Brighton College and Wellington College are two of the schools which have recently announced mass roll-outs of franchised operations.  Brighton College plans to open two schools in Abu Dhabi in 2011 and 2013, with others to follow in Oman, Jordan, Romania, Vietnam and India.  Wellington College has plans to open approximately 15 schools, beginning in China in 2011 and following with Malaysia, Qatar, Bahrain and India.  This is not a new phenomenon: Dulwich and Harrow have had franchises in China and Thailand for about a decade, while other public schools have created the odd satellite; Repton Dubai, Oxford High GDST in China, Haileybury-Almaty, Shrewsbury Bangkok and Bromsgrove Bangkok come immediately to mind.  Brighton and Wellington are fairly unique, however, in the scale of their planned operations.  Both are motivated by the franchise fees which will be used to fund bursary places and capital projects in the UK.

The franchising of a marketable British brand (or at least until A Levels are thoroughly discredited through grade inflation and curriculum dilution) outside the UK seems very sensible to me in light of the pressures imposed by the Charities Commission on independent charitable schools to provide “public benefit”.  After all, as I discussed in The public benefit that will cut out the middle classes, the absurd result of the Charities Commission’s guidance is that schools will feel compelled to offer more bursaries — bursaries which many do not have the endowments to fund.   The result?  Increasing fees for non-bursary pupils.  Taken to its absurd conclusion, this would result in most charitable schools having a polarised population of very poor and very rich pupils.  So taking cash from franchised operations to fund these places in the UK and hence preserving a broad economic spectrum of pupils seems eminently sensible.

The repatriation of profits to Britain may be morally questionable to some.  Soft imperialism has been a term that has been bandied about.  Frankly, I’m not too worried about that; the premise for the success of these franchises is that there is a stratum of the local foreign market which has the means to pay for a private British education and is more than willing to pay for it. Moreover, I have no doubt that the local population will soon wise up to the fact that they can replicate the British model on their own and squeeze the franchises out once the local market becomes better established.  This may be precipitated by the profit motive in the local market or perhaps by nationalist sentiment when locals realise that profits from the satellite schools are funding kids back in Britain rather than kids in New Delhi, Bangkok or Abu Dhabi.  I have no doubt that the consumers in these far-flung locations have the wealth and know-how to look out for themselves.  Many probably have incomes far in excess of the average parent of a public school child in England.  

This is precisely why I think the British public schools engaging in franchising or thinking about it should do so with caution.  With the exception of perhaps Harrow, very few of the public schools which are establishing satellites are household names abroad.  As much as many of the franchising schools like to think of themselves as major public schools (and let’s face it, most of them are not in this league), the cachet and hence pulling power of most public schools is not so great that they couldn’t be supplanted by generic locally-established British-modelled schools.  And when it sinks in that consumers are not really getting a Harrow, Dulwich, Repton or Wellington education but rather a knock-off co-branded education, the momentum for local home-grown competitors to the British satellite schools will grow considerably and threaten the viability of the satellite school model.

Franchising offers an opportunity to certain public schools to ensure that they can meet the public benefit requirement that the Charities Commission has imposed without increasing fees and alienating the middle classes.  If they want to take advantage of this they should do so quickly because it won’t take long for satellite school consumers to develop the expertise to establish their own home-grown schools which can give them as much, if not more, than any of our satellite schools can offer.  When that happens, the franchisor schools will find their franchise fees dry up and perhaps, if they’re unlucky, they’ll even find they’ve received little return on their investment. and perhaps seen their most valuable asset — their name and reputation — highly devalued. At that point, selling a birthright for a mess of potage comes to mind, and that cannot be a good thing for any school.

Sir Jim couldn’t be clearer. ICT has pride of place alongside literacy and numeracy as “foundational knowledge, skills and understanding of the primary curriculum”. No one will dispute the importance of English language skills and mathematical acumen at a time when even relatively few university graduates seem to possess the knowledge and skills necessary to write a coherent business letter or perform simple computations such as the percentage change between two numbers.  The prominence of ICT as a pillar of primary education, however, can only mean less time spent on literacy and numeracy and less time exposing children to subjects which they might not otherwise encounter and which benefit greatly from good teaching.  According to the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study in 2007, 95% of Year 5 children in England had a computer at home and 86% had internet access at home.  My guess is that most of these kids have the means and interest in computers to figure this stuff out outside of the classroom.  My further guess is that they know more about ICT than Sir Jim himself.  But science? French? Latin? History? Geography?  I bet very few of  the same children have the inclination and the means to learn these other subjects in the same way on their own.  I’ll put money on even fewer developing a lifelong interest in these subjects without a great teacher to spark the initial excitement.

I defended you in January, Sir Jim, but this time you’ve really goofed.

ContactPoint was rooted in the recommendations made by Lord Laming in his 2003 report following the Victoria Climbie inquiry.  That report pointed to the necessity of a national information system given that many children access services in different local authority areas or move between areas.  That recommendation led to the adoption in 2007 of the Information Database (England) Regulations which gave birth formally to ContactPoint.  This all sounds very laudable, but as unfortunate as the cases of Victoria Climbie and more recently Baby P, were, the privacy and security risks to every child under the age of 18 (and some over the age of 18) just do not justify the possible benefits that ContactPoint was intended to bring. 

The centralisation of so much information is bound to cause discomfort to anyone who has even a GCSE knowledge of the goings-on in Germany circa 1939.

But it’s not just the centralisation of information that is frightening, it is also the number of people who have access to that information.  It has been estimated that approximately 330,000-480,000 individuals could legitimately access the ContactPoint database of the country’s 11 million under-18 year olds (plus a few over that age).  Those who can access ContactPoint  include NHS personnel, the police, social workers, school principals, deputy heads, heads of years at schools, and teachers with pastoral duties — in other words, an already potentially large set of  busybodies or persons with malicious intent who happen to wear the necessary badge.  It also includes several others such as “voluntary groups” and “administrators” at schools.  What are “administrators”? Can any nosy parker who happens to be an employee at a school call himself an “administrator” and gain access to children’s files? There is something chilling about the ill-circumscribed list of those having access and its very size, even where “security vetting” (whatever that is) has been promised. 

User names, passwords, security tokens and PINs (the hallmarks of ContactPoint security) are common in most workplaces —- but are often abused through sharing and disclosure. I have worked in several businesses where secrecy should have been the norm, but where confidential documents sat on scanners for any and all to see or in recycling boxes or rubbish bins (rather than being shredded) or where sensitive phone calls were conducted in airport lounges or on trains for anyone to overhear.  And the fact that ContactPoint will log all those who access files is meaningless if no one regularly checks every child’s access log to see who has been accessing the information without a justifiable reason.   It is human nature to be sloppy with processes; witness the MI6 agent who kept unencrypted top secret information on a USB stick which was subsequently stolen or Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick’s appearance with a document stamped “top secret” under his arm for all to read when a photo was subsequently published on the web.  Remember also our child benefit details which are also circulating somewhere thanks to an inability to follow procedures somewhere along the line as well.

The fact that the information on ContactPoint may be downloaded remotely is also alarming.  The government assures us that users cannot download child data onto a desktop or removable media (such as a memory stick).  This is not terribly convincing.  Again, I have worked in environments with significant security concerns which have purported to have similar restrictions in place; I have found them to be susceptible to circumvention.  Moreover, it matters little how information is disseminated, whether on a memory stick, a photo from a camera-equipped mobile, or through transcription or verbal transmission of information; the result is the same: a potential violation of a child’s privacy and the potential to put a child at risk.  With up to 480,000 persons having access to the database, we have to assume that there are a few who might themselves pose threats to children. On this basis, I have visions of  people remotely accessing ContactPoint from home,  joined by their paedophile network in the same room or via computer link and no one to potentially report suspicions. On a less salacious level, I still abhor the idea of a gaggle of teachers sitting around the common room taking in the fact that little Johnny’s primary physician is a psychiatrist  while one of teenager Mary’s doctors is an obstetrician who is well-known to specialise in teenage pregnancies.  No nosy parker needs case notes to draw a few conclusions worthy of spreadable gossip.  If the full implementation of ContactPoint goes ahead, parents should make regular requests for information under the data protection laws to monitor exactly what is held on their children and, by extension, on them.

Finally, although the database is ostensibly for the protection of children, it is disturbing that children’s details will not be erased when they turn 18 (or 25 for those who stay on until then.)  The government hasn’t even pretended that the files will be erased when a child reaches adulthood.  The regulation is clear: they are “archived”.

All of this sounds so calculated.  It is even more so if you consider the plot that we discussed on that Saturday afternoon on the local common. Four of us were sipping our lattes.  One is sending her daughter to the Welsh School so has avoided both catchment areas and big price tags altogether. Another lives in an enviable catchment area.  The third one has no decent non-denominational state school so was pondering a house move.  Rather than moving, it was mooted, why didn’t she look to rent out her home in Stockwell and rent a maisonette in the enviable catchment area for a year or so — just long enough to gain admission — and then move back into her house in Stockwell?  To some (including the relevant mother) it smacked of playing the system.  But was it?  If  you conform to the letter of the code, does its spirit really matter?  Well, probably.  But if we’re going to deal with that question, then we must deal at the same time with the question of state-funded (ie funded by us) denominational schools at the same time.  In the case of my Stockwell friend (and in my own case), there are good denominational schools which we support through our taxes…and yet for which our own children are ineligible.  So until that injustice is rectified, I’m all for my Stockwell friend renting out her house in Stockwell, and legitimately taking up a place at the locally sought-after school based on her new residence nearby.  I may in fact move in next door to her on the same basis.

And lest any of us thought this to be a covert action of the middle classes trying to undermine the system: John Burton, the chairman of the governors of a state primary, St. Peter’s Eaton Square, was recently reported to have admitted renting out his family home in Kennington to take up rented accommodation within the catchment area first of St. Peter’s Eaton Square and later Lady Margaret School in Fulham — both highly sought after schools.  The office of the schools secretary, Ed Balls, has reportedly confirmed that this governor operated within the scope of the schools admissions code.  With Ed Balls’ blessing, I think more of us should have the balls to follow Mr Burton’s example.

The very institutions which are entrusted with the education of future citizens and leaders in a full array of subjects, including moral education and citizenship, should be leading the way in helping parents in financial difficulty to find a way to keep their children in school while allowing them to rearrange their finances.  Goodness knows, many schools are doing just this: fee arrangements are being agreed and bursaries are being granted by many schools to allow children in critical phases such as GCSEs and A levels to complete those courses or others to finish off their school year so as to minimise disruption to their lives.  This is all very laudable.  So what kind of example could the Girls’ Day School Trust (which owns several dozen schools in the UK and is estimated to educate ten percent of all privately educated girls in this country) have possibly been trying to set in terms of moral education and citizenship when it allegedly* rudely excluded a Year 7 Streatham and Clapham High School pupil mid-way through morning classes in front of all of the pupil’s classmates?  The pupil was allegedly* escorted to reception where she was allegedly* left unattended for several hours until her mother could be contacted to collect her.  The girl’s only crime was that her school fees were allegedly* £5,100 (the equivalent of less than two terms) in arrears. She was humiliated in a way that a Texan or Californian court would probably be happy to award damages for.

The girl’s family had been particularly hard hit by the credit crunch: the unexpected arrival of a new baby and the demise of a business whose client base was heavily weighted with estate agencies coupled with an ex-husband with court-ordered responsibility for school fees and child support who had not been able to meet those obligations had all meant arrears of school fees had accumulated.  The mother offered to assume the fees going forward to see her daughter through the year but was unable to assume the arrears incurred by her ex-husband.  This was, apparently, unacceptable to the school.  The mother had anticipated that the cash flows would not be available going forward on a long term basis and had secured a place for her daughter at a local secondary school for September but no one could take her before.  It would have been easy for the school to allow the mother to assume the fees for the remaining two terms and to pursue the father for the arrears separately. The girl would have been spared the humiliation she suffered and the trauma of being left without a school mid-year.  One also has to wonder whether the school can, in this economy, fill the girl’s place mid-year. If not, what is the opportunity cost of allowing the girl to continue at the school….especially if her mother could borrow the money to keep her in school until the end of the year?

Schools may be businesses, but they are also human businesses which touch on human dignity in a similar vein to hospitals.  In my mind, they have a greater duty to their clients than businesses in less “human” industries.  Moreover those schools that are charities (as the Girls’ Day School Trust is) arguably have an ever greater duty as a charity.  The GDST’s alleged* treatment of its pupil on the first day back at school in January was the antithesis of all things charitable.

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* I know the girl in question and heard her account firsthand but feel compelled, given the increasing litigiousness of fee-paying schools, to caveat this posting appropriately.

Last month, Sir Jim Rose, the former Ofsted chief inspector, tabled his interim report on the primary curriculum.  I honestly didn’t read the report because, frankly, I’ve been jaded by educational officialdom which usually has a lot to do with jobsworthing and political point-scoring and rather little to do with education.  Working groups, papers, policies, and strategies (God, I hate that last one more than anything) with titles such as Every Child Matters, the Children’s Plan, Time to Talk, EYFS, the National Literacy Strategy and the National Numeracy Strategy  rather bore me with their vapidness.  There is almost never anything cutting edge about them.  If there were, they’d be research papers in peer-reviewed journals, not dust collectors on civil servant desks.  However, sitting at a dinner party in Ottawa over Christmas, something happened which compelled me to download the full Rose Report.  And read it.

My host, a retired senior Canadian diplomat, mentioned that he had read in the Economist that we in England were no longer going to teach proper subjects in primary school, but rather topics or themes as had been done in the 1960′s, 70′s and 80′s (ie until the last report on the curriculum by Rose and two others, known as the “Three Wise Men”, advocated a shift to individual subjects in their 1992 report.)  He was appalled.  So were the other guests. What kind of educational backwater was I living in, they wondered. (I didn’t want to dig my adopted country further into the ground by telling them we’d only officially returned to phonics teaching two years earlier.)

I had seen some of the attention-grabbing headlines when the Rose Report was released on December 8^th.  The Telegraph shouted “History and geography lessons in primary schools should be scrapped, says report” while Melanie Philips at the Daily Mail condemned the report’s return to topics.  The Times did likewise, saying that topics such as “chocolate” would purport to replace maths, English, science and goodness knows what other of the currently prescribed 14 topics of the primary curriculum.  The chocolate analogy was all over the radio talk shows.  I hadn’t read the Economist article cited by my host so pulled it up.  Lo and behold, it had interpreted the Rose Report in the same way but seemed to applaud the report’s embrace of topics again.

But guess what?  I have now read the report and can only conclude that the reporters for the attention-grabbing headlined articles did not read it because Sir Jim does not advocate doing away with history and geography in favour of chocolate.  I actually think his report makes a lot of sense.  It advocates paring down the prescriptiveness of the current 14 topics to six areas which quite sensibly include all the necessary basics: English, communications and languages; art and design; maths; science and technology; human society and environment; and physical education and wellbeing.  My reading of the report is that individual subjects are to be taught, with cross-curricular comparisons made where possible. This covers the basics while still allowing passionate teachers to go beyond and to make linkages with other subjects. I still remember the sense of excitement I felt when studying the Tudors in history and simultaneously with another teacher studying contemporaneous Shakespeare in English or when seeing the overlap between physics and chemistry when studying them separately.  Studying Latin a year after studying ancient history also connected some dots for me.  Struggling with the concept of significant figures in physics one year made one topic less for me to grapple with in chemistry and maths.  Field trips to the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City at once brought together the geography of Canada I’d learned in Grades 4 through 6 and the history of Canada I’d also been taught.  Geography and history are often, as Sir Jim points out in his addendum following the misinterpration of his report, intimately connected.  In my mind, this balance of subject teaching with cross-curricular connections made where apposite is what an education is all about.

The problem with Sir Jim’s report lies not with the balance he strikes, which is, I think, the right one. Rather, it is with the implementation, and I’m not sure a report alone can do much to improve that. An abundance of interested, intelligent and inspiring teachers could, without further prescription, take care of this.  More of these are what we need more of in our primary schools, not government reports.

I’d met A earlier in the evening and had had a delightful conversation about schools with her. When B, her equally delightful husband, joined in, he mentioned that his oldest child was attending a school of the original Dulwich Estate. He was bemoaning the level of fees and the prospect of even higher fees so that the school could offer bursaries to others. But B felt that he should not have to pay more than the cost of his own child’s education. Frankly, I could sympathise, but I found myself spouting off about public benefit and the fact that these endowed schools had benefited from decades and even centuries from their charitable status and therefore could not squirrel out of their public benefit obligations under the (relatively new) Charities Act 2006.

All of this raises tough issues for middle class parents who want to send their children to charitable independent schools. Under the 2006 Charities Act, charities which operate schools need to affirmatively demonstrate that they provide a public benefit. This used to be presumed under the old law. Now, the onus is on them. Last week, the Charities Commission, which regulates charities in England and Wales, issued guidance on what constitutes a public benefit and how this obligation can be discharged. Reading between the lines of that guidance, it seemed pretty clear to me that the easiest way to discharge the public benefit obligation is through the provision of bursaries and the sharing of resources (such as teacher time) or the sponsorship of academies —- all of which involve incremental costs to the charities which must, in the case of unendowed charitable schools, find the money elsewhere.

The problem is that with the exception of a small handful of charities operating independent schools (such as Christ’s Hospital, Whitgift Foundation, Eton, the Dulwich Estate and Winchester), most charitable schools do not have any significant endowment which allows them to allocate investment income to bursaries and other sure-fire ways of meeting the new public benefit requirement. For those schools, the trustees are under pressure to ensure that they fulfil the requirements of the new Act, and in the absence of a prescribed path by the Charities Commission, many will feel the need to take what seems to be the most obvious way of fulfilling that requirement: bursaries. The catch-22, however, is that the money for the bursaries has to come from somewhere and in the absence of endowments, that means full-fee paying parents.

So what are parents to do? Well, they can choose to send their children to a non-charity independent school. Many of these are propriety commercial operations with a profit motive, so while parents may not be contributing to the fees to send the kid from the neighbouring council estate to their child’s prep, the profit motive may mean that they are paying a similar amount to line the pockets of the proprietor of the school. Of course, they can also choose to send their child to a non-charity independent school which is not-for-profit (like the schools of the New Model School Company) and rest assured that they are spending their hard-earned money on their own child and no one else’s.

The reality, however, is that most of this country’s independent schools are charities. Of the almost 1,300 schools which make up the Independent Schools Council, over a 1,000 are charities. And very few are endowed. All of these charities will have to comply with last week’s Charities Commission guidance. The effect, however, is that middle class parents sending their children to unendowed charitable schools will be priced out of those schools by increased fees to subsidised lower income families. It arguably won’t take long for those schools to become polarised with children of the upper classes and lower classes, with the middle classes noticeably absent. This clearly cannot be the right result.

Eton now costs over £28,000 per year, and that’s just for tuition and boarding. Count on an extra thousand or so for the extras: music lessons, tuck, uniform, etc. Princes William and Harry attended, as has many pages’ worth of entries in Burke’s Peerage. The school’s name is synonymous with all things elite.

It was reported this week that Eton is aspiring (like some other schools who have also come under heavy fire from the Charities Commission, I should add) to make needs blind admissions within ten years’ time. To fund this, it is raising funds for an endowment to ensure that any boy who gains admission will not be turned away because of his family’s inability to pay. That’s nice for those of you with newborns, but those of you with children in state primary schools right now may want to take note of some pretty wonderful deals on offer from Eton (of course, in part courtesy of the generous tax advantages afforded to charities by the tax system which we all pay into.)

Beginning in September 2009, Eton will offer New Foundation Scholarships to state school boys in Year 8 who would not normally be able to attend Eton for financial reasons and who are not in a position (presumedly because of their situation and prior schooling) to prepare for Eton’s other scholarships, which require knowledge that they may not have had an opportunity to gain. The application deadline is in mid-December (ie now!) for the January test and entry in September 2009. Given that this is the first year this scholarship is offered, the word may not be out yet about it, so if your son has attended a state school for the past three years, it may be worthwhile taking a punt.

Eton began offering Junior Music Scholarships in 2001. Only one junior music scholarship is offered each year. To be eligible, a boy must be in Year 5 at a state school (and he must have been in the state sector for three years). The level of ability is usually high; Eton notes that Grade 5 music ability at age ten would be a benchmark. Successful candidates are sent to St George’s School, Windsor, as boarders for three years and are guaranteed a place at Eton thereafter. Eton pays for both and music lessons (unless the parents are able to contribute a portion.)

Finally, since 1972, Eton has offered several Junior Scholarships every year. These are awarded to boys in state schools (and have been for three years) who are of high academic promise who would benefit from the opportunity of attending Eton, and who would contribute to the life of the school. Snowdon has heard via the grapevine that there are not always a lot of applicants for these scholarships. Boys apply for these scholarships in Year 5; I believe the test is in January or February and you need to get your application in a few weeks in advance of this, so if your son is in Year 5 now, think about applying right now. If selected, a boy attends a prep school near his home or a boarding school (if no suitable prep is available) and then enters Eton in Year 9 (or F block, as it is called at Eton; there is a whole new lingo you’ll have to come to grips with if your son takes up a place there.) As with the Junior Music Scholarships, Eton will pick up the full tab of the prep and Eton where the parents are unable to make a contribution.

For more information, see: http://www.etoncollege.com/Scholarships.aspx

***************

On 1 November, I wrote in From London day school to …. boarding school? Are you outta your mind? about Christ’s Hospital School. In addition to the sliding scale fees at that school, children residing in the Borough of Reading, the ancient Borough of Newbury (including Thatcham and Hungerford) and the ancient Parish of Twickenham (some adjacent parishes may also be eligible) and girls who are the daughters of a parent employee (or past employee) of the City of London are eligible to apply for a further 50% reduction of whatever fee they are assessed to pay. This year’s deadline has passed, but definitely worth considering for those with children currently in Year 5 and who can apply in the first term of Year 6 in 2009.

For more information, see: http://www.christs-hospital.org.uk/allaboutmoney2007-08.pdf

You’re in luck if your child is high ability scholarship material (although full or even sizeable scholarships are few and far between), or you’re so poor as to qualify your child (of even average ability) for a full bursary at the local prep or public school.  You’re really lucky, though,  if you don’t have to worry about the price tag and can send your child to any school in the country.  The one group left out of all of this is that of middle class parents of non-scholarship level children. What options do they have?  GEMS and Cognita, the private companies I looked at on Sunday in Would you like fries with your education? professed to be focused on providing affordable no-frills schools targeted at just this group.  But as we discovered, many of those schools charge fees that rival those at the top of the fee bracket, and certainly none in London was anywhere near more affordable than the average fee-paying school that made no pretension of being affordable.

The New Model School Company may fill part of the gap in this market.  Created by social think tank, Civitas, it aims to provide another choice for parents who feel the state system is not providing the education that it should.  Its model is based on three premises: providing a top quality education, keeping fees as low as possible (fees in 2009 will be £5,250 per year, under half of the fees charged by most London day schools) while providing that top quality education, and establishing a model that can be replicated elsewhere.

The first New Model School, Maple Walk,  was established in Kensal Green, Northwest London in 2004.  Its facilities aren’t fancy: it is principally housed in a church hall, although new premises have been bought near Roundwood Park in Brent a few miles away.  The school will relocate in September 2009.  It had two pupils in 2004 and currently has almost 100; there are over 100 pupils registered for entry in each of 2010 and 2011.

I attended the launch in Docklands this week of the New Model School Company’s second school, Faraday School,  which will serve the Docklands, North Greenwich and the East London neighbourhoods.  (This school will be located on Trinity Buoy Wharf, next to the free ferry that goes to North Greenwich.)

Faraday School is expected to follow a curriculum very similar to that of Maple Walk: a strong emphasis on the basics (numeracy and literacy) with science, French, Latin (in the higher primary years), PE, PSHE, history, geography and the other usual suspects all included.  The head teacher at Maple Walk, Sarah Knollys, addressed parents at the Faraday launch. Some of the points which caught my attention were the use by the school of a phonics reading system (rather than whole language which disappointed a whole generation) and the teaching of history in a chronological order.  (It seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how many schools like to teach in “themes”, something that drives me bonkers and inevitably produces a cohort of kids who don’t know that the Pyramids preceded the Protestant Reformation.)  Specialist teachers are brought in where needed.  Despite the absence of fancy facilities, Maple Walk participates in what I would call many “rich” activities: song, dance and poetry reading competitions, yoga (as part of PE), and Latin.  Maple Walk’s head said she is open to any enriching experiences that are affordable.  One immediately thinks that English Speaking Union speech and debate or maths competitions could easily be integrated into the curriculum, for example.

We’ll have to see how the kids from Maple Walk stack up when they participate in standardised tests and/or apply to competitive secondary schools.  But on the surface, Maple Walk and Faraday seem to be two schools worth keeping tabs on.  And of course, if the New Model School opens a school in South London, I may be among the first to fill out a free registration form…

For more information on the New Model Schools, see http://www.newmodelschool.co.uk/

Friends recently expressed an interest in sending their son to the school attended by Princes William and Harry in Kensington.  Its sister school, Pembridge Hall, was the object of much brouhaha two years ago when its headmistress suggested women have Caesarean sections early in the month in order to be sure of getting one of the five places opened each month for children born that year.  People assume that with a clientele such as the princes and demand that requires rescheduling the birth of a child, these must be pretty unique schools. In fact, they are but revenue units of a chain of 13 schools and half a dozen crammers owned by Alpha Plus, which is now owned by Delancey, a property investment company. (Delancey bought Alpha Plus just under a year ago for a rumoured £100 million, some £74 million more than the £26 million paid five years earlier for the group by private equity firm, Sovereign Capital.  Sovereign Capital reported an IRR of  53% on its investment.)  And Southbank International School, attended by the children of many expats in the City, is but one in a chain of over 30 schools in this country plus others internationally.  That chain is owned by Cognita, which is backed by Englefield Capital.  The Hampshire School, with its Kensington address, is but one of dozens of schools in the UK and abroad owned by GEMS, which was founded by Dubai entrepreneur Sunny Varkey.  Alpha Plus, Cognita and GEMS emerged in the past few years, ostensibly to shake up the private school market and to offer value private education (read: literacy and numeracy and traditional schooling, but perhaps not the equivalent of a West End theatre for little Isabelle’s Year 2 play or an onsite swimming pool.)  A laudable idea, perhaps, given the significant percentage of parents who are disgruntled with falling standards in the state schools and  who say they would send their children to private schools if they could afford to do so.   But has the theory been put into practice? And is the corporatisation of our schools a price worth paying for a cut-rate education?

It is curious that Southbank International School and the Hampshire School do not post what they charge in tuition fees on their website.  I visited Southbank a few years ago and it was relatively expensive with respect to its peer group back then. I can’t imagine that Cognita has paid good money to acquire it only to lower fees.  In fact, I have heard parents I know with children there grumble about the increases there, and I know some who have pulled their children out as a result. So much for an affordable education there now that it’s under the Cognita umbrella.  And what about the Hampshire School? Well, we have no way of knowing what they charge because they don’t make this publicly available on their website. I should point out that it is the norm for schools to publish this information on their websites.  Are they withholding the information because its fees are perhaps not in line with Mr Varkey’s mantra that he’s trying to provide an “affordable education”? Wetherby School and Pembridge Hall, which are owned by Alpha Plus (which also owns the Davies Laing & Dick crammers), are at least up front and publish their fees.  But they charge £4200 per term — more than the going rate for the average London prep.  Again, so much for economies of scale, passing on affordability, and shaking up the private sector. 

Let’s assume for the moment that there are some affordable schools in these groups (and I believe there are some), and let’s ignore the fact some of the schools really are quite expensive (so much so that they have to refrain from posting the fees on their websites).  Is corporate ownership desirable? How long will it be before the quirkiness, history and colour of the established schools brought under these corporate umbrellas is eroded by the economies of scale imperative on which the groups operate?  How can a newly established no-frills school ever hope to achieve character when pushed to provide a return acceptable to the private equity houses (in the case of Alpha Plus and Cognita) that own them?  The project has not been long in the making, and I’m afraid if we revisit this question in a few years’ time, we may find that the expensive corporatised schools have turned into a homogenised slush while the truly “affordable” private schools under those corporate umbrellas are so strongly driven by the profit imperative that they fail to develop any of the character.  In short, I fear we’ll end up with a bunch of McDonald’s restaurants and maybe a few Carluccios, but in they end, neither really has much individuality any more, does it?