The range and scale of industrial action in recent months has been unmatched in any point in my career.
Teachers have gone quickly from being instrumental in maintaining as much continuity and normalcy as possible during the pandemic, to once again feeling undervalued and taken for granted in subsequent DfE funding agreements.
The independent sector has not been immune to such action, with TPS and pay-awards being difficult to manage at a time of increasing pressure on the sector.
Managing at such a time is not easy for any head. Balancing budgets against educational continuity, recognising the difficulties that individuals and institutions face during the cost-of-living crisis and handling unfunded pay awards or pension contributions will undoubtedly pull us in many directions, whether in the state or independent sector.
“The recruitment and retention crisis that education faces will impact all schools.”
Our chief aim at this moment should be how we best look up and see the opportunities for commonality and collaboration across schools and sectors, with a crystal-clear view on making education in the UK as strong as it can possibly be.
This is incredibly difficult when our concerns, rightly, have to be on keeping as many opportunities available for students as possible in our own settings, or worse, simply keeping the lights on.
Education is richer for the debate that exists between models and methods, but also for the commonality of cause that we all have: enriching the lives and chances for our young people and giving them the best possible shot at making a difference to the world.
There is a danger of missing this perspective among the variety of challenges that we face, and instead focus falls on how we might best manage at a micro-level, even if this comes at the expense of others.
“We are all poorer with an under-funded state education system.”
The strikes in the maintained sector are not something we in the sector should be quietly pleased about, offering as it might the opportunity to draw attention to the benefits of independent education, or recruitment of teachers into our own schools. The recruitment and retention crisis that education faces will impact all schools.
We are all poorer with an under-funded state education system.
Given the political challenges being posed to the independent sector, whether the changing nature of TPS, or the policy choices of the Labour Party, now is the time for greater collaboration and joining of voices within and beyond the sector, not less.
Defending our corner has meant seeking survival in terms that are too small, too inward facing. Vague questions about what will happen to partnership work, or where our students might go if our schools become unaffordable, are not going to have the weight needed in this debate, nor is raising the prospect of fewer scholarships being available.
“Defending our corner has meant seeking survival in terms that are too small, too inward facing.”
Now is the time for us to ask as a sector, what more we can do in as wide a manner as possible to raise the bar for what is possible in all schools? If education faces a recruitment crisis, our schools should be asking what role we can play in solving it. If resources are becoming more scarce, it’s time to explore opportunities for joint procurement between independent and state schools.
At a time when education is being taken less seriously and more for granted, we should be establishing better and more loudly the terms on which we can lobby together for the sake of all students, past and future.
The months and years ahead are likely to be marked by increasingly harsh competition between independent schools and potentially arms-length collaboration with the maintained sector.
Yet they don’t have to be.