Maybe we’ve not tried hard enough or maybe we’ve just been rebuffed too many times. Maybe the person we used to get on with at the local state school has moved on or maybe a change of headteacher meant a change of attitude.
Whatever the reason, it’s been too easy for those who wish to denigrate the independent schools sector as a bunch of commercial organisations with no relevance to the wider educational system or benefit to society.
It’s been too easy to dismiss independent/state school partnerships as “crumbs from the tables of the wealthy”.
Great, groundbreaking work that has transformed the opportunities for thousands of young people in places such as York, Bristol and Edinburgh has failed to get noticed nationally.
We were probably kidding outselves if we ever hoped that the value of partnerships would tip the scales when Labour finally considers the cost-benefits of its VAT policy.
“Everyone, it seems, knows that private schools are rich, greedy, out of touch, tax avoidance scams.”
Even the Schools Together website, part funded by the DfE to showcase good independent/state school partnership practice, has been mined by unfriendly journalists to slate the sector.
And if there are any friendly journalists left, they haven’t done much to balance the narrative. Everyone, it seems, knows that private schools are rich, greedy, out of touch, tax avoidance scams benefiting the dilettante offspring of a gilded elite whose sense of entitlement is the reason we’re in the mess we’re in.
VAT? We should be grateful to get off so lightly.
Except, that isn’t the whole story. Intriguingly, while few opinion polls on the subject make independent school leaders smile, there is a consistent counter-narrative, too. “Private schools” generally may get slated, but the ones people know in their own area fare much better.
At a local level, the bursary provision, sharing of facilities, summer school opportunities, curriculum enrichment and general good-neighbourliness cuts through. People do give credit where credit is due.
“Private schools generally get slated, but the ones people know in their own area fare much better.”
We may be only weeks away from a UK general election in which the Labour Party will promise to impose VAT on independent school fees and it seems inevitable that independent schools will end up as an unlikely political battlefield.
It would be tempting to relish our moment of illumination in the sweep of the campaign searchlight. It would be tempting to sign up for the fight and engage with all our guns blazing. After all, the very existence of many independent schools hangs in the balance.
To engage with Labour on their policy, to point out the fundamental flaws in their logic and the unintended consequences that attend the policy would not only be tempting, it would be cathartic. It would be right. It would make us all feel so much better. Sadly, it would also be fairly stupid. We would not only find ourselves in the glare of the searchlight, we would also find ourselves in the cross-hairs of far bigger and more deadly guns than we could ever have at our own disposal.
There are plenty of clever people in the Labour Party who don’t need us to tell them that their numbers don’t add up or that the consequences of VAT on school fees in many areas will be dire. The fact that they will have the policy in their manifesto anyway indicates the limits to which that knowledge is relevant in deciding what the party will campaign on.
“We risk confirming the popular misconception that our only interest is our own self-interest.”
The details of the policy are not the point, but its contribution to the narrative that Labour is seeking to build as it approaches power absolutely is.
So the independent sector has a choice. We could do what presumably Labour expects us to do and fight every inch of the ground, point out how unfair they are being, what a brilliant job we do and how VAT will hurt us. But in the rough and tumble of an election campaign, that risks looking like us simply defending our supposed privilege. It also risks feeding the Labour narrative and confirming the popular misconception that our only interest is our own self-interest.
Or we could do something else. We could build on that counter-narrative which we know is out there in many communities which know that “their” private school is different. We could talk about education and how it matters for our country. We could talk about the values of our schools and how we try to live those values in the communities we serve.
We could use our moment in the glare of the searchlight to illuminate a different truth from the one people expect to see – that independent schools are first and foremost schools. Like all schools, we are key pieces of national infrastructure benefitting many more than our fee paying families.
“In the rough and tumble of an election campaign, that risks looking like us simply defending our supposed privilege.”
No one is suggesting that independent schools have all (or indeed many) of the answers, but between us we do have expertise, capacity, agility, networks, access to alternative sources of funding, facilities and above all, people.
Most of those people, like me, did not choose to work in an independent school out of ideological antipathy to state-funded education, or out of any sense of entitlement or superiority. We would support any government committed to making 100 per cent of schools in the UK work for the benefit of 100 per cent of young people.
If there is a route to mitigating the disaster of VAT, it will not be found during an election campaign, but in the work which happens as the rhetoric of campaigning subsides into the minutiae of governing.
But the campaign may nevertheless give us a chance to tell our own story better, more convincingly and in a way that marks an historic shift in the relationship between independent schools and government. Let’s grab that chance if it comes our way.