Private schools better for social mobility, says leading headmaster

Private schools do more to help social mobility than some state schools, the head of a private school group that represents Eton and Harrow said today.

Tim Hands, chair of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, said the accusation that independent schools restrict social mobility is “perverse” yet there is a feeling that spending money on private education is not “moral.”

He said that at the London Oratory, a state school where Tony Blair and Nick Clegg sent their children, only six per cent of pupils are eligible for free school meals — a measure of poverty — and houses in the catchment area cost £2.25 million. He contrasted that with Christ’s Hospital, an independent school in West Sussex where 88 per cent of pupils are on means-tested bursaries and almost half pay less than 10 per cent of the full fees.

In a speech at the HMC annual conference he said: “I invite any occupant of the Clapham Omnibus, the mode of transport by which I myself got to school, to tell me which school they think fulfils a greater social function, London Oratory or John Franklin’s wicked Christ’s Hospital.”

He warned that parents are made to feel “moral opprobrium” for choosing a private school, whereas parents who pay for private tuition or move into expensive houses in catchment areas of state schools do not feel this.

He added: “Making the journey to independent education, parents are currently made to feel, is an unacceptable mobility: expenditure on purchase of a car, holiday or house is moral; expenditure on the education of the child is not.

“The illogicality is clear. Why should those members of the public who so value education find that those responsible for publicly funded education do not value them?

“Social mobility, as I understand it, means the ability for the individual to alter their economic and other kinds of status, and, in the current debate, to do so as a result of a high quality education. Social mobility is the founding principle and the historic and enduring specialism of many of our schools and a principle to which we all adhere.”

Dr Hands added: “The long interfering arm and dead restraining hand of government has emasculated the education system of this country and deprived children of their heritage.”