Industry News
Govt told to focus on state schools
Posted on 22nd January 2008
The government should concentrate on improving state education before trying to reform private schools, a newspaper columnist has said.
Charity Commission guidelines published last week require independent schools to demonstrate what they do for the public benefit, while the education and skills bill includes a clause that suggests responsibility for the regulation of the private sector should be transferred to Ofsted.
Writing in the Yorkshire Post, Bernard Dineen claimed there is an attempt to drag down independent schools and that it is motivated by the "politics of envy".
Private schools provide a service for parents that cannot afford to move into the catchment areas of the best state schools and are no longer the preserve of affluent families in south-east England, he continued.
"If [families] are not well-off, they scrimp and save, doing without holidays and luxuries, in order to give their children a good start in life at one of the 2,500 independent schools that now have 230,000 pupils," wrote Mr Dineen.
He added that the real scandal in the British education system is not that private schools give their pupils an advantage, but that so many state schools are failing to deliver high standards.
Dr Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College, recently told BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight programme the idea that independent schools and families who choose to send their children to them are rich is a misconception.