EDUCATION

Is There a Future for the Independent Schools?

By ANGUS MAUDE, MP

WitaTEvett the Newsom Commission finally recommends (if anything), it seems clear that during the lifetime of the present Parliament there will be a crisis in the affairs of the independent schoqls. The majority of Labour supporters dislike the principle of independent education, and the Government will do nothing to help the schools. Indeed, the Selective Em- ployment Tax will place a heavy additional burden on them.

The financial burdens are already heavy and ill grow heavier, especially on boarding schools. The cost of essential domestic services has risen enormously since the war and will go on rising. In addition, teachers' salaries in inde- pendent schools will continue to increase, prob- ably at a faster rate than those of local authorities. When the minimum school-leaving age is raised to sixteen, the competition for secondary school masters and mistresses will be further intensified. Probably the only thing that could substantially improve the independent schools' competitive position would be the com- pulsory imposition of comprehensive systems on local authorities.

The cost of providing independent schooling, which determines the fees charged, has for years been increasing faster than the disposable in- comes of middle-class parents. The number of boys and girls in independent schools has been steadily falling, although the decline has not been uniform over the whole field. The leading public schools are at present holding their own, and the worst sufferers have probably been the lesser-known girls' schools and the small pri- vate nursery and primary schools.

The social catchment areas of all the schools have been changing. More established middle- class families are sending their children to main- tained and aided primary schools, and tending to keep them in the county system if they can secure grammar school places. The newer re- cruits to the middle classes are making more use of the small private schools for young children. A survey some years ago suggested that well over half the boys at Headmasters' Conference public schools are the sons of fathers who were not themselves at public schools.

There is nothing new about independent schools being used as a vehicle for social mobility; they performed this function through- out the nineteenth century. What is compara- tively new—it began in a small way in the early 1930.—is the growing inability of established middle-class families to afford for their children a type of education which they had come to egard as an essential part of being middle-class.

What distinguishes the independent schools corn all others—except perhaps the direct-grant rammar schools—is that all their pupils are n them as a direct result of a deliberate choice lade by their parents. Some young children re in independent schools because the local ounty primary schools are bad; some boys and cis are in independent secondary schools be-

cause they could not secure grammar school places. In these cases the choice is perhaps not wholly voluntary; a second-best has been ac- cepted lest even worse befall. But for the rest, the choice was voluntary and deliberate.

We have, therefore, the anomaly that in a time of growing national affluence the number of parents willing and able to pay for their children's education is steadily declining. The range of choice—or rather the ability to make use of it—is narrowing. This is naturally giving rise to some resentment, and the sufferers are beginning to look askance at the Conservative party and demand from it more definite and explicit reassurances of support.

Until now the Conservative line has been cautious and entirely reasonable. The party has made it clear that it will oppose any government move for the compulsory closure or 'nationalisa- tion' of independent schools, and that it firmly supports the right of parents to pay for their children to be privately educated if they can afford to do so. It has, however, resisted all demands for any form of subsidy to the inde- pendent schools, even to the extent of refusing to promise tax rebates in respect of school fees.

-This policy, like so many Conservative policies, has been in effect a compromise between the conflicting desires of different groups of Tory supporters. The Conservative right wing, backed probably by the majority of active supporters in the constituencies, is for upholding the inde- pendent schools at all costs, including tax rebates for fees. But some Conservative politicians are genuinely worried about the 'dual system' of education, regarding it as an increasingly divi- sive and anachronistic element in our society. The dichotomy between these two sets of views could scarcely be more complete, and events in the next few years may well make it impossible to hold to the present compromise policy.

The majority of middle-class Conservative supporters are even now barely satisfied with what amounts to little more than a token en- dorsement of their case. They see the position of the independent schools becoming progres- sively more precarious and they find themselves increasingly being priced out of the market. The Conservative 'left' has accepted the compromise, at least for the time being. It is unwilling to advocate measures that would destroy the right of parents to pay for private schooling, and is content to allow current economic trends to go on contracting the independent sector of education.

Events--with or without a Newsom Cpmmis- sion recommendation and Labour government action—will probably force a showdown. The Conservative party will have to make up its mind. It should, in fact, be starting to discuss the question openly and frankly now.

It is hard to see how discussion can avoid coming to grips with the whole awkward ques- tion of what Tories now feel about 'privilege.' Nowhere are the implications of this question more awkward than in the field of education. Tory social reformers, imbued with the Dis- raelian ideal of the unfragmented society, are inevitably worried by the divisive effects of the dual system. Yet surely all Tories should— though few of them now openly say so—be in favour of a degree of 'privilege' in society if it is earned by the performance of social duties. It is not easy to decide how far this is the case with private schooling.

Some empirical decisions can be made on educational grounds alone. It cannot be right to destroy good schools, nor yet to strive officiously to keep alive bad private infants' and primary schools (and some of them are very second- rate), or minor girls' secondary schools which cannot even provide the rudiments of sixth-form courses, when these are obviously doomed by present trends. It must be right to promise to defend the direct-grant grammar schools, and to open the direct-grant list to suitable inde- pendent schools. •

Beyond this, it seems doubtful whether the Conservative party can commit itself to any form of subsidy. The dogmatic belief of so many Con- servatives in the justice of tax rebates for feeL paying parents has never seemed to contain much logic. The argument is that these parents 'pay twice': but the bachelor, the spinster and the childless couple pay once, through rates and taxes, without getting any children educated at all. Are they to get tax rebates, too, for not calling on the state-aided system? It would seem more logical to increase the child allowances' against taxable income.

Nor is it easy to see how the party can satisfy the last-ditch defenders of the public schools when the public schools themselves are obviously. preparing to surrender on terms. Not only do they see the inevitable end of the increasing financial squeeze, but they are by no Means insensitive to the social arguments against the dual system of education. Few public school headmasters are wholly happy about the proi pect of schools increasingly dominated by the sons of the rich. As a result, both the Head.- masters' Conference and the Governing Bodies Association are in a mood to negotiate with a Labour government any reasonable kind of a deal for 'integration,' especially if the Newsom Commission prepares the ground in a way that is intellectually respectable. They would prob- ably settle for the kind of solution foreshadowed by the old Fleming scheme and enlarged three years ago in a book by Mr John Dancy, the Master of Marlborough. This would turn the public schools into something like direct-grant schools, to the extent that up to 50 per cent of their places would be made available to local education authorities: in return for this the public schools hope they would be allowed to retain at least half of their places for private fee-paying pupils.

Whether a Labour government would go for this is doubttul. It may well appear to be some- thing of a confidence trick, designed to secure public subsidies for the school fees of middle-

class boys. Few local education authorities are keen on the idea. The question is whether the Conservative party ought to approve it. There will be considerable pressure to persuade its leaders to do so: first, from the schools them- selves; and, later, from middle-class Conservatives who will decide to prefer half a loaf to the ultimate prospect of no bread at all. There are important questions of principle involved, how-. ever, and the decision will not be easy and may not admit of compromise. The Conservative' party should start nerving' itself for it now.