Sir Peter Lampl: Why should only rich kids grow up to be judges?

Sir Peter Lampl writes in The Times on the need for improved social mobility in the legal profession.

Three tribunal judges have made a ruling that ensures the apartheid between independent and state schools will stay alive and well in the UK. The detailed judgment made this month stretches to well over 100 pages. But the key message is clear: fee-charging schools do not have to provide bursaries and are now free to decide what they do for less privileged pupils to maintain their charitable status. Private schools hailed it as a victory against meddling regulators. An audible sigh of relief could be heard across the independent sector.

But the lingering suspicion in many people’s minds is that this is another classic British stitch-up. In no other country is so much influence wielded over the state-educated many by the privately educated few. As the Sutton Trust has documented, people who went to private school dominate almost all walks of public life, including the media, the City, “magic circle” law firms, the Bar and the High Court.

Three quarters of High Court judges come from private schools, compared with only 7 per cent of the population; half of them were at boarding schools, where less than 1 per cent of pupils go. Just to put that into context, putting a child through boarding school costs, £30,000 a year, plus extras, or £60,000 a year before tax, more than double the median income of £26,000 — and that’s just for one child.

And so it was that last week three senior judges ruled on something uncomfortably close to their own experience — the charitable status of private schools. They concluded that there was no need for private schools to provide bursaries to justify their status as charities.

That Mr Justice Warren, chairman of the tribunal, was at pains to stress that one of the three judges did not attend a private school demonstrates that judges themselves are all too aware that they would garner greater authority and public respect if they came from a wider social and educational reach. Ironically, the one state-educated judge attended a grammar school, not a comprehensive where 90 per cent of the population is educated.

The judgment will surprise no one. When the Charity Act became law in 2006, introducing the public benefit test, schools were galvanised into action by the need to meet the expectations of charity regulators. Since then bursary spending has increased by £100 million to £260 million a year at independent schools. Independent schools have launched fundraising campaigns to provide more bursaries, particularly after the Charities Commission ruled in 2009 that two schools had failed to meet the public benefit test. Even so, only 8 per cent of pupils in private schools receive some kind of bursary. This figure will almost certainly shrink after the latest ruling.

There has been much talk recently of whether private schools should sponsor new state-funded academies and help to break down the state-independent school divide. While laudable, this would not provide access to private schools for students who are not from privileged backgrounds and, with only a few hundred private schools as possible sponsors and only a few of them becoming actual sponsors compared with a state sector of 20,000 schools, its impact would be limited.

The Sutton Trust has funded many other attempts to cross the school divide, such as exchanging facilities, joint classes and use of playing fields. These are helpful and inexpensive compared with bursaries, but are merely sticking plaster.

We believe the best way forward is to introduce means-tested bursaries for all children in private day schools, democratising entry so that it is based on merit, not money. Together with the Girls’ Day School Trust we tested such a scheme at its Belvedere School in Liverpool where, over a seven-year period, entry was based on merit alone. It was an enormous success.

Academic standards improved dramatically and, importantly, it was a happy school with girls from all backgrounds mixing well. And because costs were shared with parents, who paid according to means, the cost per place to us, the sponsors, was less than the cost of a state school place. This could be rolled out nationally in the same cost-effective way with government funding.

Short of this approach, a smaller number of privately funded bursaries are the only serious option. At a stroke the incentive to provide them has been destroyed. So, the judgment is a big blow to social mobility, ensuring that independent schools remain the exclusive preserve of a moneyed elite — and will continue to produce the vast majority of our High Court judges.

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