Fifteen years ago, I made the career move from a leafy public school in Kent to a gang-riven estate in Hackney. I had spent four years working in the independent school sector and was convinced that, if I could replicate some of the things I learnt in Britain’s second-oldest school, and bring it to the kids in Hackney, I could get similar results. Really high expectations, never-say-die support, early mornings, late finishes, packed weekends and endless patience. I was an idealist. In the intervening years, that conviction has only grown.
It is important to be respectful when making comparisons between state and private education. There is a tendency for each sector to pass sweeping judgements on the other. Go to a state school and you won’t have to look far to find some teachers saying private schools should be closed down. Go to a public-school staff room and you will sometimes hear complacent talk about council estate oiks. Both positions drive me mad.
I received a state education, but I have worked in independent schools too. I have seen how both sectors largely operate in silos and struggle to understand each other. Finding teachers who have moved from state to private education is rare. Finding teachers moving in the opposite direction is almost non-existent.
I chose to stop working in private education after four years. Not because my time there wasn’t enjoyable; I made friends for life and learnt a great deal from wise senior colleagues. I had a job I loved and I was looked after. The kids and families were kind to me and I had experiences I’ll never forget. I just find it much easier to get out of bed each morning to teach kids from disadvantaged backgrounds.
In many ways, I am not a public-school critic. I would like to see the end of private education one day, but I don’t see urgent and immediate abolition as the answer. For starters, there is much good practice in the independent sector which can be adapted to a state school setting. The better option is that state education becomes so well-funded, and of such a high standard, that it no longer makes sense for any parent to pay for their child’s education. This is doable. It costs money, but there’s no secret to it if the political will is there.
There are a number of things which make the career of a public-school teacher more sustainable than their state school counterpart. The respective staff retention levels are testament to this. In the independent sector, class sizes are smaller, facilities are enviable, and there is, self-evidentially, universal commitment from home. In boarding schools, the environment is much more controlled than in day schools, so things like homework don’t tend to be a problem. There’s marginally better pay, slightly longer holidays, fewer classroom contact hours, and often subsidised on-site accommodation. But private schools get their pound of flesh too. When I worked there, I was in work one or both days on the weekends and often had boarding house duties in the evening.
I was a keen young bean when I first started teaching in a private school. I probably did above average hours, but those were voluntary. I didn’t have a family to think about so my time was my own. My working week went something like this: Up every morning to start coaching at 6am, get breakfast ready for those in training before we all sprinted off to registration, chapel and lessons. Teach most of the day. Lessons finished at 4:30pm. After that, three afternoons a week were dedicated to coaching my core sport. On the other three evenings, I would be supervising in the gym or helping out by providing additional coaching across other sports.
It was a twelve-hour day every day, except for Saturdays when I could sleep in until 7am and finish work at 5pm. When we were away at weekend competitions, it was probably more like a 15-hour day. No one ever watched the clock. It just wasn’t a factor. The EU Working Time Directive didn’t get much of an airing. I didn’t care. I got to coach sports I loved to young people with endless reserves of energy, gratitude, and a will to win. All that said, I do of course recognise that I was young and that such a schedule is not sustainable in the longer term. But it was a lot of fun.
The students were pushed pretty hard. The expectation wasn’t so much that they needed to win – although that was there for those who were competitive by nature – but more they were expected to seize the chance to fill their day. There was a culture amongst staff and students of going the extra mile. We would raise the bar and students would strive for the new standard. They reached it and we lifted the bar again. And so it went in every sphere of school life: continuous improvement and never satisfied; an appetite for the next incremental challenge. After 13 years, that tends to rub off.
Quite a few parents in the school I worked for were themselves from working class backgrounds similar to mine. I naturally gravitated towards them. They had built successful businesses. They paid quite a bit of money to educate their kids in an environment which was alien to them. It wasn’t anything to do with a perceived quality of the teaching. That wasn’t the differentiator. They were paying for everything else; the sport, music, drama, trips, and all the other ‘extras’. Most of all they wanted their kids to finish school with maximum confidence and self-belief. They liked that their children were pushed and cajoled to always strive for more.
The point I’m making is that, once I’d been there for a while, this all felt pretty normal. For the students, parents and the teachers that had been there for years, it was seen as a privilege to pursue your hobbies at work. This is where government can support state schools to close the gap on the independent sector. This has nothing to do with academic outcomes; teaching in state schools is often more rigorous and subject to stricter quality assurance. The outcomes I am talking about are the energy, ambition, confidence, commitment, and the appetite for challenge which is instilled in students through co-curricular programmes. It’s hard to truly understand the difference it makes until you’re responsible for delivering it. Many children are fortunate to have such habits encouraged and supported at home. So many I have worked with are not.
Most of my colleagues from the state sector would love to commit more time to this aspect of education, if only they had the freedom and resource to do so. Unfortunately, with class sizes twice that of the independent sector, this is an impossibility. The size of the state sector workforce needs to increase considerably. There are plenty of examples of high-quality co-curricular programmes in the state sector but, at the moment, such provision is often an afterthought. A step change in co-curricular delivery in state schools would, in my view, have a bigger impact on social and economic mobility than anything else. It cannot happen without investment and that is why it hasn’t happened yet.
There is a quiet reason private schools don’t want state schools to copy this aspect of their model. I don't mean the really big public schools; they have a brand and waiting list which will always keep them solvent. Most public schools in this country – the ones you’ve not heard about - are only just managing to balance the books. The parents in these schools often struggle to meet the fees. The continued presence of these schools is more fragile than you would think. If the state sector were able to match the independent sector’s commitment to co-curricular, nearly all of these minor public schools be competed out of existence. Now that is levelling up.
The single most powerful reform we can make is changing what happens inside schools outside of the classroom. Not a dilettante approach, but one which is deep, thoughtful, scientific and pervasive. Smaller class sizes, better facilities and bigger workforces are entry-level requirements. If state schools can start to make co-curricular delivery run through their offer like a stick of rock, the opportunity gap in this country would close in a permanent way. It wouldn’t change things overnight, but within two generations this country would be unrecognisable.
That reform is hiding in plain sight.
