Comment: Tear down this wall, Mr Cameron
The pupil premium offers the chance to open up elite schools to disadvantaged children.
By Rob Wilson MP
“I want every child to have the chances I had. That is why I’m standing here”, David Cameron told the Conservative party conference in 2009. But while the coalition government has introduced a number of welcome initiatives in education policy to promote greater equality of opportunity, pre-school places for two-year-olds, such as the pupil premium, the expansion of the academies programme and Teach First, many of England’s very best schools will continue to remain largely beyond the reach of bright children from poor backgrounds. I refer specifically to the top-performing schools in the private or ‘independent’ sector, which in total accounts for just seven per cent of school pupils. Since the abolition of the direct grant system and the more limited assisted places scheme by successive Labour governments, places at these schools, which offer some of the best educational opportunities in the country have largely been available only to those with the money to afford fees.
Last summer’s A-level results show the continuing academic dominance of elite private schools. Of the top 40 schools in terms of ‘academic’ A* grades per pupil, three-quarters (29) were private schools (the remainder being selective schools in the state system). Analysis by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showed that British private schools enjoyed a 62 point performance advantage on its ‘PISA’ reading scale – more than double the average for the rest of the OECD. And despite forming such a small percentage of school pupils, students who attended private schools still account for over 45% of places at Oxford and 40% at Cambridge. Research has shown that in an average year at some of the top private schools, such as Westminster and St Paul’s Girls, a staggering 50% of pupils are admitted to Oxford and Cambridge.
It should therefore not come as a surprise that the products of elite private schools continue to dominate access to the top universities and professions. Three-quarters of judges, and well over half of top journalists, barristers, solicitors and finance directors, and just under half of civil servants were independently schooled. More than half of the present Cabinet attended private schools, as did a quarter of Cabinet ministers who served in the Blair and Brown Labour governments. To complete the cycle of advantage, previous research has shown that more than half of the Oxbridge graduates in teaching are to be found in private schools.
Let me be clear, I am not for a moment suggesting that private schools are per se ‘better’ than state schools. There is huge variation within both the state and private sectors in terms of standards and pupil attainment. Nonetheless, more needs to be done to tackle the educational apartheid in this country, where a wealthy child attending a private school is 55 times more likely to win a place at Oxbridge than a child eligible for free school meals, whose chances of winning a place at one of the ancient universities is less than one in 100.
To really give bright children from poorer homes at least a fairer chance at entering the top universities and professions, then in addition to the welcome reforms aimed at raising standards in the state sector, we need to open up access to England’s top-performing independent schools to bright pupils from the poorest backgrounds. A pilot project could work as follows: a number of the best independent day schools would commit to reserving a percentage of free places in each year solely for bright pupils who are eligible for free school meals. Both the participation of the schools and the pupils would be voluntary. Admission to the reserved places would be competitive, with tests designed to assess not current academic performance, but intelligence and future potential. To help the participating schools meet the shortfall in fee income, the government could allow the funding attached to disadvantaged children, due to average at least £7,000 a year by 2014/15 when the pupil premium is included, to follow those pupils who successfully secure the reserved places on the basis of their ability. A partnership with business and private donations would also help.
Unlike the assisted places scheme and private schools’ existing bursary schemes, such a project would be explicitly and rigorously targeted at opening up places to bright pupils from the poorest homes. It would help a participating school to demonstrate that it deserves charitable status, while at the same time bringing in bright pupils capable of boosting its exam results in future years.
Opening up access to successful private schools has been shown to work, both in terms of creating a broader social intake and in improving school results. The Sutton Trust sponsored a hugely successful ‘open access’ scheme at the fee-paying Belvedere School in Liverpool between 2000 and 2006. Under the terms of the scheme, every place was allocated on the basis of merit alone, not the ability to pay. About a third of the pupils had their fees fully covered by the Sutton Trust and the GDST, and a further 38% had their fees partially covered. During the five years of the scheme, the school received applications from three-quarters of the primary schools in Liverpool and the proportion of pupils eligible for free schools meals admitted was 32.8%, more than double the national average. The school went on to achieve its best ever GCSE results in 2005, with 99% achieving five GCSEs graded A*-C.
Labour’s instinctive aversion to independent schools meant that further progress opening up access to some of the country’s elite educational establishments got nowhere under the last government, despite the exceptional promise shown by the Belvedere Pilot. Those on the left who will reject such proposals as an ideologically-driven subsidy for private schools must answer these questions – would they rather do nothing and leave a swathe of the country’s elite schools available only to those rich enough to pay the fees? Would they rather talented children from poor backgrounds continue to be excluded from even the chance to attend some of the very best schools?
This government, famously led by products of England’s elite independent schools (Eton, Westminster, St Paul’s), has talked encouragingly of introducing real diversity of provision into our public services and giving people a genuine choice over the services they use. The question is do we now have the courage to open up some of the very best services to the very poorest and break down one of the key barriers to social mobility at the top of our society?
In my view there is only one answer; tear down this wall Mr Cameron!
Rob Wilson is the Conservative MP for Reading East.
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