Access not apartheid

Our Parliamentary Privilege research brief last week attracted plenty of media interest, with its finding that nearly a third of candidates in winnable seats were privately educated. While this has lessons for political diversity, as Conor Ryan blogged last week, it also shows how important it is that our best independent day schools are opened up on the basis of ability rather than ability to pay.

Since 2000, the Sutton Trust has been making the case for Open Access, needs blind admissions to our leading independent day schools. At the Belvedere School in Liverpool, we showed it could be done as we transformed over a seven year period an elite girls’ day school into one where 30% of the students paid nothing, 40% paid partial fees and the rest paid full fees.

With the support of the Girls’ Day School Trust, Belvedere offered a beacon for other leading private schools, provided that Government was willing to back such a change.  An outreach officer helped attract 360 applications for 72 places, compared to 130 previously. Entry was selective but with allowance made for prior school and home background.

In their evaluation, Alan Smithers and Pamela Robinson from Buckingham University found academic standards improved and it was a happy place for pupils of all backgrounds. With parents paying fees according to means, the cost per pupil to us the sponsors was less than at the average cost of a state school place because costs were shared with parents.

Belvedere has provided us with the blueprint for a national scheme. Nearly 90 schools have signed up to Open Access if Government funding were available including Westminster, St Paul’s, City of London, King Edward’s Birmingham and Manchester Grammar. Until 1976 most of these 90 schools were part of the direct grant scheme which consisted of 183 schools where 61% of places were free with the rest paying full or partial fees and all funded by Government.

Last year, an independent report by the Social Market Foundation showed not only the extent of the private school wage premium – £194,000 by the age of 42 – it also calculated that Open Access could be introduced at a cost to the taxpayer of £215m a year to the benefit of over 40,000 able students whose parents would not otherwise be able to afford it. Places individually would be no more expensive than the average cost of educating a child at a maintained school or academy.

As the SMF Director Emran Mian blogged at the time the report was published:

“It seems that throughout the rest of the education system we allow public funding to follow quality but, when it comes to schooling, we cut off those who cannot afford the full fees themselves from some of our very best schools. Open Access would change that, turning our independent schools from bastions of privilege into engines of social mobility.”

We have supporters in the main political parties. Dominic Raab, the Conservative chair of the all-party social mobility group, wrote in Friday’s Times in response to Parliamentary Privilege:

“….rather than bashing public schools, let’s prise them open. The Sutton Trust piloted a scheme at Belvedere independent school in Liverpool, opening its doors to the brightest applicants, with sliding-scale fees for those from poorer homes. Far from places being gobbled up by rich kids, 70 per cent were on fee support. With government help this model could become the norm….”

Labour MP Ian Austin has written supportively too:

“…The Sutton Trust proposes opening access to the country’s leading independent day schools by selecting pupils for all places purely on merit…..Extending that to 100 or more leading academic day schools, with state funding, would boost mobility and give our best universities and top professions access to Britain’s brightest young people irrespective of background. Sharing costs with parents means the cost per head to the state for Open Access would actually be less than the cost of the average state school place.”

However, we do need more political buy-in as the leaders of the main political parties remain reluctant. They make three main objections. For a start, it would require selective admissions, which the main parties say they don’t want to expand. However, the number of grammar school places expanded under Labour and is expanding under the Conservatives. Open Access would not increase selection it would simply democratise the selection that already exists.

The second objection is that all the places are not free. If the state wished to pay the full fees for all pupils, I wouldn’t object. But in these austere times, that’s unlikely. So it makes sense to link it to ability to pay. However, the net cost to the state would be small given the huge gains that could be made.

A third objection is that we should focus on improving other schools. Of course we should do that too, and Open Access is one part of a wider agenda to improve social mobility. It is one of ten big ideas in our Mobility Manifesto which we commend to all the parties for May. We don’t just want to open up the best independent day schools. We also want to see fairer access to the leading comprehensives – the top 500 take half the national average free school meal intake – and grammar schools – where just 2.7% of pupils are on free school meals. And we need to do more to close the 9:1 access gap between rich and poor to our leading universities.

But the truth is that addressing the education apartheid that separates independent and state schools has to be part of the social mobility agenda. Partnerships with state schools and academy or free school sponsorship are small solutions for a big problem.  They won’t transform our elites in the way that Open Access would. We may not see Open Access in any of the 2015 manifestos, but we must continue to make the case, not least to the many new MPs who are likely to take their seats in May.  Open Access would transform the truly appalling lack of social mobility at the top of British society.