It is a stock in trade of those on the political left that independent schools entrench the privileges of the few at the expense of everyone else. Alistair Lexden took issue with that view in a Lords debate on social mobility on 29 January—a debate in which the large number of speakers meant that contributions were limited to two minutes each. His speech follows.
I declare my interest as President of the Independent Schools Association, which has nearly 550 members. I speak on their behalf. They are good schools. In no way are they grand schools. They do not retard social mobility; they assist it. People who proclaim their opposition to independent education because it provides only for a wealthy elite should visit some of them.
Drop in on the Old Vicarage School at Darley Hall in Derbyshire, a co-ed preparing 160 pupils for education post-thirteen and charging modest fees.
Or call in at Maple Hayes School near Lichfield, which, year by year, achieves spectacular results for around 100 children with severe dyslexia—and yet has to fight local authorities that try to stop families choosing state-funded places there, to which they are entitled.
It is tragic that these schools, firmly based in their local communities, should have to listen to pundits and politicians calling for their abolition. For them, for the independent sector as a whole and for our country, the right route to greater social mobility is through widening access to them ,on which the Independent Schools Council has made major proposals to the government, and through ever closer co-operation with state schools.
There are now nearly 11,500 partnership schemes bringing schools together in a two-way process for joint music lessons, joint teaching of STEM subjects and much else besides.
In 2011, just three students from the borough of Newham went to Oxbridge. In 2019, the London Academy of Excellence in Stratford—sponsored by six independent schools—sent 25 pupils to Oxbridge. Such initiatives highlight what independent/ state school partnership can achieve in assisting social mobility.
