On 15 January Alistair Lexden addressed a conference organised by the Independent Schools Association (of which he is President) for heads who have recently joined this thriving organisation whose membership has been steadily increasing in recent years. The conference was held at the Hanbury Manor Hotel, outside Ware in Hertfordshire, a former convent whose pupils included Karren(now Baroness) Brady, the celebrity, and a mistress of Charlie Haughey, the Irish Prime Minister whose career was mired in financial and political scandal.
Speaking in what had been the chapel of the convent, the ISA President stressed the importance of the recently launched ‘ Schools Together’ website, a major landmark in developing further the vital work of partnership between independent and state schools. A long- established feature of the education system, partnership schemes are now attracting increased parliamentary interest, particularly in the House of Lords where Alistair Lexden acts as the unofficial spokesman of the Independent Schools Council (ISC), of which the ISA forms part.
The new ‘ Schools Together’ website lists nearly 650 partnership projects—an impressive achievement but one which needs to be developed further over the coming months, not least because the Lords will in due course be discussing the progress that has been made. The site can be accessed by schools in both sectors. The ISA office, under its Chief Executive, Neil Roskilly, is giving every encouragement to heads to seek further partnership opportunities; the ISC has recently made information available to ISA regional representatives throughout the country. Sport is an area on which it is felt that ISA schools might usefully focus in advancing partnership work.
In addition to endorsing the efforts to step up state/independent school partnership, Alistair Lexden referred to his continuing efforts to secure a greater understanding of the diversity and variety of independent schools and combat the gross caricature of the sector as uniformly expensive and exclusive. He also paid tribute to the dedicated staff working with Neil Roskilly in the recently opened ISA House: Karen, Carey, Alice, Danielle, Susan, Jennie and Laura—and Richard, the second male member of the team. ‘I was thinking of setting up a presidential complaints board’, he said. ‘But what would be the point? It would never have anything to do’.