Paul Hassall
Within the education sector, the gulf between private and state schools has widened considerably during 2020.
Anyone doubting this need only look at the stark contrast in pupil remote learning experience during the summer term lockdown.
Cross-sector school partnerships have helped prevent this gulf from becoming a chasm and could, if extended, start to bridge the gap.
Partnerships between state and independent schools having been running for many years, driven in the main by the enthusiasm of headteachers with encouragement from the Independent Schools Council (ISC).
Those running our private schools are motivated by much more than pupil recruitment, fee income, exam performances and self-congratulatory Tatler Awards.
They realise that building meaningful community partnerships will help create a better, less divisive society. They also know that failure to do so will leave private schools open to being perpetually defined as bastions of wealth and perpetrators of privilege and inequality.
The ISC reports 5,600 individual cross-sector school partnerships from 1,394 independent schools.
The vast majority of these are academic collaborations and the difficulty has been quantifying the impact in a way that makes them look more than a public relations exercise.
Extending these partnerships to include the sharing of knowledge and resource for strategic fundraising would go a long way to achieving this.
More importantly it could provide desperately needed additional income into the state school sector.
As someone who attended a very good comprehensive school in Merseyside in the 1970s and has experience of fundraising in both education sectors I feel well placed to help.
I set up www.stateschoolfundraising.com earlier this year with the primary intention of promoting and facilitating the transfer of independent school fundraising expertise into the state school sector.
State schools have four main options when it comes to fundraising:
1. Not to engage at all, believing that it is fundamentally wrong to do so and to believe that all funds should be provided by the DfE
2. Engage in low level, low cost, low return fundraising – Christmas raffles, cake sales etc
3. Develop a fundraising strategy supported by a local independent school
4. Commit to investing in their own fundraising infrastructure
The options are not mutually exclusive and some state schools may chose to select a hybrid model.
Anyone doubting whether cross-sector fundraising partnerships can make any meaningful difference to promoting social mobility and reducing inequality need only look at amounts raised by independent schools.
Fundraising in private schools is now focused almost entirely on creating bursary places for talented children from disadvantaged backgrounds. ISC schools raise on average £667,000 per year per school, with 25 schools raising in excess of £1,000,000 per school.
In contrast, despite having an eight per cent real term cut in budgets over the past decade, few state schools have any form of foundation structure or fundraising strategy in place.
There will be a need to change the fundraising focus to reflect the differences that exist between the sectors.
The majority of independent school donors are alumni; in the state school sector I see the fundraising opportunity being more with current parents.
It is true that state school parents have less wealth on average that those in the independent sector but many, without the burden of school fees, have more disposable money and would be inclined to support a school if a powerful case was presented which clearly demonstrated how their children would benefit.
Fundraising would not however be restricted to parents and it would be important to identify former state school pupils who have done well as part of building a thriving and engaged alumni community.
There are challenges that exist on raising funds in the state school sector, both financial and ideological. Overcoming them requires a different approach with a different message the make an emotional connection.
I have been fortunate to work over the past year with Julie Robinson, chief executive of the Independent Schools Council. The ISC represents over 1,300 independent schools and provides government with data and research analysis which is used to help form policy.
Julie is fully committed to cross-sector working and extremely supportive of sharing fundraising expertise.
David Laws, chairman of the Education Policy Institute, has been equally helpful and has recommended the drafting and submission of cross-sector fundraising proposals to schools minister Nick Gibb. I am drafting them in conjunction with Future First who link state schools with alumni networks.
In the meantime work has commenced on building a network of cross-sector fundraising partnerships. Early signs are encouraging.
Corsham School Academy Trust in Wiltshire have ambitious plans and are keen to be the first state school to run a Giving Day, which could raise as much as £50,000. I am waiting for governor approval to approach local independent schools on their behalf.
They face the same resource and IT challenges as other multi academy trusts (MATs) but are ambitious and, with right level of support, could well be a trailblazer for others.
Mossbourne Community Academy in Essex have committed to recruiting their own fundraising personnel and have set themselves a three year fundraising goal of £850,000, not through an independent schools partnership but their own fundraising infrastructure.
Other MATs have expressed an interest in taking a more strategic approach to fundraising and are actively looking at investment costs, the length of time to generate meaningful income and technology requirements.
I take great inspiration from people like Heather McKissack, a teacher for many years at the fee-paying Kings College School in London. Heather was responsible for setting up partnerships with eight local state schools with the aim of helping academically gifted young children achieve their potential whatever their circumstance.
Heather saw partnerships as a means of encouraging social mobility and the HMCK Charity set up to continue her work is doing an excellent job having just embarked on its very first fundraising campaign.
Their “Transforming Life Chances” campaign aims to raise £40,000 to buy laptops for motivated students from less fortunate backgrounds across the eight local state schools.
It will be interesting to see which of the fundraising models the 192 MATs in England adopt.
For those which did choose to partner with independent schools, the level of integration between independent and state schools will vary.
At one end of the spectrum an independent school could take full responsibility to fundraise on behalf of a state school.
I would envisage a more common form of partnership to involve the sharing of expertise and best practice in areas such as role requirements, building cases for support, creating and segmenting databases, identifying and approaching potential major donors and building regular giving programmes.
Independent schools will do this because they need to actively engage and support their local communities to avoid being labelled elitist and entrenching privilege with the resultant loss of relevance and charitable status.
They also recognise the need to instil in their pupils that doing public good is more important than academic qualifications.
Social mobility has shown signs of slowing down considerably because of coronavirus and we need more head teachers from both sectors to work collaboratively in the world of fundraising to help ensure that every child , regardless of background, is able to achieve their potential.
If we don’t the education gulf between the sectors will widen still further.
Paul has 30 years’ experience in sales and marketing working across different industries. Having spent the last two years at two leading independent schools he is passionate about bringing their fundraising practices into state schools. He is the founder of State School Fundraising.
