Of course we are all committed to diversity and equality! Great schools such as Eton and Winchester were founded to provide needy boys with great education; the classic grammar schools of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were veritable engines of social mobility.
Today’s UK independent schools are breathlessly pursuing partnerships with the state sector, sharing their facilities with the local community, and focusing ever more sharply on increasing the funds available for scholarships and bursaries.
Applications for awards and places are increasingly “blind” so that all traces of bias are obliterated. The aim is to make independent schools “safe places” where those who are vulnerable to discrimination on ethnicity, gender, orientation, political and religious beliefs, can seek sanctuary. All this is good…but the bottom line is that it is made possible by fee-paying parents choosing to spend their money on freedom of choice in education rather than the opportunity cost of expensive homes, holidays and cars. The myth of oligarch billionaires palming off their ill-gotten gains on school fees is Guardian fodder rather than reality.
Shaun Fenton, HM Reigate GS and Chairman HMC, is no establishment toady. He is a radical champion of innovation and social relevance in education. AMC is delighted that he has accepted our invitation to be the next speaker at Dine & Discuss, Wednesday 1st May – details on AMC website. His title is the snappy “Engines of Excellence and Social Engineering for Equality: Independent schools in a time of the politics of envy, anti-expert commentary and polemic reporting”.
At a time when Michael Gove has described choosing an independent education as “eccentric”, followed by the wish that they would soon wither away, it would seem that independent schools are increasingly playing on an uneven playing field. This was brilliantly expressed recently by the “fake” news coverage of IGCSE where they were maligned as a tool to gain unfair advantage for independent school pupils.
In a liberal market economy, where the opportunity to choose independent education is an inalienable freedom, can we really expect fee-paying parents to pay for the egalitarian agenda much beloved by the hard left.
Anthony Millard
