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What would a successful independent education sector look like?

Daniel Lilley, 20 January 2025

Independent schools have featured prominently in the media airwaves over the last year. Critics of the sector have been busy revelling in the new government’s imposition of VAT on school fees, whilst proponents of the sector have lamented the same policy. We have read times over that the money is needed for 6,500 new teachers, and we also have read times over that education should never be taxed and that this policy will hurt the poorest, not the richest, independent school parents.

It has been clear that virtually everyone – from the sector’s harshest critic, to its fiercest defender and all the shades of indifference in between – agrees that this policy is not the best-case scenario. What is not clear is what that best-case scenario would look like. The Prime Minister wants the sector to ‘thrive’: but what does this mean?

Civitas’ Commission on the Future for Independent Schools, published today, asks this question. What would a successful independent sector look like?

It is a relatively straightforward question to partially answer. Independent schools are… well, schools. The purpose of schooling, or, more broadly, of education, is reasonably well established: to pass onto children the knowledge, skills and attitudes to live fulfilled adult lives. The emphasis between these things changes substantially with who you ask, as does how you achieve this purpose, but this basic outline – kept unspecific – is relatively uncontroversial.

The purpose of independent schools is obviously first and foremost to do the above: to educate. That is the first part of the answer: a successful independent sector will educate as well as possible. Success demands excellence. We want an independent sector that sets the global gold standard, with children coming from far and wide for an education at an English independent school; we want an independent sector that churns out top grades, Olympic medal winning athletes, and Nobel prize winning scientists.

But there is also more that is unique. Independent education provides a sector within the school system that is free. Free to teach what it chooses, free to employ whom it chooses and free to fund itself independently of the government – within this is the freedom to charge fees.

The best-case scenario would see this freedom used to facilitate creativity, innovation, and breadth. Freedom to do as you please offers the exploration and testing of new, old, and different ideas. Freedom to be culturally broad: housing different religions, educational philosophies, specialisms, subjects, and people groups.

A successful independent sector would also use this to improve educational standards more widely. To do this, the sector needs to collaborate closely with its state counterpart: it is no use coming up with great ideas if they are not shared, and coming up with ideas is going to be much more worthwhile with the help of state sector colleagues.

Of course, for any of that to be achieved, the sector’s freedoms need to be respected and sustained: you cannot utilise the great opportunities of independence if you aren’t independent.

Finally, most sensitively, but absolutely fundamentally, a successful independent sector should be accessible. This accessibility is key to much of the above: you can’t be culturally broad if inaccessible to most children, and you can’t substantially improve standards if your practices are not affordable to replicate.

Accessibility is, however, also extremely important in its own right, and this is for two reasons.

First, in the best-case scenario, independent schools do not skew educational opportunities so that less affluent children have worse life chances. Perhaps the best-best-case scenario is all schools being entirely perfect, but since this is infeasible, the best-case scenario is that all children have a fair chance at getting to the best schools. This demands that independent schools are as accessible as possible.

Second, parents paying for schooling is a prosocial act; people investing in furthering education in the country. A successful independent sector would have ever more parents able to do this. Investment in the next generation is the lifeblood of education, and this requires financial resource – the vision is always to expand this.

Together, these give us five principles of a successful independent schools sector: excellence, independence, cultural breadth, collaboration and accessibility. The sector can always do better at each of these, and the government has the right to push it to, but this has to begin with understanding what success itself looks like.

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