Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
180-199)
DAME JUDITH
MAYHEW JONAS,
DR ANTHONY
SELDON AND
SIR SIMON
JENKINS
2 JULY 2008
Q180 Mr Prentice: Dr Seldon, is there
anything in this draft advice that makes you wince?
Dr Seldon: Shame on me! I have
not studied it in the kind of detail that perhaps I should.
Q181 Mr Prentice: You came here this
afternoon without having studied it in detail?
Dr Seldon: It is a difficult time
for us hard-pressed teachers with 890 end-of-term reports to write.
It is a tough business. There is a tendency to see the independent
sector as if it is a homogeneous whole but it is not. There are
schools like Wellington College and others. We have 400 acres,
wonderful buildings and so on, but there are many independent
schools whose buildings are far less good. We have been making
perhaps the assumption that independent schools have better facilities.
They do not always have better facilities than state schools.
Some do not have much at all. That more should be expected of
those that have more is certainly a point that I want to make.
As to sharing, I spoke earlier about developing the eight intelligences.
One of them is sporting intelligence which is the right of every
single child. One of the great sadnesses is that you cannot do
it unless you have playing fields. Sharing ought to go beyond
just the facilities; it ought to include human interaction and
working together on joint projects. It is not just about your
school playing another school because you want to beat the hell
out of each other and that will not do anything to bring you together.
It is a matter of working together on shared projects whether
in the classroom or outside it and creating challenges. The great
thing about CCF is the physical danger and challenge which all
children need to have. I think we should be working together on
that.
Sir Simon Jenkins: One of the
problems from which we have slightly drifted away is that to many
people the word "education" is considered to be a good
in itself, that is, the fact that you are involved in education
irrespective of who is getting it, which class gets it and whether
they are paying for it, justifies regarding yourself as a charity.
In that respect the exact parallel is the arts and religion. Most
religious organisations are not by any manner or means open to
all; on the whole, they are not open to people who do not belong
to the particular religion, and yet it is probable that most people
would regard a church as a good in itself irrespective of who
makes use of it. If I was promoting the case that I do not necessarily
support, I would say it was about something that was very good,
education. Why should I not regard being about education as very
similar to being about opera or the Trinity? In a sense, the challenge
for you is to prove why it is that education is different from
religion and the arts and in a sense is merely a service.
Q182 Mr Prentice: I understand that.
How many schools do you think will come to the conclusion after
all this consultation with the Charity Commission that it is absolutely
not worth the candle to go through this ridiculous pantomime of
charitable status and dump it and just become companies, or whatever
the other form is?
Sir Simon Jenkins: Insofar as
I have had these conversations, I gather that quite a lot will,
but would you ask the same question of the Regents Park mosque?
Chairman: We did.
Mr Prentice: I specifically asked a question
about Regents Park mosque.
Q183 Paul Flynn: In the previous
session we asked the Evangelical Alliance whether it should have
a state subsidy for teaching that all homosexuals and Muslims
are going to hell. We asked various other questions of the charities.
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: Perhaps
I may answer Mr Prentice's question which raised a very important
problem. Most of the schools cannot divest themselves of their
charitable status easily because of their founding documentation
and the way the assets are set up. Even if they wanted to stop
being charities they would find it very difficult.
Q184 Mr Prentice: So, at no point
in the past were the 256 independent schools that are members
of the Independent Schools Council which are companies with shareholders
charitable organisations?
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: No.
Most of them have been set up under different situations. I know
that a lot of the schools have looked at the original documents
because this has prompted an enormous amount of thinking. People
have gone right back to their beginnings and come to the conclusion
that it is quite hard to get out of it.
Q185 Mr Prentice: The point you make
and my response to it is that the Charity Commission can be as
tough on you as it likes and you have nowhere to go because the
majority of the schools in your organisation cannot renounce charitable
status because it means the loss of their buildings, grounds and
so on?
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: Most
of them would find it difficult to divest themselves of charitable
status, but most will find it not that difficult to comply with
the regulations.
Q186 Mr Prentice: It was a big mistake,
was it not, to appoint Rear Admiral Chris Parry to speak on behalf
of the Independent Schools Council?
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: No comment.
Q187 Mr Prentice: Let me comment.
He described state school pupils as unteachable and their parents
as ignorant. I think he said that to a Committee of the House.
That must have made you squirm with embarrassment.
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: I am
not prepared to comment on that, except to say that that is not
the view I hold.
Q188 Mr Prentice: I do not want to
box you into a corner. Were you on the appointments panel for
Rear Admiral Parry?
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: I was.
Chairman: We love the statement you issued
when he was disposed of. Politicians love statements like: "Although
he was looking forward to making a difference in the sector Chris
has chosen to take up other opportunities that he has been offered."
I thought that was priceless.
Q189 David Heyes: Dr Seldon is quoted
as saying that he disagrees with some of what Rear Admiral Chris
Parry said. With which bits did you agree?
Dr Seldon: I think it is known
that I have a high regard for state schools and I did not agree
with any of those statements at all. I am all about trying to
build bridges between those sectors, so I was embarrassed by those
statements. I happen to believe that he did not quite mean that
and it was just a gauche comment. I saw a good man who said something
which I found offensive but I do not condemn him; I do not think
he meant it in that way.
Q190 Chairman: Presumably, when he
spoke about the Charity Commission's guidance as "a missile
aimed from the maintained sector into the independent sector"
he had not just dreamt that up; he was expressing a view that
he was hearing around him, was he not?
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: I think
you will find that that was a personal statement and I hope I
have corrected it today.
Q191 Chairman: In all this discussion
of public benefit that we have had with religious groups and others
the intention is to balance the public benefit against any disbenefit
or detriment. The guidance has some trouble in relation to schools
in describing what disbenefits might arise. The only examples
with which it can come up is running a course on computer hacking
or teaching people how to launder money.
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: We do
not do either of those.
Q192 Chairman: Can you think of any
way in which a private school may cause disbenefit and whether
it ignores all the wider arguments on which we have been touching
today about the effects of the sector on the wider educational
system and society as a whole? What do you think "disbenefit"
means in relation to private schools?
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: Like
the Charity Commission, I am stumped.
Sir Simon Jenkins: It might mean
what Dr Seldon has written about the best pupils being creamed
off.
Q193 Chairman: But if it means that
you are in real trouble, are you not? If they were to go down
that road and talk about that as a disbenefit the sector would
be in real difficulty?
Sir Simon Jenkins: The words "public
benefit" are a real problem. It is not what the word "charity"
meant originally. Public benefit can be proved by almost anybody.
There is some public benefit in what all of us do—even newspapermen—but
we are not charities. I believe that the commission needs to concentrate
on the word.
Dr Seldon: If we could design
education from scratch we might have a unified system whereby
all would be state, which many of you seem to prefer, or all would
be independent as I would prefer, but we have to live with the
world as it is. Whereas there might be some social disadvantages
in the independent sector I would say that the overall gain far
outweighs them. I also believe that the benefits of the independent
sector in terms of being genuinely world class ought to be and
could be shared far more by the maintained sector but it needs
encouragement from government so to do. As I have also written,
I should like to see some of the money that independent school
parents give in taxes to pay for others to attend state schools
to be given back to encourage the kind of partnership activities
about which I am speaking.
Q194 Chairman: Dame Judith, in describing
your ethos, community role and so on you said you would always
go the extra mile. I have always been puzzled why you do not queue
up to do some of the really tough things in education. We know
that you take children who can afford it. Why not take those who
are really tough to educate?
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: Probably
one of the greatest charitable schools in this country is Christ's
Hospital and it is doing some of the really tough stuff.
Q195 Chairman: I do not mean the
exception as it were. You would really meet the challenge and
go the extra mile if you took on all the kids whom we are told
are too difficult to educate and those in care for whom we are
paying a fortune.
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: That
is what Christ's Hospital does.
Q196 Chairman: Christ's Hospital
is a splendid place, but why is the sector not queuing up to say
that it wants to do these things and prove that the things it
claims for itself will be demonstrated through its ability to
deal with children that the state has not been able to deal with?
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: I can
speak only from my own experience as chair of the LEA in the City
of London. When Hackney went into special measures it was City
of London School for Boys, an independent school, that seconded
its head of English and maths into that education action zone.
The outreach which the City of London School for Boys does in
the East End and South London is quite extraordinary. It is that
kind of unsung activity that has been going on. What is really
exciting about what will happen is that we shall get examples
of best practice and be able to highlight them in the Charity
Commission returns. You will find that a lot of the difficult
stuff is already being done.
Q197 Chairman: Do you think we will
see the independent sector queuing up to take on board some of
the most difficult kids to educate in the country?
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: I think
that in some cases it is already happening, particularly in the
special education needs schools, but in some of the partnership
activity where the poorer schools are being linked to other schools
you see a lot of this work already being done. I think we have
to wait and see what comes back in the returns.
Q198 Chairman: But the parents who
are paying those fees do so to get their children away from all
those issues and problems?
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: I do
not think they are paying for that; they are paying for high-quality
education which is different.
Q199 Chairman: They are paying to
get their kids out of troublesome classes, are they not?
Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas: There
are many reasons why parents do it, but I think that as we go
through this process we shall be quite surprised by what comes
out of it. Basically, I am an optimist and we shall be very pleasantly
surprised about the good outreach work that has been undertaken
for a long time in this country. There are many exemplar schools
like Christ's Hospital and the City of London School for Boys
that work in the poorest communities.
Chairman: We have had a good run. We
shall await developments and observe closely what goes on. We
are extremely grateful to all of you for coming along today to
give us your time and expertise. Thank you very much.
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