Top head: 'Take secondary schools away from politicians'

4 October 2004

Secondary school policy should be taken out of the hands of politicians and handed over to a permanent standing commission, made up of employers, universities, parents and teachers, a leading independent school head said today.

Dr Martin Stephen, chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), told members at the opening of their annual meeting in St Andrews today that, just as the Government had given decisions about the Bank Rate to a panel of experts, so control of secondary education should be given to those who use it.

Dr Stephen, High Master of St Paul's School, London, said: "Is it not time that we recognised we have made a great mistake. In accepting that the Government is responsible for delivering the educational system, have we not too easily assumed that it must also design it?

"We can never realistically remove from Government control of spending on education, or responsibility for delivery of the system. Yet isn't it time we took the design of secondary education policy out of the hands of Government? Education is a service industry. Who are the end-users of our product? Universities, further education and employers.

"Isn't it time to take educational policy out of the hands of politicians in general, and party politics in particular?" he asked.

It was unfair to criticise politicians with regard to education; their intentions were good, said Dr Stephen. "Yet the truth is that we have an educational system that arouses deep dissent and dissatisfaction, and the final responsibility for that system is held by the successive Governments who have redesigned and redesigned out education system so that it bears a resemblance to a wound operated on so often that all that is left is scar tissue."

He added: "My suggestion is for a permanent, standing Commission designated with the task of recommending a lasting pattern for secondary education in the UK. The dominant body on that standing commission should be composed of the end-users of secondary education in the UK. A third of the proposed body would be drawn from our universities. A third would be drawn from employers. The final third would be drawn from parents of secondary-age children, and from heads and teachers in the secondary system."

The commission would be charged with responsibility for the development of long-term education policy, and of types of school to last longer than the lifespan of governments.

"Let's start to make our education structures something decided by those who need it, by those who use it and by those who know about it because they work in it. Let's make the politicians' job finding the resources for what we've decided we need," said Dr Stephen.

Earlier, Dr Stephen called on the Government to help widen access to independent schools. "If we are to take a proper pride in what we are and what we do, it follows on logically that every child in the UK should have the chance to attend an independent school regardless of the race, colour, creed, social or economic standing of their parents.

"In a world where the mixed economy is the norm, it is madness for Government not to buy places in our schools."

The full text of Dr Stephen's speech is available from the ISC Press Office.

* The Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, established in 1869, comprises 241 senior independent schools, boys' and co-educational, throughout the UK. Its schools have more than 176,000 pupils, nearly 50,000 of them girls. About 38,000 pupils in HMC schools are boarders.