done?
And tackling the ‘prestigious’ schools will require long hours of heavy negotiation. Are we ready?
John Fowler is policy manager for the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU). He has over 30 years’ experience of local government in management, performance and policy roles for seven local authorities in London and the south-east and representative bodies. John has written for the Local Government Chronicle, Croner’s Education Now, and the Education Journal. He has also been the main author of, or a contributor to, books on Acts of Parliament affecting education and children’s services.
