Examination of Witnesses (Questions 560
- 579)
WEDNESDAY 30 JUNE 2004
DR MARTIN
STEPHEN, DR
ANTHONY SELDON,
SIR EWAN
HARPER, MR
JONATHAN SHEPHARD
AND MR
JACK JONES
Q560 Lord Phillips of Sudbury: Then
I would like to turn to the on-going clash between Dr Seldon and
Dr Stephen.
Dr Stephen: Happy disagreement!
Q561 Lord Phillips of Sudbury: What
would you say, Dr Stephen, to my own experience as a governor
of a couple of state comprehensives for very many years when about
15 years ago I tried for a second time with our local well known
independent school to get some sort of joint activity. I suggested
sports, arts, anything, only to be told for a second time by the
chair of the governors that parents were not sending little Johnny
to his school at £15,000 a year for them to mix with the
hoi polloi up the road. Do you think that is an untypical reaction?
Dr Stephen: It may well have been
typical 10 or 15 years ago. I think one of the great features
of the independent sector is its capacity to evolve with the times.
That is the only reason it has survived as long as it has. I would
be immensely surprised and, quite frankly, horrified if you got
a response like that nowadays. It would be wholly counter to the
prevailing spirit that Ewan has discussed in the independent sector.
We have changed.
Q562 Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I
appreciate you are chair of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses'
Conference. Your school is an exceptional one and always has been.
You do not think you are being a bit triumphalist in saying that?
Dr Stephen: I do not think my
school is unique in any sense nowadays. I would like to think
we were a little ahead of the game and I do not take the credit
for that, it is the institution. I do think the sector has changed
radically in the past ten years. I think it has evolved and it
has recognised now that the way forward is partnership and the
key thing is that partnership without patronisation. What we have
learned and what endless schools that one speaks to have learned
from their links with the maintained sector is that it is of mutual
benefit, that this is not a one-way process.
Q563 Lord Phillips of Sudbury: The
appendix we got of what is happening with the Manchester schools,
not just your own, if you look at that and if you look at the
very helpful document that Mr Shephard supplied us with, most
of the contact between the independent schools and state schools
is rather de haut er bas, it is mentoring, it is providing
pitches and so on. I see very very little equality of engagement
between them.
Dr Stephen: I would like to take
you through 50 or 60 case studies because I think that was true
when these partnership schemes started. I do not think it is true
any more because those partnership schools move on. There is one
more crucial point I would like to make on a much wider issue.
I am very proud and privileged to be a member of the ISPB forum,
the Independent/State Schools Partnership Forum. That forum lists
what I call the official partnership schemes. What is fascinating
about the sector at the moment is that those are only the schemes
affected that receive government funding. I know from my own experience
that there are at least as many unofficial schemes operating between
local head and local head and operating beautifully because there
is no heavy central template. These are individual teachers, where
75% of the language is universal, meeting each other perhaps even
socially. The scheme that we have was engineered by the fact that
the maintained school head in question and I were introduced because
two of her pupils mugged my youngest son, which must be something
of a first in partnerships. These schemes, which are 50% of what
is happening, are now unrecorded, they are very informal, usually
immensely useful and wonderfully experimental because there is
no government funding, there is no central template. Quite literally,
the water can find its own way down the hill. If they do not work
they stop or they change direction. I would like to emphasise
the tremendous amount of unofficial schemes that are going on.
Q564 Chairman: You would argue that
those sorts of schemes, whether funded by the Government through
the Partnership Programme or the schemes that you have eluded
to, the voluntary schemes or indeed the schemes that Mr Shephard
identifies in his Good Neighbours report, essentially fall
into the category of public benefit?
Dr Stephen: Yes, I would.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: The Chairman
asked some very pertinent questions on statistics around bursaries
and scholarships which you are going to do some work on, Mr Shephard.
I wonder if you could add two points in that research. One is,
to take up the point that Dr Stephen laboured, the difference
between entry exams which apply aptitude tests from those which
I think he calls "attained knowledge" and to know what
proportion of bursaries and scholarships follow that pattern.
The second thing is, and I do not think this is in any of the
documentation, you talk about 31% getting bursaries or scholarships,
but what proportion of the fees do those bursaries or scholarships
amount to? Is it 1% of the fees or 100% of the fees? Give us some
help as to the rough proportion of fees to see to what extent
they really do reduce the financial elitism of the system.
Q565 Chairman: Perhaps you can provide
that in your memo rather than try to answer it now.
Mr Shephard: I will do my best
to find out the information.
Dr Stephen: I know a very significant
number of schools use a common entrance exam which many would
see as having the capacity to test acquired knowledge. They will
let people in even though the acquired knowledge bit in that exam
is very bad. They are looking for aptitude through an exam that
is designed for something else. Perhaps I could give you one stupid
example. Many schools I know will see an 11-year old's use of
irony as indicating high intelligence. It is almost impossible
to teach. It is associated with high intelligence. I have seen
a common entrance paper where the person has got every single
date wrong, said William the Conqueror invaded England in 1944,
but the person is using irony and the school has let that child
in. It is not as easy as it might seem to quantify.
Q566 Chairman: Mr Shephard, 17% of
your schools are not charitable schools. What is the difference
between them and the charitable schools in performance and public
benefit?
Mr Shephard: The ones that are
not charitable schools are proprietary and they are therefore
run for profit.
Q567 Lord Phillips of Sudbury: How
do they look different or feel different to those who use them
and in terms of public benefit?
Mr Shephard: The schools that
belong to the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and
the Girls Schools' Association and the Society of Headmasters
and Headmistresses of Independent Schools are all charities, there
are three anomalous ones in City of London schools, so essentially
three of our senior school associations are entirely made up of
charitable schools. There are a number of preparatory schools
and they will operate in their local market, but the senior schools
are put on the charitable side.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I do not think
he has answered my question.
Q568 Chairman: Can I try to answer
it for you? I have been just been reading the Good Neighbours
report. You say on page 9 of that report that the absence of charitable
status makes little difference to either a school's willingness
to make its facilities available—that is to the state sector
or to local community groups—or indeed to its charging policy.
Then you go on to say on page 10 of the same report that the percentage
of schools without charitable status which undertake partnership
activities is not significantly different from those with charitable
status. So it seems that the charitable status, which is the point
that Lord Phillips is getting at, is pretty incidental to the
performance of what you agreed earlier was the public benefit.
Is that right?
Dr Stephen: No, because the schools
that are not charitable are not representative of the whole sector
at all.
Q569 Chairman: So it is a statistical
anomaly?
Dr Stephen: No. As Jonathan has
just said, it tends to be preparatory schools.
Q570 Chairman: Why put it in your
report? Why put those two very bold statements in your report,
that charitable status makes no difference whatsoever?
Mr Shephard: I do not want to
duck this. I have been in ISC for three months. That report was
produced before I joined and of course I take responsibility for
all ISC documentation.
Q571 Chairman: Can you answer and
explain?
Mr Shephard: We are dealing with
one argument for charitable status which is benefits provided
to the local community through use of facilities. When the Charity
Commission comes in and as regulator it will have to look at each
school on an individual basis and say, "Does the total package
add up to enough for the charitable status to be there?"
Q572 Chairman: When I asked you earlier
to describe (the very first question) you said essentially three
things: in answer to the question about why independent schools
should be charities, you said that education was for public good;
you said that your schemes on bursaries and scholarships extended
access—and we have had discussion and debate about that;
you said that it saved the State about £2 billion a year,
and I want to come to that; and, finally, you talked about the
public benefit through good works. We are now exploring this issue
of good works and it turns out, from your own report, that whether
or not an independent school is charitable is absolutely incidental
if it works. That is what the ISC says.
Mr Shephard: In that report you
are correct, Chairman, in saying there was little observable difference
in the use of facilities between charitable and non-charitable
schools. It will in the end be up to the Charity Commission as
regulator to decide for each and every school whether it is providing
enough public benefit.
Q573 Mr Mitchell: I want to be very
clear on this point, Mr Shephard, which ties in with the questions
that have been asked about numbers, and it ties up for me a lot
of the argument that for every pound gained through charitable
status in excess of £2.30 is given in assistance through
bursaries. Is that figure correct, or do you need to revise it
in the supplementary evidence you are going to give to us?
Mr Shephard: That figure was certainly
correct. When it was researched by the Bursars' Association we
had no reason to think the ratio had gone anything other than
positively.
Chairman: If you want to reiterate this
or amplify it in your written memorandum that would be helpful.
Q574 Ms Keeble: On the issue of the
use of facilities and public benefit through access to facilities,
given that the state sector has to pay for it, I have never quite
understood why it is regarded as such a big deal, frankly. If
a private school provides its playing fields to the local state
school and charges them for it that seems to me like a commercial
function. Why is it given this special status?
Mr Shephard: I agree absolutely
with what you say. If it is charging then that is a commercial
function and not charitable, unless the charge is nominal.
Q575 Ms Keeble: How much of it is
actually charged or paid for through some government grant?
Mr Shephard: Many schools do provide
facilities at cost, below cost or entirely free. To the extent
that it is below cost then that is charitable, but if it is above
cost then it is not.
Ms Keeble: Can you give any idea of what
the proportion is? Because with all the schemes I have seen there
is a cost involved. I want the global figure; I do not want the
individual case.
Q576 Chairman: There are figures
in the Good Neighbours Report in detail. Have you formally
submitted the Good Neighbours Report?
Mr Shephard: I have not, no.
Q577 Chairman: I think it might be
helpful if you would do that and the previous two reports from
1998 and 1993.
Mr Shephard: We can do that. It
is approaching 60% which are free.
Q578 Mr Campbell: I want to come
on to this question of the use of facilities in just a moment.
If I may first of all return briefly to the question of access
with a request rather than a question. When you put out your questionnaire
to schools about bursaries will you ask the question: how many
bursaries at that school go to children of staff in that school
as part of their employment package?
Mr Shephard: Yes.
Q579 Mr Campbell: I want to move
on to the question of partnership and facilities. When Leeds University
School of Education did the evaluation of the independent state
school partnership scheme it found that standards were rising
in a very cost-effective way. The issue as far as I am concerned
is whether or not private schools are doing enough of it. If only
around 10% of schools, according to the ISC survey, participate
in the government's partnership programme is that doing enough?
Mr Shephard: As Martin Stephen
said, there are a number of partnerships all the way round. The
whole ethos of the leaders of the independent sector is to reach
out and engage in more and more partnership activities so that
we are seen as part of a single system. What we are desperately
keen to avoid is being put back, if you like, into the box into
an exclusive sector. Yes, the more partnership the better. ISC
is entirely in favour of that and so are all the heads that I
know.
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